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.
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.
German Palm.de site reports that the Palm Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus are going to be released in Germany on April 28th, 2010. The exclusive partnership between Palm and O2 in Germany is over, Vodafone is going to offer the Palms aswell.
There is currently no information available about pricing.
Read more on investor.palm.com…
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…
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:
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
Wir alle kennen die Situation. Ein Freund sendet uns eine MMS und wir erhalten eine SMS stattdessen, obgleich unser Telefon MMS fähig ist. Warum eigentlich?
Nun das ist sehr einfach: sofern man selbst keine MMS bislang versendet hat, geht der Provider davon aus, dass man kein MMS fähiges Mobiltelefon besitzt. Das ist einerseits ein guter Ansatz, andererseits jedoch auch eine nette Art, 60 Millionen deutschen Mobilfunkkunden zu zwingen, zumindest eine einzige MMS zu versenden – nämlich damit sie imstande sind, MMS zu empfangen.
60 Millionen MMS x 0,29€ pro MMS, bei jedem Wechsel des Mobiltelefons… Hmmm, nette Summe für die Portokasse der lieben Telefonkonzerne, aber lassen wir das lieber. Heute ist ja dritter Advent.
Blöd wird es nur, wenn einzelne Provider, die die Netze anderer verwenden, die SMS Benachrichtigungsoption für eingegangene MMS’ nur unzureichende implementieren. So isses beispielsweise bei dem deutschen Anbieter Alice / Hansenet. Hier erhält man folgende Nachricht:
Sie haben eine MMS von +491231234567 erhalten. Sie können diese im Web unter lesen. Ihr PIN lautet aB3D5F.
Tja. Äh wo soll ich die abrufen? Genau, nirgendwo. Der Link ist irgendwie nicht in der SMS enthalten. Einige Tests zeigen, dass in allen SMS Benachrichtigungen über eine vorliegende MMS, die von Alice derzeit versendet werden, die Webadresse fehlt. Macht ja nichts, wenn wenigstens Google etwas Hilfreiches zu Tage fördern würde … Hmm… Google hilft leider nicht… Also Gehirn anstrengen.
Alice ist im Mobilfunkbereich Reseller von O2 Produkten. Also mal bei o2 schauen, wo man die MMS online abrufen kann… Hmm… Google vermeldet (nicht ganz auf Anhieb): http://o2online.de/goto/o2mms
Und tadadada… Alles wunderbar. Meine MMS kann ich nun hervorragend bei O2 im Web abrufen. Oder sollte ich vielleicht doch mal die MMS senden, damit mein Provider merkt, dass ich MMS direkt auf dem Mobiltelefon empfangen kann?
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…
According to a posting to the german Nexave forums the european Palm Pre 1.3.1 update (for GSM phones) will be released on monday November 23, 2009. The update does not seem to include activation of the GPU.
We recommend to remove custom installed homebrew patches.
Features:
- Synergy: – Calendar and Contacts synchronization with Yahoo!
- LinkedIn contacts synchronization
- Synchronizes Google Contacts “My Contacts” (not all)
- Manual edit of Internet settings (APN, user name, password, etc.)
- Option to disable all data connections
- Bluetooth support to send / receive vCards
- Backup and restore:
- No backup of passwords for increased security
- Disabling of backup service works
- Backup Browser Favorites
- iTunes support from version 9.x
- Available space is immediately updated and displayed when in USB mass storage mode data is added or removed
- Manual e-mail retrieval works
- SMS / MMS forwarding, and marking of all communications
- Highlight / copy of selected areas of SMS and IM messages
- Browser: File download in browser
- Highlight / copy of text in the browser
- Support for Self-Signed Certificates
- System volume was optimized
- Optimization of the audible during an incoming call when another call is active
- AppCatalog: Recommendation for Apps can be forwared via email or SMS
- Facebook Application
- Country-Specific Application Offers
- Initial Registration: password input is now a part of the recovery (because passwords will no longer be backed up) and now entering a security question and answer in the account creation is mandatory. SIM card PIN is requested during the registration process.
via Nexave.de Forums…
Palminfocenter is reporting that webOS 1.3.1 is coming to european Palm Pre’s by the end of november.
They say they gotten this news from UK O2’s reps. Palm did not comment on this, though.
» PalmInfoCenter.com: webOS 1.3 in Europe by end of november…
The competition in the UK seems to be getting hard around the jesus phone. Orange just released the iPhone 3GS for their network.
O2 seems to be feeling they needed to come up with something that mostly only the iPhone Dev Team or GeoHot could provide: an unlock.
The unlock is offered under the following conditions:
Unlocking will take up to 14 days. Unlocking customers will receive an SMS confirming the unlock. iTunes will then confirm that the iPhone has been unlocked successfully.
via Fonearena.com
A video appeared showing that SIM locked Palm Pre’s from the UK seems to have been unlocked using a proxy SIM solution called RebelSIM. There is no further detailed information about if this is a safe unlock like with the proxy SIMs for the first gen iPhones or i RebelSIM cards use IMSI fake IDs.
In general we suppose to be cautious with proxy SIM solutions. Why? Basically it’s the same with the proxy SIM cards for iPhones (read here).
A software unlock – meaning a binary code modification of the baseband – is almost always the better solution from a technical point of view, but it on the way to being able to patch the baseband many other issues can occur.
So for people who are desperate for a Palm Pre: get yourself the german factory unlocked version and learn to live with a QWERTZ keyboard. It much less hassle imho.