Well what do we have here? A few snaps of the O2 (NYSE: TEF) Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre in Germany? Yessir! The GSM variant of the Pre comes in packaging strikingly similar to the one over here in North America, but with a nice blue flavor. Of course, it comes with some different accessories and it’s not QWERTY but a QWERTZ keyboard… Little differences, but all-in-all, still pretty much the same deal with a GSM radio packed-in.

If I recall correctly, the Palm Pre is coming to the UK and Ireland on October 16th, and Germany on October 13th. Not much longer to wait now!

More images below.

[Via: webOS-blog.de]

Big-screen lovers, capacitive touchscreen fans and smartphone users “in the know” will be happy to hear that the HTC HD2 (aka Leo) is almost here. HTC has today announced that their HTC HD2 will be launching later this month in select European markets. Boasting a class-leading 4.3-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen (a first for Windows Mobile smartphones!), blazing fast 1Ghz Snapdragon chipset (a first for HTC) and a 5-megapixel autofocusing camera, the HD2 packs some serious processing and multimedia power under its slim 11mm thick shell. And, as HTC’s first Windows Phone to sport the smartphone maker’s custom Sense UI, the HTC HD2 isn’t just a pretty face, it’s also easy to get along with.

The HTC Sense UI rose to fame as the Android-powered Hero’s slick homescreen interface. And, this is the first time we’re seeing aspects of the multi-pane Sense UI making its way to Windows Mobile, and it looks promising. The new Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional interface has been re-worked to play nice with finger inputs, but it took HTC’s Sense UI to polish it to a touch-optimized shine.

The HD2’s Windows Mobile-based Sense UI also brings along a couple additional features from its Android roots. For one, HTC’s Peep Twitter app makes the jump from Android to Windows Mobile. Another new feature is integrated support for photo uploads to Facebook and Twitter. Facebook also syncs up with the address book.

As for hardware, the HD2 is the first HTC smartphone to take advantage of the powerful Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) 1Ghz Snapdragon chipset. Paired with generous RAM stores, the HD2 should make quick work of anything you can throw at it. Hopefully, that also spells the death of the dreaded UI lag that WinMo users have been gritting through all these years. The 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen is as big as they come in the mobile space, and the 5-megapixel camera takes impressive photos. The feature-set rounds out with a heaping portion of smartphone trimmings – 3G, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, microSD slot, FM radio and a digital compass.

An optional car mount kit turns your HTC HD2 into a fully functional turn-by-turn GPS navigation system. We can see a dash of Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s design aesthetic in the HD2’s car mount, but that’s just fine by us.

Suffice it to say that the HTC HD2 is going to turn heads on the street. Unfortunately, those streets will only be in Europe for the time being. Launch is expected later this month in the EU, with O2 in the UK possibly launching on October 12 and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Spain aiming for a November launch window. Additional markets should go live shortly after. Price? €649, but it’s not like it even matters. We’ll trade a kidney for an HD2. What about it, HTC?

A tongue-in-cheek viral film and engaging campaign microsite (simrugby.co.uk) featuring members of the England Rugby squad is being launched by O2 (NYSE: TEF) this week, created by creative agency VCCP. The SIM Rugby film sees top England players including Mike Tindall,  Riki Flutey, and Steve Borthwick, playing a game of rugby where the  traditional oval ball has been replaced by a SIM card.

The film has been created to raise awareness of O2’s Pay & Go free SIM offers which give people the chance to get up to four free SIMs, keep one and pass on the others to family or friends enjoying free calls and texts between them.

The activity coincides with the launch of O2’s latest free SIMs offer, Text & Web. This pay & go tariff offers unlimited texts and internet for just £15 per month.

The SIM Rugby viral will be supported through online rugby channels,  including the RFU’s recently revamped website (RFU.com), and the online rugby community, Maximum Rugby (maximumrugby.com). The campaign will also see embedded ads on Youtube and Facebook promotion at Twickenham on matchdays during the forthcoming Investec Challenge Series in November. The dedicated microsite www.simrugby.co.uk contains more exciting content such as behind the scenes footage, funny out takes and competitions.

“This is a great example of how we can leverage our England Rugby sponsorship to support current propositions we have in the market,” said Alistair Johnston, Head of Online at O2. “SIM Rugby injects some fun into the free SIMs campaign which is also supported by TV and print advertising.”

Check out simrugby.co.uk for more information, plus the video.

Just the other day we reported on a rumor that the ridiculously big-screened HTC HD2 (Leo) was headed to O2 (NYSE: TEF) on October 12. Today, we have some semi-solid confirmation that the HD2 will be making an appearance in the UK in the near term. A copy of O2’s October product catalog found its way to Engadget’s inbox and it shows the HTC HD2 proudly strutting its stuff in print. Strangely, the HD2 in the ad shows a stock Windows Mobile 6.5 homescreen rather than the HTC TouchFLO 3D UI that we’ve gotten used to seeing on HTC”s Windows Phones.

There’s also talk of the HTC HD2 launch being pushed back to October 26, but we’re not going to put too much faith into that rumor just yet.

Whatever the launch date turns out to be, we can’t wait to get a chance to put the HTC Leo/HD2 and its ginormous 4.3-inch capacitance touchscreen through its paces. It’s not hard to see the HD2’s 512MB RAM, 5-megapixel camera, GPS, WiFi and 1Ghz Snapdragon chipset putting the hurt on the iPhone later this year.

[Via: Engadget]

O2 recently said it was the “home of smartphones” (see quote in here), but with the recent iPhone announcements (see here for example), it looks like other Operators are lining up some mobile powerhouses also – let’s compare O2 and Orange for example:

Orange

• BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Bold & Curve & Pearl
• HTC Hero
• Toshiba (OTCPK: TOSBF) TG01
• Samsung i8910 Omnia HD
• Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Dext (soon)
• iPhone 3GS (soon)
• Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N86

That’s a pretty reasonable spread isn’t it? Taking in BlackBerry O/S, Android, WinMo, Series60, and Apples O/S. Nice.
So What about O2?

O2

• O2 XDA Zest & Guide
• BlackBerry Bold & Curve & Emerald
• Nokia &3 & N86
• iPhone 3G & 3GS
• Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre (soon)
• HTC HD2 (Leo) – (rumoured soon)

So pretty much the same selection of Operating Systems there too, apart from adding Palms WebOS.
T-Mobile, Vodafone , and 3UK haven’t (to my mind) made any big seasonal announcements yet (OK, so VFUK did ‘announce’ iPhone 3GS today!), but when they do, you can assume it will be driven by, or include, smartphone device(s). In simple terms, the Operators are going to become very similar very quickly, in terms of the smartphone device portfolio offered – and whilst it might be good for tariff and device pricing, networks won’t be differentiating on hardware so much – shame, because there’s nothing better than a restrictive exclusivity deal to stir up news and opinion

Shazam today announced that it has teamed up with O2 to make discovering and capturing music even easier for O2 customers.  The agreement will mean that anyone on O2 will benefit from an enhanced mobile music experience, discovering music with Shazam and then purchasing it through their mobile, on the move.

O2 customers simply need to dial 2580 on their mobile and hold it up to the music for a few seconds.  Shazam’s award-winning service will then text the user back with the details about the track, and O2 customers will then have a link embedded in that text that will allow them to immediately purchase that track.

“This is another great example of our strategy of working with the best companies in the world to deliver compelling music services for our customers,” said Matt Ward, Head of Music at O2. “We have joined forces with a leader in this space to allow our customers to have an even greater in-depth music experience on their mobile.”

Jonathan Symons, EVP Business Development, Shazam, continued: “O2 has a strong music presence through its relationship with The O2 and O2 Academy venues.  We’re delighted to work with such a leading company to create added value for our IVR service and we look forward to working even closer with O2 in the future.”

The agreement is part of O2’s ongoing commitment to music and will be supported by an online, viral and outdoor marketing campaign.  The campaign will include online advertising on O2 Active, interactive marketing at the O2 Academy venues and rolling on-screen advertising at The O2.

A nice move on the part of O2 methinks – they have quite a music/event-centric proposition, so adding a service that can identify tracks and then deliver them has got to be a good thing!

Wow.

I wrote a piece a little while ago about the Internet Tethering not working too well on the iPhone/MacBook Pro combo (I think it could just as well be any Mac), but I wasn’t expecting it to be this bad….!

As I noted previously, I’ve been doing some testing of the Tethering to see how it performs – the simple summary was “not good”. However, given that most of these tests had been in areas of only average data coverage, I figured I ought to give things another shot – big mistake!

What I’ve now found is that even in areas of good 3G coverage, the data rates are not very excellent, and even worse, I am beginning to think the Tethering implementation is buggy. Why do I say this? Well, tethering has managed to crash both iTunes on the Mac, and completely lock the 3GS, to the point where it needed the power/home key combo to turn the thing off.

This is really quite disappointing indeed – the 3GS should have everything it needs to make it a great data modem, but I wonder if there is just too much else already going inside it’s shell for it to dedicate sufficient resources to the job. Bear in mind it’s got to hold up a cellular connection really well, and also pipeline the data over USB to the MacBook – something which dedicated USB data modems seem to do with great aplomb.

If I had any doubts, they are now confirmed – I’ll be cancelling the Tethering add-on I have, and buying a separate data modem from probably Vodafone or 3 – let’s see how they perform!

If you do still want to try out Internet Tethering, you can visit the O2 (NYSE: TEF) website here.

Well this doesn’t happen too often in the crowded space that is the UK Mobile market – a new Operator is launching, called giffgaff:

Hello. We’re a brand new people-powered mobile network. We’ll be fully up and running before Christmas, but in the meantime, a little about us. We love to keep things simple. We don’t provide mobile phones, just the SIM card that goes in it. And the way we’re run is different.

Our members get involved in lots of ways, that’s what we mean by “people-powered”. The more they put in, the more they get back. Involving our members helps us to keep our costs low and allows us to pass the savings back to them. Give and take, that’s what we’re about. The giver-taker-talker-maker. Quite like that.

Not a lot else is clear other than the fact that there’s only one tarrif, it’s an MVNO, and they are running on O2 (NYSE: TEF)’s network – presumably more details will be incoming shortly.

Oh and in case you were wondering what gifffgaff means:

giffgaff was originally a Scottish expression – You give me something, I give you something back.

You can take a look at the giffgaff website here.

The O2 (NYSE: TEF) is putting on an exhibition (the official one, no less) revolving around Michael Jackson. Whatever you might think about MJ, he was an incredible performer, and so this exhibition at The O2 (perhaps in some way to fill in for the shows that he was never able to perform):

Showcasing some of the most personal and iconic memorabilia from The King of Pop’s extraordinary life, Michael Jackson: The Official Exhibition will celebrate his unparalleled career, opening for a limited run starting 28th October 2009 at The O2 bubble.?The exhibit will chronicle Michael’s rise to fame with The Jackson 5 at Motown Records, his record-breaking solo career as a global superstar and the spectacular shows he had planned for The O2 arena before his untimely death.

I wonder if AEG (who operate The O2) and O2 (who brand is obviously on the venue) will put some kind of Mobile content offering to go along with it? That would be a nice touch….

You can find out more here.

The last we had heard about a release date for HTC’s upcoming Leo was late October/Early November. Well, a conflicting rumour has been tossed into the open suggesting an earlier October 12 release date on the UK’s O2 (NYSE: TEF) network. Getting a little carrier-specific certainly adds some weight to the rumour; apparently the internal O2 database is listing the Leo as the HD2 and missing the usual XDA branding. If you haven’t had a chance to get a close loook at the Leo, it’s shaping up to be one of the Windows Mobile 6.5’s hottest new handsets: 512 MB of RAM, 1Ghz processor, a 4.3″ WVGA display, 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, and all the rest. Considering the proximity of the dates, it seems entirely likely that the Leo HD2 will make a more official appearance on Windows Mobile 6.5’s launch on October 6th. Here’s hoping!

[via Engadget]