A few questions about the German Palm Pre

[brasax]

Originally Posted by irifan

1)
2) A friend of mine flashed the current sprint firmware onto his German Pre. Now he can use nice gadets like the virutal keyboard. I do not think the update to 1.3 will block that.

Are there any limitations?

I will get the Pre (german) end of the week and I´m thinking about flashing the US-firmware. Some people said, afterwards the german Pre might getting problems because of the radio..

Can you say something about that?

How to get the US-firmware on it?

Cheers,
brasax

[dakis]

Originally Posted by dr3wster

3) And is there a way of knowing if 3 Hutchison Australia's settings are in the known providers? Or is that wishful thinking?

Only German providers are pre-set. I had to find that out the hard / costly way :-(

[loweymonster]

Hey dakis!

Does that mean the Pre doesn't auto connect to a new telco network? Is the only thing that's not working, the data connection side of things? Does the phone side work?

[spud101]

Yes, and you can only use the phone/sms after you've activated the phone over a German dataconnection...

Flashing the German Pre with 1.2.1??? Interesting. What does that give us for the GPRS settings issue?

@rwhitby do you have any insigth how 1.2.1 handles GPRS/UMTS connections? Predefined profiles? If so which? Or auto-detect (as my Treo does)?

[dakis]

Originally Posted by loweymonster

Hey dakis!

Does that mean the Pre doesn't auto connect to a new telco network? Is the only thing that's not working, the data connection side of things? Does the phone side work?

the problem is, that without an active data connection you can't even activate the phone. Since you can't edit the GPRS access point yet on the Pre, only the pre-configured (German) networks will let you activate it. It only auto-detects the networks whose APNs are pre-configured in the O2 firmware.

Once you've activated it you have voice services, SMS and data via WiFi but no data via mobile network.

Peter

[irifan]

Originally Posted by dakis

Only German providers are pre-set. I had to find that out the hard / costly way :-(

Would you be so kind an tell me what provider SIM card you are using and if you have been in your providers network or used international Roaming.

[irifan]

Originally Posted by dr3wster

...

2) Flashing with WebOS Doctor... if you download this from the US or UK Palm Site rather than the German one, would this put the QWERTY firmware on? Or is there some internal identifier that's going to force QWERTZ to be used. Anyone want to Guinea pig?

The Guinea Pig told me, the Z stays a Z after flashing a German PRe with the US Firmware.

The only limitiation he has found so far is, the sprint navigation has no maps for Germany.

[irifan]

I was able to get a glimpse on the list of supported carriers. This list was very extensive. And that´s the problem: its so extensive, that even o2 is suspicious.

There were no APNs on that list, which might be important for some tariffs, only the name of the supposedly supported network.

Since o2 can´t check the validity of this list, I can not currently access or even publish it.

However, I can try to check whether a provider is on that list or not, for those who have unsucessfully tried to activate the German Pre with a non German SIM card.

Please keep in mind, that the German Pre has data roaming disabled. So activating a Pre with a non German SIM card will only work back in your home network.

[dr3wster]

I know it's been asked before, but do you know if 3 Hutchison Australia settings are in that extensive list??

[dr3wster]

Originally Posted by irifan

The Guinea Pig told me, the Z stays a Z after flashing a German PRe with the US Firmware.

The only limitiation he has found so far is, the sprint navigation has no maps for Germany.

Looks like it's a job for WebOS internals

[Der Jens]

Originally Posted by irifan

However, I can try to check whether a provider is on that list or not, for those who have unsucessfully tried to activate the German Pre with a non German SIM card.

Could you check if AT&T is on this list, maybe even twice (regular and GoPhone)? Thanks!

[dakis]

Originally Posted by Der Jens

Could you check if AT&T is on this list, maybe even twice (regular and GoPhone)? Thanks!

Only German providers are on the list (and not even all of those - my Vodafone Germany SIM didn't work)

Peter

[steiale]

Originally Posted by dakis

Only German providers are on the list (and not even all of those - my Vodafone Germany SIM didn't work)

Peter

I habe a german pre with a german vodafone sim. Works like a charm..

What is not working? Internet? Calls?

[dakis]

Originally Posted by steiale

I habe a german pre with a german vodafone sim. Works like a charm..

What is not working? Internet? Calls?

Prepaid or on contract? I tried to activate mine with a PAYG Vodafone card and it wouldn't establish a data connection. I (later) also read that not all Vodafone SIMs work:

Palm Pre: Konfiguration für mobiles Internet derzeit nicht möglich - teltarif.de News

("Es gibt jedoch Ausnahmen. So lassen sich mit Vodafone-Karten derzeit keine WebSessions nutzen - mit einer Prepaid-Karte des Düsseldorfer Betreibers wäre dies der einzige verfügbare vollwertige Internet-Zugang.")

[NeoLeon]

I've updated a germany Palm Pre (GSM/3G-version) without problems via WiFi. Currently i have no interner flat data plan, so everything i did to setup the phone was via WiFi. But there is on exception: to activate the phone you have to put in a valid SIM-Card from a german provider!

So i am not sure if this germany phone works in australia.

[dakis]

So I gave this another try today, this time using a SIM card issued by Orange Switzerland. And guess what: it works! Data is fully enabled now. Apparently it DOES work on some networks outside of Germany. The question is just: on which ones?

[testrev]

My experience with the Orange SIM in Switzerland was the same. Connection to data works perfectly. Not so with a Swisscom Sim card, however. ?
This is very frustrating.

[loweymonster]

Just had a detailed look at the "CarrierNetworkSettings.db3" that is tucked away in the XxxOS leaked doctor - version 1.0. Thanks to Tim and John for pointing me in this direction.

Note sure if this has been discussed at length before, because my search showed nothing similar.. Anyways, some of you have said that they either do not know whether a given Telco is in the list, or if the phone will automatically setup the APN based on what carrier's SIM card is inserted.

Well, I dunno if anyone's done this before, but if you download a program called SQlight manager, you can actually take a decent look at the file mentioned above. It gives you a nice SQL-based database. I simply opened the file, when to the table: "com_palm_datanetworksettings_CarrierNetworkSettings" ... and man... that list is sooo extensive. It's gotta be the list where the Pre looks for carrier settings... it has soo sooo much detail in it!

Things like the carrier's Voicemail Numbers, mmsc numbers and addresses and more! There is soooo much info stored. It couldn't possibly be useless information that the system wouldn't be using..

In another table in the same database doc, there's a data connection setting stable, which lists things like the APN, region default etc.

So, my questions are:
1) In light of the above, can we assume the German Pre Phone has AT LEAST these settings (version 1.0 rom), and it will look in this database to search for network details thus eliminating the problem associated with not being able to manually configure APNs?

I'm guessing if some details are missing for other carriers, you can always go in and try modify / add settings..

Now, I guess this means that the only hurdle in using a German Pre abroad, will be the activation issue... webOS internals anyone?


2) Is there a newer version of this db3 file available?


Was very glad 3 Hutchison made it into the list - period! I'll try upload some pics at some stage... this db3 file was verrrrryy interesting reading...

[brasax]

Originally Posted by dakis

Palm Pre: Konfiguration für mobiles Internet derzeit nicht möglich - teltarif.de News

The link was already postet on the first site..

@ loweymonster

How to get access to the table? I´m using now the US-firmware and want to check, if other APNs are in the list. o2 Germany is working fine, but I need to know, if Orange (Swiss) is on the list..

[Der Jens]

Orange CH is on the list for the Sprint 1.21 ROM.
The Internet APN is "internet" (without the quotes) wih no user/password.

Swisscom is on there as well. There is one MMS, one VPN and one WEB APN.
The WEB APN is gprs.swissom.ch with no user/password. Does this make sense?

Has anyone looked at the class files in "usr/lib/luna/java/CarrierNetworkSettings/com/palm/data/carriernetworksettings" as they seem to be responsible for setting the carriersettings (they call the aforementioned database). Unfortunately, I am not a developer and my abilities end here but I guess it might be worth looking at those files?