Waves of exultation and joy must be coming out of Saigon as the first secret G.S.M. Palm Pres begin wending their way out of the secret Pre factories in the jungles to the south. A crack team of commandoes have wrested one of these super secretive models out of the hands of an unsuspecting courier and taken video and photos of it.
Remember that the Palm Pre originally came in G.S.M. flavor back at MWC 2008 and that O2 and Movistar probably have Pre exclusivity which allows us to assume the G.S.M. model will drop sooner than later.
A G.S.M. Pre makes a lot of sense – it would at least make the phone international – and G.S.M. has traditionally been Palm’s strong point up until they settled in at the CDMA carriers of late and just kind of hung out there, essentially blocking their international spread.
This a rough translation of what is being said in the video:
“This is Palm Pre phone, GSM version. This is one of the first Palm Pre GSM in the world and arrived in Viet Nam. This is brought back by Khanh, a member of giaima.com forum. The exterior design is no different with CDMA version. This is an unlocked phone and could be used with any carrier. A Mobile Phone SIM is inserted in. We could text, make call and use GPRS signal. All the features are identical to those that are found in CDMA version. The only difference is that this one runs on GSM network. Let’s take out the back cover. SIM slot, camera and flash are being pointed to. They then make test calls with a HTC magic. SMS is tested after that. They open up tinhte.com page with GPGS/EDGE. As you could see, it’s pretty fast with Edge.”
Note: 3G does not exist in VietNam yet. It is being developed and will be launched in the near future.
In the forum, they also noted this is not a “FOR SALE” version, that’s why the interior is not painted.
Yessss…. Let’s hope they don’t saddle the phone with some sort of greedy overpriced contract. Thats what the iPhone did here in Indonesia and the take-up is horrible. Unlike in the U.S. We actually have alternatives to being ripped off out here. Apple can’t compete in that kind of environment.
Please Palm – don’t get greedy and tie the Pre to contracts or over-price it. You’ll only hurt yourself.