palm-pre-21

Palm Pre– getting 4G?

I was at Best Buy the other day, and Iwas talking with a Best Buy Mobile (Best Buy’s cell phone department) guy. We talked about a lot of upcoming phones, and he shared with me something about the Palm Pre which, if true, would be absolutely awesome– think something that can really kill the iPhone! This news is really big if true, so big that we’re devoting a seperate post to it instead of putting it in the Upcoming Sprint phones post we wrote! Read on for all the details!

Now before we get to the Palm Pre news, let’s set it up with some info about Sprint’s recently launched 4G network (THAT’s A HINT :) )

You probably are seeing this on TV and online in Sprint’s new ads, talking about Sprint’s 4G network. Yes, Sprint is the first national US carrier to make the jump to a 4G network, and it has already begun rolling it out across the US in areas like Baltimore, Dallas and New York, with plans for many other cities throughout the course of 2009 and beyond. They use a new technology called WiMax which is kinda like WiFi on steroids: very solid speeds, rivaling that of your current home DSL or cable internet connection or, in short, much faster speed on the internet than that of 3G networks (on any carrier — AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and even Sprint); and at a much greater range (think in these terms: if you have cell phone service, you’ll have blazing fast internet).

Below is a brief list of additional cities in found online that should have WiMax at this point:

Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Boston, Philadelphia, Providence, Washington DC, Austin, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, New York, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and Seattle.


 All in all, it’s great to see 4G starting to come to life in the US. Verizon and AT&T will begin their 4G network work later this year and early next year, using a different technology called LTE, which we’ll explain in another post (T-Mobile just got their 3G network a lil while back, so we can’t see them going to LTE so quickly ;) ). And even though right now 4G is only on data cards for laptops, we should expect to see more devices taking advantage of it as Sprint continues to grow the network in the coming months.

With that intro…

As I said, I was at Best Buy the other night, talking with one of the Best Buy Mobile guys, and he told some good and bad news on the hotly anticipated Palm Pre that you could take as you will (I can’t confirm nor deny that this will actually happen, as this is the first I too am hearing of it).

The bad: the Palm Pre has been delayed a little longer (how much I don’t know, but I would think Palm and Sprint would have this out at their said date of within the first half of 2009).

The good, if not amazing news: The delay is because, according to this source at Best Buy, who has seen the Pre before in person, the phone’s delay is because THEY’RE PUTTING 4G ON ALL PALM PRE PHONES!

If true (which I really hope it is), it’s definitely awesome, and its the perfect device to really kick off 4G, and its probably worth waiting a little longer for the phone (after all, IT WILL BE 4G!!!!). Again, I can’t say whether this is actually going down, but this guy seemed to know what he was talking about, so take this as you will.
Before we end this post we gotta ask: Have you seen these new 4G speeds in action , and if so how fast are they? Also what your thoughts on the Palm Pre possibly (remember: unconfirmed– I dont want to stir any false hope) getting 4G? You think it’s better than the iPhone with it, or that it already is better than the iPhone because of it’s keyboard and doesn’t need 4G to beat it? Let us know in the comments.