2010 February » TamsPalm - the Palm OS / web OS Blog

Micro SIM electrically compatible with classic SIM cards

Feb 042010

GSM Micro SIM Card vs. GSM Mini Sim Card Micro SIM electrically compatible with classic SIM cards Apple’s announcement to use a micro SIM in its iPad caused quite a bit of waves in the mobile industry – no other box has used this smaller format so far.

The illustration on the left shows the site difference – and CNET reports the following:

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The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which sets the standards for SIM cards, tells us that except for the size of the plastic around the chip, micro SIM cards are identical to the SIM cards we normally find in phones.

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This means that you can cut existing SIM cards to size – have fun, tinkerers!

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Justin Ormont

Palm holds developer event in Germany

Palm News No Responses »

Feb 042010

Update: Palm has just written in that there never was a press release in the first place. Sorry, my bad!
Don’t ask me why I didn’t get this before – but the folks at Palm’s will hold an event in Germany on the 10th of February.

The reason for this is short and sweet: German users have downloaded over one million content apps from the App Catalog.

Looking at the agenda, we see a smorgasbord of Palmary topics interesting for developers:

Mojo
PDK
Ares
Selling apps

First Bluetooth 3.0 handset certified – the Samsung GT-S8500

Hardware News 1 Response »

Feb 022010

Bluetooth 2.x is getting somewhat old in the tooth – it has been around for over two years. Its successor Bluetooth 3.0 has been certified for some time, but has not hit the road so far.

It looks like this will change in the very near future – the Bluetooth SIG has just certified a Samsung phone with a Bluetooth 3.0 radio:
bluetooth 3 0 handset First Bluetooth 3.0 handset certified the Samsung GT S8500

Further information can be had at the URL below:
https://www.bluetooth.org/tpg/QLI_viewQDL.cfm?qid=16289

Alcatel releases Android-powered Pre knockoff

Palm News No Responses »

Feb 022010

So far, Palm’s Pre has been knocked off in China. In the rest of the world, no manufacturer felt motivated to touch the form factor so far.

Given that the folks at Alcatel’s always had a slightly strange taste (I knew an insider there), the look of the OT-980 does not surprise me too much:

According to the French site frandroid, the box will drop in four to five months. It will have an MSM7227 CPU, 192MB of RAM and a QVGA screen.

Strategy Analytics: Q4 2009 handset shipments up by 10%

Hardware News No Responses »

Feb 012010

The folks at Strategy Analytics have provided us with quite a bit of interesting information in the past – the latest is a report that handset shipments have risen by 10% on a year-to-year basis.

Looking at the figures reveals the following distribution:
nokia smartphone marketshare Strategy Analytics: Q4 2009 handset shipments up by 10%

Unfortunately, things don’t look too rosy for the “market leader”:

“Nokia has outperformed in smartphones, but longer-term challenges still remain, including below-average share of the high-growth touchscreen market and a tiny presence in the influential US market,” the research firm said in a statement.

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