Palm prepping Pre with North American GSM, but for whom?

Filed under: Handsets, Palm, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS, webOS

Palm seems to be making an active, conscientious effort to say as little as it can about the GSM version of the Pre, possibly in an effort to give Sprint as much spotlight as possible before its exclusivity expires -- but as we all know, it's real and it's coming. Thing is, Palm has always implied that it's being limited to European duty with a 3G radio that fails to cover bands that are of any interest to North Americans, so what the heck is this noise all about? Multiple certification bodies are now reporting the existence of a Pre model number P100UNA, as opposed to the P100UEU that's launching in Europe -- and it doesn't take a lot of detective work to gather that those codes on the end stand for "North America" and "European Union," respectively (for the record, the CDMA version on Sprint is P100EWW, so it ain't that). One distinct possibility is that Palm's preparing a version to cover Bell's new HSPA network since the carrier is Palm's exclusive Pre launch partner in Canada and they're smack in the middle of a transition from CDMA -- and needless to say, if that's the case, there'll be an unprecedented effort to get that sucker unlocked on the double.

[Via PreCentral]

Read - WiFi certification [Warning: PDF link]
Read - Bluetooth SIG

Palm prepping Pre with North American GSM, but for whom? originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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