 Following
yesterday evening's launch
parties in several O2 stores across Germany, the
Palm Pre is now
available exclusively from
O2 Germany.
Unlike the US version of the Pre, which features CDMA, the European Pre supports
quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE as well as dualband UMTS/HSDPA (but misses HSUPA). And
while the Palm Pre is available exclusively from O2 Germany, it's available SIM-free
and -unlocked which means that even T-Mobile, Vodafone and E-Plus customers can
get it, thanks to O2 Germany's "My Handy", which sells the device for 481 Euro.
Quite interesting is the fact that it's not possible to configure the APNs,
MMS and SMS settings but - according to sources at O2 Germany - a wide range of
foreign networks are automatically supported by predefined profiles. Therefore a
T-Mobile or Vodafone SIM card should work as straight as a O2 SIM card does.
However, it's not yet confirmed if Austrian and Swiss SIM cards are supported as
well.
Right in time for the German launch, Palm and O2 Germany also added a couple
of German applications to Palm's App Catalog, namely billiger.de. wetter.com,
ran and VZ-Netzwerke (for Studi-VZ, Schüler-VZ and Mein-VZ).
Like all other in Germany/Euope available applications, also these
applications are yet free of charge since the firmware version doesn't support
paid-apps yet. However, unlike Microsoft Windows Marketplace for Mobile but like
Google's Android Market, Palm's App Catalog lists all available applications
from across the world.
Cheers ~ Arne
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