The Palm Pre available in Britain and Europe will be able to surf the web during calls, whereas its U.S. counterpart will not. It all comes down to an inherent limitation of the evdo technology used by Sprint: it can run data or voice, but not both at once.
Pam Deziel, Palm’s veep of software product development, confirmed the news at Mobile World Congress. PC Mag:
The difference between the European and Sprint Pre’s is common to all EVDO and UMTS phones. EVDO networks like those from Sprint and Verizon Wireless can’t run voice and data streams at the same time, so EVDO phones have to pause Internet connections temporarily while they make phone calls. UMTS phones can run voice and data at the same time.
Palm still hasn’t announced a European carrier for their UMTS Pre, though they said that Sprint’s exclusivity contract applies only to the United States.
Source [PC Mag]
“…in Britain and Europe…” – Great! Well, most Brits do not count Britain to Europe
This really irks me on my phone. It’s not so bad when your reading a web page, but if you’re listening to an audio stream and a phone call comes in the stream must be restarted, usually at the beginning.
#1: darn, this is exactly what I wanted to write///