TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

Call it another funny, Palm-borne eeker: word about data loss after receiving an exchange device has recently been all the rage. So far, neither Palm not Sprint commented on the issue – which, after getting loads of press, eventually needed to be handled.

sfgate.com quotes the two as follows:

“We are seeing a small number of customers who have experienced issues transferring their Palm Profile information to another Palm webOS device,” the company said. “Palm and Sprint are working closely together to support these customers to successfully transfer their information to the new device.”

As of now, no further information is available…

Whether we like it or not: China is a huge market. Handset vendors can live off the Japanese market alone – and China is significantly bigger. However, getting in is not easy – the handset tastes are peculiar, and the Chinese market is known for its price sensitivity.

Palm is now rumored to try and break into the market. A Reuters report goes as following:

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HONG KONG, Nov 23 (Reuters) – China Telecom (0728.HK) aims to sell BlackBerry handsets and Palm (PALM.O) smartphones in China by early next year, as it tries to gain share from its two larger mobile telecom rivals, a source familiar with the situation said on Monday.

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“China Telecom hopes to have released BlackBerry handsets by the end of the year or early next year,” said the source, adding that the firm is also in talks with Palm to release Palm smartphones in the same time period.

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As of this writing, no particular handsets have been named. However, given the traditional affinity of Asian customers to touchscreens (and their price sensitivity), I would bet that we will see the Pre, Pixi or a keyboardless box…

People using a Treo 680 or Centro on various networks (including T-Mobile and O2 in the UK) have recently reported an increasing amount of “dropped calls”, etc. As this has happened somewhat frequently, a network “upgrade” was a likely culprit.

A T-Mobile manager has posted the following, somewhat long-winded explanation of the issue:

Ok, I now understand the problem. I spoke with an RF Engineer about it.

There was a BTS upgrade to the system – perhaps not in all markets – but in mine, and I would assume everywhere where the problem exists…that upgrade was applied by TMobile about five weeks ago. [This also explains why some users report that the problem ceases when they travel outside of their "normal" use area. Those areas may not have base-stations by Nokia / Siemens, or perhaps don't have the same software revision that exposes the problem.]

The real issue is due to a “feature” called DTX – or Discontinue Transmission. In essense it allows either end to “discontinue” transmitting when there’s a silence. In short, the phone recognizes that you’re not talking and enters DTX mode. This means it doesn’t have to transmit on the radio during the time DTX is enabled, thus saving power. The phone is supposed to recognize when you start talking again, and signal the base station to discontinue DTX mode.

For some reason, DTX mode isn’t discontinued when you start talking again and the uplink radio traffic is either lost or doesn’t occur. Since DTX isn’t new, one would assume that it worked properly before, and that some interaction in the new base station upgrade has revealed some interoperability problems.

Normally the carrier could release updates to a phones firmware – because they would have access through the vendor. This gets into a grey area, I expect, as to what’s possible etc. But suffice it to say that I expect TMo isn’t exactly excited about spending time and money on a fix to the handset they never sold or promised to support – even if Palm would allow them to modify the firmware (which Palm might well not agree to).

Palm doesn’t want to spend any resources themselves on Palm OS when it’s dead and gone and they’re trying to get WebOS going and keep the company alive. [And I've been told as much by Palm.]

However, as I said before, this DTX problem does occur on some other handsets – ones TMo sold. Thus, they’ll want to address these handsets.

The wrinkle is this. They can address the interoperability problem in either of two ways.

1) They can update the software in the handset so it doesn’t end up in a faulty DTX mode in relation to the base-station.

2) They can pressure Nokia / Siemens (that page link above is now dead – go figure) to re-work the software in the base-station, also to improve the interoperability problem.

For those of us with Treos and Centros – the first solution will leave us out in the cold. The second has a good chance of fixing it for us.

But I don’t know how urgent TMo feels the problem is, and how they’re leaning to fix the problem. If they only have a few handsets with the problem – and they can get the problem to go away by making people upgrade etc – they’ll probably choose option 1. It would be a lot cheaper and easier I expect.

Palm probably celebrates this event as you read this – let’s see what happens…

Like or loathe their redesign, but Engadget did a great job on getting good reviews on the road in the past. Their latest victim is the Pixi – can it stack up?

Most important of all, it looks like Palm finally managed to get its keyboards back to the quality level seen on earlier Treos:

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Admittedly, we weren’t expecting fireworks when we first laid eyes on this tiny QWERTY, but the experience of using it day to day has been nothing short of a revelation. You would think that the tight spacing and tiny keys would make typing a difficult task, but Palm has cleverly given the Pixi keyboard snappy tactile feedback and a substantial height boost, making tapping away a serious pleasure

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Their final verdict stated that the Pixi – while not a bad device on its own – has issues especially with its larger (and similarly-priced) predecessor:

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But the fact is that these phones are closely matched in both features and design — save for those items we just mentioned — and the Pre doesn’t lose out in a single category (unless you consider “smallest” to be a major factor, and even then you don’t have a lot ground to stand on). So, why buy the Pixi? Well we’re not really sure. Is it for Centro upgraders? Perhaps, but again, the Pre does exist. Palm offers a better device on the same network for nearly the same price… and that’s a fact we can’t ignore. We think there’s a lot of room for evolution in the world of webOS, both on Sprint and (hopefully) with other carriers, and we eagerly await a less lateral move.

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Either way, find further information at the URL below:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/12/palm-pixi-review/

Rumors of an upcoming Facebook integration for Palm’s webOS handsets have been floating around the industry for some time – unfortunately, they have not materialized so far.

Engadget Mobile now shares the screenshot on the left along with the following description:

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Just in time for the Pixi’s grand debut, webOS devices (that’s just Pixi and Pre) now have their first official Facebook app, joining the ranks of iPhone and Android… and we’re sad to report that it’s about as barebones as they can get.

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From my personal point of view, we are not looking at an official integration here. Rather, we are playing around with a third-party app.

As of now, no further information is available – stay tuned…