It’s been spotted on holiday in Vietnam, and companies from Spain and the United Kingdom have already snapped it up for local consumption, but the elusive GSM Palm Pre has been noticeably inconspicuous on its own home continent. Well, not so anymore: a gifted internet detective found telltale signs that the beloved Son of Sunnyvale is coming back home, draped in much-awaited GSM garb.
Alright, flowery prose aside, it’s about damned time this thing started popping up. With the clock ticking on Sprint’s exclusivity deal with Palm, it was only a matter of time before a model meant for different carriers began making the rounds on all those loose-lipped standards groups’ websites. An astute Pre Central reader named Calvin has Googled beyond the call of duty and dug up the dirt from the Wi-Fi Alliance (careful: links to a PDF), the Bluetooth SIG’s Gadget Guide, and TÜV Rheinland’s safety certification site. The verdict: a new (and hopefully improved) version of the Palm Pre, dubbed the P100UNA seems set for a North American arrival hopefully sooner rather than later.
The last big mystery to solve is which carrier will be getting their grubby little mitts on the thing next. AT&T seems like a logical choice stateside, but let’s not forget that North America’s a big place. The guys over at Engadget bring up a good point: with Palm’s Canadian partner Bell in the middle of a CDMA-to-GSM switch, could it be that they’ve already snagged the P100UNA for themselves? Only time will tell, and you can bet we’ll be here to tell you once we hear more.