Tag Archives: Deutschland

[Muzaq] Win A UAD-2 Quad DSP Card Every Day

UAudio at the Frankfurt Musikmesse 2012

One of the leading suppliers of digital signal processing devices Universal Audio will be at the Musikmesse in Frankfurt 
between March 21th and 24th and they will raffle off a UAD-2 Quad DSP Card each and every day.

They will also be publicly demoing their latest flagship Apollo. So don’t hesitate to stop by at the S.E.A./Universal Audio booth in Hall 5.1, #C68.

Links

» Frankfurt Musikmesse
» Universal Audio
» Universal Audio’s Apollo

[Pre] Prices For German Pre Plus and Pixi Plus Revealed

German carrier O2 just revealed the price tags of their latest Palm gadgets: the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pixi Plus. Distribution will start April 28th, 2010.

  • Pre Plus: 509€ (or 29€ as down payment and 24mth x 20€)
  • Pixi Plus: 389€ (or 29€ as down payment and 24mth x 15€)

Both devices come straight unlocked from the factory to your hands and can thus be used on any GMS/3G network anywhere on this planet. Buying phones at german O2 stores don’t require O2 subscriptions.

[Pre] Palm Pre’s Slider Oreo Issues

Forum reports seem to be growing about this issue. A certain amount of first generation Palm Pre’s being sold all over the world seem to have slider issues. “It just wobbles too much, thus making it feel like a 500€ plastic toy.”, said a customer in a local O2 store.

Our testing device received from  a local O2 store in November, 2009 here in Berlin suffers the same slider issue.

When talking to O2’s customer support,  he by the way confirmed: “my Pre had the same issue. It is being repaired currently.”

Fortunately the repairing procedure with O2 is quite painless. If a customer realizes a defect within the first seven days of purchase, the local O2 store offers direct exchange of the device (this not only applies to Palm’s devices but to any cell phone O2 offers here in Germany). If defects are reported after seven days, they will be repaired within two weeks. Business customers are offered exchange devices at any time within 48hours.

If Palm Pre’s having the orea offect can be repaired at all, is still not really proven. According to a report on PreThinking, U.S. american devices are getting exchanged. Repair centers are not allowed to repair them.

When asking O2’s customer service, if the slider issue has been reported often, he answered: “No, this is a very rare issue, and we also asked Palm about this, and they also said, there is no slider issue.”

This might be the case for Germany, but in the meantime Palm in the U.S.A. seem to have implicitly confirmed the slider issues. In a PreCentral.net review article of the second generation Palm Pre (called Palm Pre Plus for the Verizon network), Dieter Bohn mentioned that “Palm says that they’ve fixed up the slider action (..)”.

In the meantime we’ve received our exchange device, and guess what? Although it still is a first generation Palm Pre, this slider has no orea effect.

It feels a lot more stable, making it eventually a serious tool for all the people who don’t want to follow the iPhone hype.

Picture is courtesy of PreThinking.com

[Pre] WebOS 1.3.5.2 Released in Europe

Telefonica (O2/MoviStar) has approved Palm’s latest update. We expect they found some bugs that are on the american 1.3.5.1.  The update will be installed automatically over the air. The 15 MB update brings Tethering via Bluetooth and 3D graphics acceleration to European Palm Pre’s, thus allowing us eventually to play Doom, Quake and Need For Speed.

The update features:

  • installation of apps to the media partition, thus allowing to use up to 7GB for applications
  • simultaneous installation of apps from the AppCatalog
  • Downloads can be paused and resumed
  • speed improvements
  • improved support for prepaid SIMs
  • improved battery runtime
  • support for animated GIFs

We are still waiting for a full changelog from Palm for this update.

Warning

Before updating: don’t forget to use the “Emergency Patch Recovery” (EPR) tool, if you installed patches via PreWare. The EPR tool can be found in PreWare under Available Packages -> Linux Applications -> All -> Emergency Patch Recovery

[Muzaq] MySpace Take Over iMeem and Shut Down

Golem.de reports that the social music and media streaming service iMeem has been overtaken by Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace.com and eventually been closed. It seems like this buy was intended only to remove a possible competitor from the market.

iMeem was a Start up from San Francisco. It was founded by former Napster Employees. Users could upload music and music videos, that could then be listened to as a stream. In 2007 iMeem managed to make deals with major music labels in the U.S.

» History of MySpace.com on Wikipedia
» History of iMeem on Wikipedia
» Rupert Murdoch on Wikipedia

[Pre] Re-Enable Full App Catalog in Europe

The European Update 1.3.1

On Monday European Palm Pre users were just happy to eventually have the 1.3.1 update that has already been provided to U.S. customers two weeks earlier.

Sadly the smiling in our faces didn’t last long. European customers rapidly found out that their App Catalog had been crippled. PreCentral explains why this technically happened, but they cannot explain the marketing logic behind this move.

Luckily there is a strong European community of developers, that Palm should be listening to more carefully, since many of us are iPhone switchers.

The workaround for Europeans

A guy going by the nick Dleira from Switzerland found a way to re-enable many more (all?) applications for European Palm Pre friends aswell. It has been confirmed to be working, but anyway: do this at your own risk. We did not test it yet. This workaround requires root access to your Pre.

Link

» PreCentral Forums: Re-Enable App Catalog in Europe by Dleira

[iPhone] T-Mobile Tariffs in Europe Differ Extremely

You ever felt like citizens of T-Mobile’s home country Germany pay a lot more for iPhone tariffs than citizens in countries you spend your vacation time like Netherlands or Austria?

Well, your feeling was right. T-Mobile is flagrant expensive here in Germany. Why? We don’t know. But we know Deutsche Telekom (parent company of T-Mobile) earned €5,5bill in Q3/2009.

Anyway, we prepped a little table with a little comprehension. Let the pictures speak. Prices for 24mth. subscriptions.

Country mins SMS Traffic Price per mth.
Netherlands 150 150 unlimited 30€
Austria 2000 1000 3GB 25€* (50€)
Germany 120 40 5GB 50€

* Special X-mas offer (for the whole 24mths.), otherwise 50€/mth.

Links

» T-Mobile Netherlands
» T-Mobile Austria
» T-Mobile Germany

Screenshots

T-Mobile Netherlands

T-Mobile Austria

T-Mobile Germany

[Pre] Palm Pre Release Date for Germany

October 13th will be the day many people have been waiting for. The official iPhone competitor by Palm will be released in Germany. The Pre will be exclusively available from O2 Germany.

According to their latest information the Palm Pre will also be available without subscription for about 480€ (=700US$). There is currently no information about upcoming special Palm Pre O2 tariffs.

In Great Britain and Ireland the Pre will be released on october 16th.

In contrast to T-Mobile’s german iPhone tariffs, O2 Germany is gonna allow VoIP applications like Sipgate or Skype (via german Heise.de News).