I have to admit that the touchstone charger was one of the top 5 reasons why I switched to the Palm Pre from the iPhone 3G. The touchstone charger has truly revolutionized the way we charge our phones. Before it was all about finding the end of your charging cable then manipulating it in such that it weasels its way into an overly complicated connector on your phone. Now it is so easy to charge, simply place your phone on the touchstone. I wanted to do a quick review of the touchstone. There are some tips and tricks and some features that you may not know about. This article is a good place to learn everything about the charger.

The touchstone charger kit comes with a touchstone and a back cover that is compatible with the touchstone. That is all that comes in the kit. There is no micro-usb cable and no ac adapter that is compatible with the touchstone. The idea was that the ac adapter and micro-usb cord that came with your Pre will be used with the touchstone. Well this was a bad idea because almost everybody will be purchasing more than one touchstone (home and work) which leaves you needing an additional micro-usb cable and compatible ac adapter. And to make thing worse you cannot use any ac adapter or micro-usb cable with the touchstone. It is only compatible with ac chargers that put out 1000mA and has a certain pin configuration, and micro-usb cables that have extremely small and streamlined ends so that it can fit into the tiny hole in the back of the touchstone. Therefore, you will need another Palm ac adapter and micro-usb cable. However, i was able to find a way to obtain the Palm ac adapter and micro-usb cable for free. Skip to the last paragraph if you would like to know how. There are some ac adapters on the web that have been found to work but they are very hard to find, and you could buy any micro-usb cable and file down the end of it with a dremel or something.

Now that we are done with the logistics, lets talk about the touchstones features. It has a very sticky bottom that literally sticks (and sticks hard I might add) to flat surfaces. To remove the touchstone you need to twist and lift up. It can be reused as many times as you need it on different surfaces but if the bottom starts to collect too much dust it can loose its stickiness. If that happens then you need to wash the bottom wish soapy water and let it dry. You will be restored to full stickiness. The reason that the touchstone has a sticky bottom is because the magnets holding down your Pre to the touchstone are very strong. In fact many people use the touchstone in their cars with no problem at all. The Pre stays put even while making sharp turns.

The touchstone back cover that comes in the touchstone kit is a new back for your Pre. It has magnets and induction coils built into it. It is a nice rubbery/plastic feel like that is like a matte finish unlike the standard Pre back that is a slick and polished finish. I like the touchstone back much better than the standard back. It is easier to grip and there are no finger prints.

Now that you have your touchstone stuck to your table and the touchstone back installed on your pre, what happens? Well when you set you pre on the touchstone you get the “ba-bing” sound and it says charging. Then the Pre turns into basically a night clock. The Pre is dimly lit and has the time and notifications on it. It can be displayed vertically or landscape depending on how you set the Pre on the touchstone. A lot of people are annoyed by this feature because when you are trying to sleep it can be slightly distracting. I have had no problems with it and i sleep right next to my Palm. Still, Palm should offer the ability to turn this feature off.

When your Pre is on the touchstone wifi stays on and the Pre wont go to sleep if you have it on (if you manually make it sleep it reverts to the “night clock” mode. It is extremely easy to place the Pre properly on the touchstone. It is also a very fast process placing and removing the Pre. If you receive a phone call while on the touchstone be careful because if you pick it up off the touchstone you just answered that phone call. It is supposed to emulate a standard phone where if you pick it up off the hook you answer the phone. The touchstone charges very fast. It is almost as fast as simply using the standard ac adapter. The touchstone also enters a low power state when the Pre becomes fully charged.
The touchstone is incredible and I have one at home and at work. It has made charging the phone almost fun. I prefer to use the touchstone instead of leaving the Pre in my holster because it sits on my desk where I can see notification when they pop up. I highly recommend the touchstone but make sure you know what you need before you place and order. First you will need the touchstone charger kit which can be purchased below. Then if you want a second you will need to purchase a touchstone by itself which can also be purchased below. Finlay you will need to obtain another Palm ac adapter and micro-usb cord. This can be achieved by using the purchase link below or using the FREE method at the bottom of the page. The touchstone definitely gets the L337Tech stamp of approval.

HOW TO OBTAIN A FREE PALM AC ADAPTER AND MICRO-USB:
This has worked several times for me (Me and my women have lots of touchstones). First go to google maps and input your area code. Once the map zooms in on your area type “sprint wireless”. Look for a result that says “Sprint Store”. This is a corporate sprint store. The other results will just say “Sprint” or “Sprint PCS” etc. Those are little stores that do not have what we need. Second, drive your vehicle to the store and talk to a representative. Say, “I have two touchstones but I only have one Palm ac adapter and one Palm micro-usb cable that came with my Pre. Can I get another Palm ac adapter and micro-usb cable since that is the only thing that will work with the touchstone.” The rep will then try and sell you the aftermarket crap in the store. Reply with, “those do not work with the touchstone, the touchstone website specifically says it has to use the Palm ac adapter and micro-usb cable.” He will then say well we do not sell those in the store. Reply with, “well can I get on from the back that y’all use for testing and stuff.” He will then go to the back grab the goods then give it to you for free. Sprint is trying really hard to keep everybody happy with the Pre and they are aware that the touchstone does not come with the proper ac adapter and micro-usb cable. They will give you the stuff for free and smile the entire time. Like I said I did this several times for all my touchstones. Have fun with your new charger.

After several weeks of testing I am ready to name the king of the Palm Pre belt clip holster’s. First of all let me explain that I work in a building that requires business casual dress. So simply carrying the Pre in my pocket was not acceptable (huge bulge). Therefore, I began my quest to find the perfect belt clip holster.

I did have some basic requirements. It had to be black, rotatable, slim, and have access to the audio port. The first one i tried was the Seido Spring Clip Holster with audio port access that can be bought here:

At first, I opened the packaging and took out the holster and the first thought popping into my head was high quality. It felt very solid and was made from a material that seemed to be a plastic/rubber hybrid. The swivel was solid and doesn’t moved unless you force it to move with strong hand twists. The spring clip had a medium strength “grabbiness”. Under the spring clip was a small protruding clip about 1cm long which I guess is there to help guide the Pre into place. The holster had a nice felt layer on the inside which is supposed to protect your screen from scratches. However, 90% of the Palm Pre users will have a scratch resistance shield on their screen so the felt layer may not matter much.

I found that the Pre would only go into the holster if the screen was facing inwards. I also found that the Pre does not seat perfectly in this holster. The Pre wants to slide open when inserting into the holster and even when you push down on the spring clip it never goes perfectly closed. I found a fix for this. I simply cut off the 1cm long protruding piece of plastic on the top underneath the spring clip. I am not sure why this was deemed necessary for the holster by Seido. I found it a huge nuisance. After removing the 1cm long protruding piece of plastic with wire cutters I was able to get the Pre into the holster flush. It was also easier to remove the Pre from the holster with that piece gone.

This holster allows for easy one handed entry and removal of the Pre. It does take some skill but not much. Unfortunately, after two weeks with this holster the spring clip got stuck underneath the 1cm long protruding piece of plastic that i removed 90% of and while trying to get the spring clip unstuck i ripped it off. Holster dead. (UPDATE: Seidio read this review and contacted me. They were more than willing to replace my broken holster.)

Instead of ordering it again (its a little high priced) I decided to try another. This time my requirement was that it be a dead simple holster that was cheap. I also needed it to allow the Pre to face outward and inward. I found one made by Optimum Holster that can be found here:

This holster was dead simple and dead cheap. When I got it, it did feel a little cheap but I was happy enough considering the price. It has no clip mechanism. It relies on the elasticity of the plastic clip on the top to hold the Pre in place. It also allows the Pre to be facing outward in the holster.

The holster mad for easy easy Pre entry. Removal was more difficult than the Seido holster. In most cases you will need two hands, but after a while in certain situations I could remove it with one hand. The real plus for this case is that you can put it in inwards or outwards. There are situations where you want to see notifications without removing the Pre from the holster. Simply put it in the holster facing outwards for those situations. I found this a HUGE plus for the holster. The other huge bonus for this holster was that it was much slimmer and sleeker than the Seido. The clip on the top part of the Seido protrudes too far and your arm can hit it at time. But this Optimum case is perfectly flush with the face of your Pre so my arm never hit it once. I love this holster.

I have been using it for several weeks now and I feel totally comfortable claiming it the best Palm Pre holster in the world (currently). This holster definitely gets the L337Tech stamp of approval.

-L337Tech

Okay, we at L337Tech have replace our iPhones out of sheer bordem (had iphone for 2 years and am now bored with it). We now have Palm Pre’s. I love my Palm Pre but was not happy with the battery life. Luckily the Palm Pre is the easiest phone to hack ever. Heck, to access developer mode you type in the konami code, come on thats awesome!! I wrote some code that uses power saving features built into the linux operating system used by the Pre. This has literally increased my battery life by 40%. It is only a matter of time before Palm sees this and writes their own power saving script. But as of right now the Pre has now power saving features so use my code.

This is basically a repost of the work i did in the forums of PreCentral.net

Okay i have been doing extensive testing. I believe i have solved most of the problems related to cpu scaling.

noted problems:
1. Video playback flickers and can be choppy
3. Phone freezes usually in standby or some other low state like listening to pandora in standby.
2. Can force the phone to have a 250mhz minimum instead of 125Mhz minimum

Fixes:
Two new scaling schemes. The first uses 1 second sampling rates and an 11% cpu utilization speed up threshold. The second method uses powersave_bias to turn on the 250mhz minimum (this will cause the phone to quit going down to 125Mhz, it goes down to 250Mhz instead during standby or other lowly states)

The fist scheme fixes video playback and phone freezes during lowly states, but does not fix the 250Mhz minimum problem so you phone will use 125Mhz for its lowly state.

The second scheme fixes phone freezes during lowly states like standby and Pandora, and makes 250Mhz the minimum cpu frequency. This method does not fix video playback flickering issues.

Here is the code:

First scheme (my favorite and the one im currently using)
assumes you are at root@castle:/#

echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo 500000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
echo 250000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq
echo 11 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
echo 1000000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate

Second scheme (not my favorite because of video flicker and other reasons i will explain latter but it does utilize the 250mhz low state which is a little snappier than 125Mhz)
assumes you are at root@castle:/#

echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo 500000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
echo 250000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq
echo 11 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
echo 10000000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/powersave_bias

The main problem with the methods people were doing before is that the chip was switching between low and high state several times over the course of a few second no matter if they were playing a video or pandora. The first scheme above fixes that issue. The second scheme still suffers from this but i tried to lessen its severity by changing the sampling rate to 10 seconds (in reality it seems like 2 seconds durring testing). 10 seconds was the lowest i could go without it wanting to change states from low to high several times in a few seconds. There is something wrong with the powersave_bias function that makes it switch states faster than the sampling rate. I am looking into possible workarounds.

I would have liked to make the speed up threshold 5% but the lowest the up_threshold function would let me choose is 11%. 5% is usually low enough to have the phone running full power during pandora. Your phone is almost always lower than 5% during standby or when not doing anything on your phone.

If you want these codes to stick after a reboot then you will need to prepare a script in vi editor inside you pre’s linux system in the format similar to how they did it at pre dev wiki here

scroll down the page till you see how they made it stick. Just change the code to the codes in the post, but you need to change the format slightly. If you dont know how to do this then you do not need to be trying anything mentioned in this post.

And as always i am not responsible for any damage this may cause you. But the consensus is that the ondemand scaling function is pretty harmless to your phone. Freezes are fixed by unplugging you battery. If you want to be extra careful then just run these codes without making a script. That way when you reboot everything goes back to defaults from palm for the cpu.

If anyone can get powersave_bias stable let me know what you did. I was using trans_table in the /cpufreq/stats folder and also time_in_state within the same folder. Another usefull tool is cpuinfo_cur_freq within the /cpufreq folder. Also use top command to monitor your cpu utilization, this command can be executed anywhere within linux.

I have decided to include some code that will help anyone if they decide to do their own testing of cpu scaling and power save bias. Here is the code I use for testing:

current speed
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq
time in different frequencies
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/stats/time_in_state
number of switches between power states
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/stats/trans_table
current sampling rate
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate
current up threshold
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
current power save bias
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/powersave_bias
current max freq
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
current min freq
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq

turn off power save bias
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/powersave_bias

overclocking
echo 550000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
echo 600000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
echo 1500000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate

good luck

-L337Tech

We have decided to reduce the price of our L337Tech Preconfigured NAS System from $499 to $399, shipping not included. This price reduction was initiated by the increased competition in the NAS market. There are a lot of great NAS systems out there but we want ours to have the best price/performance.

For $399 + shipping you are getting a great deal! here is a summary of the features:
1. Windows file sharing
2. OS X file sharing
3. Linux file sharing
4. PS3 file sharing
5. Time Machine backups
6. 1TB of storage space
7. 50MB/s+ transfer speeds
8. Desktop computer running Ubuntu 8.10

-L337Tech