In other news, the folks at MobileSyrup have caught wind of rumored (emphasis on rumored) release date and pricing for the Pre 2 on Rogers. Apparently, we might be looking at a November 9th launch with pricing at $99.99 for a three-year contract. If this pricing rumor (emphasis on rumor) pans out and takes hold outside of Canada, the Pre 2 might just have a chance for moderate success. All told, it’s a fairly modern phone inside (minus a few modern niceties), but making the value proposition case isn’t easy when the price is over a hundred smackers.

Source: Industry Canada, MobileSyrup; Thanks to KJB86 for the tip!

Right on cue the Palm Pre 2 has passed through the testing labs of the FCC, sporting fresh “this won’t boil your brains” certifications. The newly certified phones don’t come with any further surprises from what we already knew about the Pre 2 from all of the leaks and the announcements that came this morning, but it’s at least nice to see them making a courtesy stop for certification, opening the door to sales. Let’s just hope that this means the phones will become available sooner rather than later in the undefined “coming months” ahead.

For the record, the phones certified are the P102UNA (UMTS GSM, sporting AT&T-compatible 3G bands) and the P102EWW (EVDO CDMA for Verizon and Sprint). The GSM version will initially be available as the unlocked developer phone, while the CDMA phones will be available on Verizon. Unknown is whether or not the CDMA or GSM version will launch on the unspecified Canadian carrier, though if we had to guess we’d put our money on GSM (Bell and Telus are busy transitioning from CDMA to GSM, the last thing they want to do is launch a phone they’re working to be incompatible with).

Source: FCC (P102EWW, P102UNA); Via: Engadget; Thanks to Arthur on Twitter for the heads up!

Update: Palm has posted up a page about the developer program. We still don't have a date or exact pricing, but this bodes well:

HP is excited to announce that developers will be able to purchase an unlocked UMTS version of the new Palm Pre 2 smartphone in the United States to be a canvas for your creativity. And qualified developers will be able to purchase the unlocked Pre 2 at a substantial discount! [...] We will be announcing more details of the program as well as device availability shortly. Stay tuned! (To be notified when the program starts, send an email to pdc@palm.com .)

Read the Press Release

The Palm P102UEU, presumed to be the Palm Pre 2 (or Palm Pre Double Plus) has cropped up in the FCC databases, as noted by the fine chaps at Engadget. P102, as you may recall, is the model type (the Pre was the P100, and Pre Plus P101), so presumably the P102 is the next generation Pre. UEU has been determined through similar deductive reasoning to be the UMTS 3G GSM variant of the phone, however historically there have been two batches of GSM webOS devices: the UNA (UMTS for North America) and the UEU (UMTS for Europe). Strange that the UEU is getting FCC clearance while the EWW and UNA were cleared by German certification firm TÜVRheinland. Either way, FCC clearance is one of those last formalities before these devices head into the hands of users, so maybe we’re not that far from announcement time.

UPDATE: Some super-sleuthing into the FCC docs has revealed some specs and some interesting observations - check it out here.

Source: FCC; Via: Engadget

There’s no getting around it, we love O2 Germany, and we don’t even live anywhere near Germany. Our love for O2 Germany comes mainly in form of their advertising, which has been worlds better than what we’ve seen on the North American continent, and tends to peak out early. Let’s not forget Palm fans in Germany, we love you too, especially when you take pictures of these peaking-out-early ads. In this case, it’s a rather large O2 Germany poster, with the Palm Pixi, QWERTZ keyboard and all, standing front-and-center before devices like the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, the Motorola Milestone (known as the Droid stateside), and devices from Nokia and LG.

Looking at the ad, there’s no indication whether or not this is a Pixi Plus or the Wi-Fi-less Pixi as seen on Sprint (there’s no Wi-Fi icon in the top bar, but this is stock imagery here). The folks at German phone reseller 7mobile.de may have the answer and then some. They have a listing for a Palm Pixi, complete with UMTS data and Wi-Fi. Then again, they also say it will support video calls and T9 predictive texting. Either way, we would be stunned if the Pixi Plus was not the device that made it oversees, as that’s the device that AT&T is getting (albeit with different radio bands). 7mobile.de also claims an amusing "hours" of standby time and "minutes" of talk time.

At this point we have little doubt that the removal of Wi-Fi from the Pixi was Sprint’s idea, and not something that Palm wanted to do. While releasing the Plus on every other network is little consolation to Sprint Pixi owners, it’s still better than nothing. And it is worth noting that when and if the Pixi hits O2, it’ll be the first time it’s been available outside the United States, some six months after the Pre first hit European shores.

Thanks to gizmo21 and Jens for the tips!

The certification was sparse on details, though we do have confirmation that the phones will be quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dualband UMTS/HSDPA at 900/2100 MHz, otherwise known as not compatible with AT&T.

[via: Engadget]

Have a Palm Pre on O2, but find yourself envious of your American compatriots on Verizon running Mobile Hotspot left and right? Fret not, for your quandary will soon be quashed. In a tweet on one of O2 Germany’s official Twitter feeds, the following (translated into English) was posted.

Coming soon: the Palm Mobile Hotspot App. Thus the Pre becomes a UMTS Wi-Fi router with WPA or WEP encryption - ideal for iPods & iPads.

Zing! Especially considering that at launch won’t be able to get a 3G iPad in Europe at all. This is the first official word we have of the Mobile Hotspot app making the leap to another carrier. Because the Pre on O2 is a GSM phone, users will be able to still place and receive phone calls while running Mobile Hotspot, something their Verizon brethren can’t do. No word on pricing, though we expect the app to be free, and O2 Germany currently runs a tethering plan starting at €25 a month. Correction: Tethering is offered free-of-charge for O2 subscribers, but watch your usage to avoid going over your plan's usage cap.

Thanks to Ruben for the tip!

Remember that Palm P100UNA that was certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance back in August? Yeah, that’s a GSM Palm Pre made for the United States. To break it down, P100 is the Pre (as seen by the P100 on Sprint), U is for UMTS (3G GSM), and NA for North America. While we haven’t heard anything on this front for over two months, the FCC database trawlers at wireless goodness noted that today a new Palm device passed the fed’s certification process: the P100UNA.

There’s not much too be gleaned from the FCC documents on the P100UNA that we couldn’t figure out from the name: it’s a Pre that will be compatible with US 3G GSM bands, e.g. AT&T and T-Mobile (and our friends up in Canada on Rogers, Telus, and Bell). When will the GSM Pre finally make its way to Palm’s home shores? We don’t know for sure, but if we had to guess we’d say sometime after Sprint’s US exclusive on the Pre expires at the end of 2009. Let’s just hope that an unlocked version is in the mix.

O2 announced today that the GSM Palm Pre will be launching in Europe in the middle of next month. The staggered release will see Germany getting their hands on the hot little smartphone on October 13th, with the United Kingdom and Ireland getting it on October 16th. Yup, that announcement really did come quickly.

Plans will vary by country. United Kingdom O2 customers will have several plan options for the Pre. On an 18-month contract you can sign up for a minimal contract of £29.38 a month (75 minutes, 125 texts, unlimited data) and get the Pre for £96.89. Alternatively, they can pay as little as £44.05 a month (1200 minutes, 500 texts, unlimited data) and get a Pre for free. Customers signing a 24-month contract for a minimum of £34.26 (600 minutes, 500 texts, unlimited data) will also get a Pre for free. All available plans for the Pre come with unlimited data on O2’s HDSPA network and access to 7500 affiliated WiFi hotspots.

German shoppers can pay €1 upfront for the Pre on a 24-month contract, with the rest of the phone subsidized at €20 a month over the contract. In total, you can expect to pay €481 for the phone, or an extra €2 to get the Pre contract-free (no word if that also means its SIM-lock free). The Pre will be available on any contract with O2 Germany, though they recommend you sign up for at least the €10/month data plan (otherwise you'll be loaded down with by-the-kb data charges). O2 Germany is also giving away 10 Palm Pre phones.

In Ireland, you can sign up for plans ranging from €40 (175 minutes, 100 texts, 10 MMS, 1 GB data) to €65 a month (450 minutes, 150 texts, 15 MMS, 1 GB data) for 18 months and get a Pre for just €99, while forking over €100 a month (700 minutes, 250 texts, 25 MMS, 1 GB data) for a year and a half will get you a Pre for free. All plans are limited to 1 GB of data month, though they do also all come with unlimited access to O2’s WiFi hotspot network.

The German O2 website has also confirmed that the GSM Pre is indeed a Quad-band phone, with dual-band UMTS support (all told, we’re talking EDGE, UMTS, and HSDPA). Apart from that, the phone is practically the same as the CDMA Pre seen on Sprint and Bell Mobility.

Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

The Palm Pixi will be the first smartphone to ship with Qualcomm’s new MSM7627 chipset, so there are understandably a lot of questions about what the lower-cost processor will be capable of. While we’ve seen in action that the Pixi isn’t quite as snappy as the Pre, and Palm has said that it won’t support as many open cards (which would seem to be more of a RAM limitation than the processor), the MSM7627 has remained cloaked in mystery.

Over at PalmInfocenter they’ve gotten their hands on the full spec sheet for the MSM7627, which you’ll find below:

• Two ARM cores integrated into a single chip – a dedicated CPU core and a dedicated modem processor – for an unparalleled level of integration:
  • 1. 600MHz applications processor with floating point unit and L2 cache
  • 2. 400MHz modem processor
• Supports both CDMA2000® 1xEV-DO Rev. A and UMTS HSDPA 7.2Mbps/HSUPA 5.76Mbps, and GSM
• In addition to the two ARM cores, features 320MHz application DSP for multimedia supporting full 30 fps WVGA encode/decode, 200MHz hardware-accelerated 3D graphics core supporting OPEN GL 2.0, high-resolution camera, integrated GPS
• 12mm x 12mm footprint
• Optimized power consumption

Yup, you read that right: the modem chip will easily support both EVDO (on the currently announced Pixi) and HSDPA (for the GSM Pixi we all know has to eventually come) - so at least we can be pretty sure that when Palm slaps a GSM radio in this thing, we won't have to guess about the chip again (Update, to clarify - the processor can play nice with both CDMA and GSM, but again, the Pixi is CDMA only). Also, the 320 MHz DSP (digital signal processor) and 200 MHz 3D graphics core should provide adequate oomph for gaming, once Palm gets around to whipping up an SDK to take advantage of the chip.