Palm Pre in China

When I take my Palm Pre to China on July 2, is it going the first Pre in China?

Hope I can use it there on China Telecom's CDMA EVDO network.

Perhaps there will be already a bunch of Pre's, the 5-star smartphone

:http://product.cnmo.com/cell_phone/index156370.shtml

China Telecom is in desperate need of variety of CDMA EVDO handsets

http://tech.qq.com/a/20090512/000073.htm

Dose Palm hear what China Telecom is begging?

Palm and Sprint to release the Pre at the all star race

Palm and Sprint will release the Pre at the Nascar all star race on May 16- May 17?

Palm Pre Bluetooth Tethering

Palm released Palm Pre specs that include Bluetooth tethering:

The Palm^® Pre™ phone will be available on the Sprint network.

Carrier	Sprint
Operating  system	Palm® webOS™
Network specs1	3G EVDO Rev A
Display	3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320x480 resolution HVGA display
Keyboard	Physical QWERTY keyboard
Email2	Microsoft Outlook® email with Microsoft® Direct Push Technology POP3/IMAP (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc).
Messaging	Integrated IM, SMS, and MMS
GPS1	Built-in GPS
Digital camera	3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field
Sensors	Ambient light, accelerometer, and proximity
Media formats supported	Audio Formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV Video Formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264  Image Formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP
Wireless connectivity4	Wi-Fi 802.11b/g with WPA, WPA2, 802.1X authentication Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
Memory	8GB (~7GB user available)5 USB mass storage support
Phone as laptop modem	Bluetooth tethering
Connector	MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
Headphone jack	3.5mm stereo
Palm®Touchstone™ charging dock6	Compatible
Dimensions	Width: 59.5mm (2.3 inches) Height: 100.5mm (3.9 inches) Thickness: 16.95mm (0.67 inches)
Weight	135 grams (4.76 ounces)

Touchstone Charges Pre As Fast As A Wall Charger

There were questions about the technology behind Touchstone charger, the inductive technology, may slow users down.

That is a wrong perception. Adam Kaufman, the "accessory guy" from Palm answered one of the the user questions on Facebook:

When we developed Touchstone, that was one of our goals...if it wasn't as effective as the wall charger we include with Pre, we shouldn't do it. Check out our site: http://www.palm.com/us/products/accessories/dock.html#tab2

Touchstone charges at the same rate as our wall charger.

It will be selling as hot as the Pre!

Palm Pre will be launched in time

According to Laptop, Palm isn't worried about Apple may drag Pre's feet.

Spokesperson Lynn Fox has this to say: 

We have no reason to think that our launch plans for the webOS and Palm Pre won’t come to full fruition. We have no plans to change the launch time.

We will hear more in a couple of weeks from Palm the earliest.

Who's carrying a working Palm Pre phone?

When Plam revealed the Palm Pre phone at CES, many people wondered when will the phone be released?

From a Facebook post, Palm's product manager Matt Crowley actually disclosed that he's carrying a working Palm Pre with him and he's not getting used to use the new phone just yet:

I just used Universal Search yesterday when my 10 year old son asked me how fast a giraffe can go. I typed in "how fast is a giraffe?" in Universal Search and I got the San Diego Zoo's Animal Bytes results. ~34.7MP/H (56 kilometers per hour). I didn't have to go to the browser and find google.com and then do a search. Just press Pre's center button and start typing. To be honest, I'm still getting used to it, since I am so used to going to the browser first to look for stuff on the Internet. I like the new alternative way. I can still go to the browser and go to google.com if I want, but I am liking Universal Search.

Here's the link: Facebook post

China Telecom to get Palm Pre?

Enter year of Bull, the dust over 3G network licenses finally settled down in China.

For 3G network carriers to attract and retain customers, a killer smart phone or phones is undoubtly very important. ATT clearly is gaining customers by exclusively launching the iPhone in the US.


After telecom reorganization, mobile carriers in China formally entered the "Three Kingdom" era.

The biggest carrier, China Mobile will pursue domestically brewed technology, Td-sCDMA, which will be built on top of it's GSM-EDGE network. It was rumored that China Mobile will get the iPhone. But it looks like a long shot now due to compatibility issue unless Apple willing to tailor made the iPhone for China Mobile.

The second largest carrier, China Unicom will pursue worldwide dominant technology, wCDMA, or UMTS which is similar to ATT network in the US. China Unicom may get the iPhone eventually.

The smallest mobile carrier will be China Telecom, the former state monopoly of telecommunication in China.

After being split in parts, the parent company was left without mobile license for many years. The government's intention was to give enough time to nurture strong enough competitors in China Mobile, China Unicom, as well as other smaller players.

Now, with the issuance of 3G mobile licenses, China Telecom finally got it's wish and even better with a CDMA2000 network.

CDMA2000 was developed by Qualcomm. It's the most mature network with easiest migration path to 3G, so called CDMA EV-DO network.

China Unicom is predicted to spend about one year to build the wCDMA network and possible another year to fine tune it.  China Mobile may take even longer time to make the TD-sCDMA network. 

However, the migration to EV-DO 3G network may give the smallest mobile carrier China Telecom  a huge head start. Some inside the company has indicated the 3G migration could complete as early as next month. With less than 28 million subscribers, China Telecom needs the new 3G network up and running to expand it's customer base.

However, there are not many smart phones made for the CDMA 3G network that come close to the functionality of the iPhone at current time. To play catch up with the much larger carriers, China Telecom desperately wants something similar to the iPhone to attract new customers and retain old customers. With the coming of Palm Pre, it could be perfectly fit into China Telecom's expanding strategy.