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Sprint support site says webOS 1.2 coming today, releases patch notes
According to Sprint's official support pages, webOS 1.2.0 is officially heading out of the stable sometime today. There's lots of minor tweaks and updates here, a hefty refinement of the current system -- but a few of you already know that. Our Pre phones haven't started blinking yet, and there's still a chance the patch date is in error. Hit up the read link for the full list of changes, and be sure to let us know if you start getting any update notifications. [Via Pre Thinking]
Sprint now offering $100 service credit to Pre buyers who port a number
We were expecting a Pre price cut today, but it looks like Sprint has slightly different plans -- instead of lowering the outright price of the handset, the carrier is offering new Pre customers a $100 service credit if they port a number from a different carrier. Yeah, that's a little odd -- especially since the credit is spread out over three months, instead of applied all in one go. We're guessing Sprint and Palm are just trying to lure new sales without having to openly cut prices on the Pre and undo its "premium" image, but as far as psychological marketing tricks go, parceling out a discount over 12 weeks might be the least effective one we can think of -- we're pretty sure most people would rather take a $100 price cut at the top end of the deal. Still, the end result is that the Pre is now $100 cheaper for switchers -- anyone running out to buy one? [Via Everything Pre]
Palm Pre rumored to be dropping to $150 on September 8th
We've already seen the Palm Pre dip below its $199 list price during a few limited, occasionally inadvertent sales, but it looks like it could soon be dropping well under the $200 mark for a slightly longer period of time -- at least if a purportedly legit leaked document is to be believed. According to PreCentral, the doc comes from someone working at a Sprint "indirect partner retail dealer," and quite clearly indicates that "indirect partners" will be able to sell the Pre for $149.99 (after a mail-in rebate) between September 8th and October 31st, 2009. Presumably, Sprint itself would also be offering the Pre for the same price during that time and, if the HTC Hero's $179.99 price tag on Sprint is any indication, there seems to be at least a decent chance that the price drop could eventually become a permanent one. Either way, we won't have to wait too long to see how this one pans out.
Video: webOS 1.2 in action, LED notifications just a hack away
Palm might have tried to bottle up that webOS 1.2 leak the other day, but it looks like it was to no avail -- videos of the new build in action have hit YouTube, and the hacking community has already ripped the code apart and found some new features. Just like we'd heard, the browser's been updated and there's revised and improved copy / paste functionality, but the big new feature seems to be email searching, which Pre owners have longed for since day one. Hidden deeper, it seems like the LEDs in the gesture area can be enabled for notifications by tweaking just a few lines of code, and there's also the somewhat disconcerting addition of remote app kill switch for Palm, which would apparently let it delete apps anytime it wants. We're sure this is just a cover-your-ass move as Palm prepares to open up the App Catalog -- and it's not exactly unprecedented -- but it's still a little disconcerting given how closely Palm seems to be monitoring Pre usage to begin with. Oh, but come on, let's turn that frown upside-down -- video of new features after the break. Read - webOS 1.2 video Read - LED notifications
Palm webOS 1.2 leaked, plugged in record time
You know, sometimes if you just study hard, keep your nose clean, and stay away from the pirate cable TV business, fate will do you a solid. For instance, check this post by PreCentral forum member go4craig. Today, the hapless youngster innocently applied webOS Doctor in a bid to reset his phone back to factory and wouldn't ya know it? When all was said and done, the phone's operating system was upgraded to webOS 1.2. And what's more, the maneuver has been repeated successfully by a handful of other forum members.What can the accidental early adopter expect for their trouble? How about account information for the App Catalog (a sign of paid apps to come), a Select All option in the browser's edit menu, and some changes in GPS location services. In addition to all this inadvertent newness, the update is said to have "much improved (zoom animation)" and a number of "little tweaks throughout." Sadly, as of this writing the gang at Palm seem to have plugged the leak. But chin up, little ones -- we're sure an official release must be imminent. [Thanks, Jay]
iPhone app scoops best software prize on Microsoft campus
Poor Microsoft. You generously welcome a Startup Weekend on your campus, where all manner of geeks and techies code their hearts out for 54 hours straight, you throw in the BizSpark program to encourage them to use your tools, and what do you get in return? Learn That Name, voted best app in show and designed for use on Apple's iPhone and Palm's Pre. Gee thanks! On the bright side, we congratulate Microsoft for allowing people to write for their platform(s) of choice -- and hey, it's not like Redmond has been lacking in innovation lately, right? Video demo of the name memorizing game / app is after the break.
Video: Pre virtual keyboard developing rapidly, gets easy install method
We know you just can't wait to get typing on the Pre's lush touchscreen, and the folks at WebOS Internals must feel the same way as they've been hard at work making their on-screen keyboard a functional reality. Installation has been made a breeze thanks to the Preware app, and usability seems to have improved markedly since the pre-alpha version, but a few kinks remain that need to be ironed out. Still, if you're willing to put up with some buggy behavior and the potential for your Pre to melt into a puddle of fiery lava, then slide past the break to get educated on the how, what and where to download.
Bell's latest Pre ad insults Americans, old people, and bloody roller derby girls in one pass
With the latest installment of Bell's "Meet my Palm Pre" series, paid spokesman Bradley here has basically guaranteed himself that he'll be visited by elderly American roller girls with bad attitudes and a taste for justice. Some of the gruesome highlights: "Unlike our neighbors to the south, Canadians are an active people." "Coupe de Kill is kinda scary. I should probably get out of here before she goes on Twitter." "According to Wikipedia, this game was first played in 1299. And, uh, I think some of these people were maybe there." Follow the break for the video. [Via MobileSyrup]
China Telecom talking to Palm for the Pre?
Nabbing a contract with a carrier pushing into nine-figure subscriber count territory would go a long way toward helping any manufacturer's woes, so it's reasonable to believe that Palm would be shopping its latest wares around the streets of Hong Kong and Beijng where China's big three carriers are headquartered. Intriguingly, the Financial Times has just casually mentioned in a somewhat-unrelated piece that "China Telecom is planning to offer the Palm to its subscribers," a perfect fit considering that rival Unicom is poised to launch the iPhone and Telecom runs CDMA with nascent EV-DO coverage in the works. The Pre already knows a thing or two about CDMA networks from its Sprint and Bell launches, of course, so they've already got that base covered -- beyond that brief FT mention, though, we've got nothing, so it's hard to say when this might be hitting retail.
Pre ad is to iPhone ad as dude is to lady in Aerosmith song of the same name
What can I say? White background, disembodied finger and digi-creepy stillness of the device... the Bell [Canada] version of an ad for the Palm Pre looks hilariously like an iPhone ad. View the videos and judge for yourself. Then get a Pre if you are compelled to do so. It has maps and Twitter and you can touch and rotate and slide it. Bell version and an iPhone ad Spooky, isn't it? Of course, there are only so many ways to illustrate the feature set of a multi-touch smartphone, aren't there? It's like when Newhart was sued by the guy who also wrote a handyman book. There are, in fact, only so many ways to explain how to nail a nail, Dick explains. Lucky us, all smartphone ads will now follow this format, making it much easier to determine which phone is best for us. Thanks, Bell! [thanks to Philip Lam for the tip!] Update: And here's an iPhone ad's audio on top of the Bell/Pre ad. Note the flow and that "how cool is that?" pops up at a cosmically opportune moment.
Bell's Palm Pre commercial couldn't be more Apple if it had an Orba Squara soundtrack
Far from being creepy this time around, the latest Palm Pre ad -- this one specifically for Bell's Canadian customer base -- is familiar. Very familiar. Plain white backdrop? Check. Peppy male narrator? Check. Hip, upbeat music? Check. Mysterious hands showing off mobile apps and other smartphone capabilities? Check. Side-by-side comparison videos after the break. Hey, at least this one isn't gonna creep you out. Update: Looks like someone read our minds and spliced the commercial with Orba Squara's infamous "Perfect Timing" found in the iPhone ads. Video's after the break. [Via Pre Thinking]
Palm launches e-commerce beta for the App Catalog
Love the Pre? Love code? Love money? Well it's your lucky day. Palm has just announced that it will begin accepting applications for developers interested in producing for-pay apps for the webOS App Catalog. The company says that requests taken now will make devs eligible for inclusion in the mid-September launch of its e-commerce program. Just like Apple and Google, Palm will be splitting profits of paid apps with developers 70 / 30 (the devs get 70 percent, don't worry), and go figure -- credit cards will be accepted. Of course we're pumped about paying $.99 for a to-do app someday soon, but we're hoping this will also herald in a new age of steady releases for the Catalog, which is still looking frighteningly bare to us. Hey, that's what homebrew is for, right? Full PR after the break.
Palm Pre, iPhone 3GS owners' satisfaction polled, compared in new study
Studies just released by RBC Capital and ChangeWave Research polled iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre owners on their respective levels of satisfaction with their devices -- then compared them. In the studies, 200 iPhone 3GS users and 40 Palm Pre owners were polled. Overall, 99 percent of owners of Apple's phone proclaimed themselves to be "satisfied," while 82 percent of that number declared they were "very satisfied." The poll of Pre owners showed that 87 percent are "satisfied," and 45 percent of those owners describe themselves as "very satisfied." Interestingly, the 42 percent of "very satisfied" customers are the highest score ever attained by a Palm device, and it's a number that's only ever been bested by RIM and Apple. When asked about their respective reasons for buying their devices, Palm Pre owners listed the touchscreen interface, ability to multitask, and ease of use in the top three, while iPhone users cite its touchscreen, ease of use and faster web browsing as its biggest draws. So what about drawbacks? iPhone users (a whopping 55 percent of them, in fact) say that AT&T's network is their main gripe with the device, while Pre owners list short battery life and lack of third party apps as the devices biggest drawbacks. All in all, a pretty good showing for both -- though the microscopic sample size (especially for the Palm Pre) makes us wonder about the validity of the findings a bit.Read - Apple's iPhone 3GS has 99 percent satisfaction rateRead - iPhone vs. Palm Pre: Satisfaction bakeoff
Palm prepping Pre with North American GSM, but for whom?
Palm seems to be making an active, conscientious effort to say as little as it can about the GSM version of the Pre, possibly in an effort to give Sprint as much spotlight as possible before its exclusivity expires -- but as we all know, it's real and it's coming. Thing is, Palm has always implied that it's being limited to European duty with a 3G radio that fails to cover bands that are of any interest to North Americans, so what the heck is this noise all about? Multiple certification bodies are now reporting the existence of a Pre model number P100UNA, as opposed to the P100UEU that's launching in Europe -- and it doesn't take a lot of detective work to gather that those codes on the end stand for "North America" and "European Union," respectively (for the record, the CDMA version on Sprint is P100EWW, so it ain't that). One distinct possibility is that Palm's preparing a version to cover Bell's new HSPA network since the carrier is Palm's exclusive Pre launch partner in Canada and they're smack in the middle of a transition from CDMA -- and needless to say, if that's the case, there'll be an unprecedented effort to get that sucker unlocked on the double. [Via PreCentral] Read - WiFi certification [Warning: PDF link] Read - Bluetooth SIG
Pre gets the on-screen keyboard it's been missing, yet has always had
When we asked how you'd change Palm's Pre, one group of respondants requested a virtual keyboard, a group that should really quit its bellyaching because the phone already has one... it just doesn't offer any particularly useful keys. That's changing thanks to the modders at WebOS Internals, who are taking the control that pops up when you hit the "sym" key and expanding it to actually contain some symbols you might use more than once a week -- like, you know, letters and jazz. They have a functional keyboard operational at this point that works in both phone orientations, but it's still decidedly pre alpha, meaning only those whose delicate thumbs are blistering on the Pre's soft, smooth, physical keys should even think about this modification right now. The team has made huge strides in just the past few days, though, so perhaps before the end of the month everyone can be soft-typing pain-free. [Via PreCentral.net]
Pre phones home with your location, which explains the black helicopters all around you
Wondering why you keep getting followed by shadowy figures in trenchcoats and fake moustaches? Worried that those snipers on the rooftops always seem to know exactly where you are? We think we know what's going on: it's the Pre in your pocket. Turns out that Palm has code tucked away in webOS that's uploading your location periodically -- once a day or so -- along with a list of applications you've used and how long they've been open. Here's our take on the situation: One of the very first screens you see when you power on the Pre for the first time is a disclaimer asking you to allow Google to collect, aggregate, and anonymize your location data in order to improve the performance of location-based services. Furthermore -- and this is important -- "collection will occur regardless of whether any applications are active." We don't know whether Palm acts as a conduit for that data to get to Google, but we'd be surprised if Palm had built services to pipe location data straight to Google within webOS itself; in all likelihood, Palm's getting the data first, which is why it's being uploaded there. Bear in mind that you're seeing this warning outside the context of any Google app on the Pre -- it's right in the operating system. Palm has its own terms and conditions that you agree to above and beyond Google's, too, and they flat-out say they "may collect, store, access, disclose, transmit, process, and otherwise use your location data." There you have it. App usage is a pretty benign stat -- equate it to TiVo anonymizing and selling your viewing habits, except even less interesting, because we have no evidence to suggest Palm's trying to sell this. We can totally understand why Palm would want insight into app popularity, and when you think about it, this could actually lead to some pretty clever ranking systems in the App Catalog; the iPhone has starkly demonstrated that download volume doesn't equate to replay value, and Palm might be able to do something about that. Oh, and seriously, you need to cut it out with the Jon & Kate Plus 8. When an app crashes, Palm gets some more in-depth information about the crash, most notably a list of installed apps. You know what else collects and sends a crapload of information when an app crashes? Mac OS. Windows, too. If they really wanted to go into CYA mode, they could ask before sending the way those desktop OSes do, but we're not sweating bullets here -- we just want stability, and this kind of data helps them get there. Bottom line: we're all carrying phones that can identify who we are and where we are -- and they have the wireless means to ferry that data wherever their makers wish. And let's not forget that your Palm Profile lives out there in the cloud anyhow, right? [Via PreCentral] Update: Palm has issued a statement on the situation, basically confirming what we suspected -- it's collecting information to offer "a great user experience," which we take to mean that it's trying to squash bugs and keep location-centric apps functional, among other things. They've also mentioned that it's possible to turn data collecting services off without going into details -- ostensibly they're referring to the checkbox at setup (see above) that lets you stop sending aggregated location results to Google.
Palm quietly improving Pre build quality, tweaking hardware
It's not the most comprehensive survey, nor is there any official confirmation, but the crew at PreThinking has checked in with a number of new Pre owners and discovered that Palm's apparently building its webOS handset better lately -- and what's more, it's even made some minor improvements. The biggest change appears to be a fix for that nasty bug that caused the Pre to reset or turn off when the keyboard was closed -- that bit of grey foam pictured was added to the battery compartment to tighten up the battery connection. There's a also word that the screen cracking and unintended rotation issues have been addressed, although time will tell on those, and the button color has changed from pearl to silver. As for improvements, well, there's a new battery model, and the Palm logo is now embossed on the carrying case. Yep, just little stuff, but it's good to see Palm addressing the build issues on the Pre, which are by far the most common complaint about the device. Let us know if you've spotted anything else, would you?
Controversial Palm Pre ads judged to be effective, still creepy
Palm's slightly disturbing Pre ads continue to make news, putting to rest any doubts about their effectiveness. Hot on the heels of ad agency Modernista totally loving that you're "creeped out" by them, analyst MediaCurves has done a little online study --"little" meaning a small sample group of only 305 viewers. Still, the results are interesting, with half of all respondents feeling inspired or happy after viewing the commercial, nine percent feeling disturbed. Sixteen percent were, however, confused, but that didn't stop 21 percent from saying the commercial was "extremely effective," and 46 percent indicating "somewhat effective." At the read link you can watch the ad with a line graph drawn over it rating peoples' interest realtime, generally going up when the phone is shown (the "bing, bing, bing" segment) and down the rest of the time, perhaps inspiring a new series of Pre adverts with more time for demos and less for dazed-sounding, tight-haired, 60-foot-tall women. [Via everythingpre]
Palm Pre soap brings webOS to the tub
Okay, so we sort of understand molding soap into familiar gadget shapes, but this bar of Pre soap utterly baffles by being scented "bourbon and Coke," which seems a bit self-defeating. Smell like a hobo with webOS for just $13 -- and don't worry, there's BlackBerry, iPhone, and Playstation soap on offer as well, presumably scented with Boone's Farm and OE 800. [Via Pocket-Lint]
Amzer issues embarrassingly gigantic Palm Pre extended batteries
Look at that. Just look at that. Do you have the slightest idea what that is? No, it's not a wired optical mouse. It's not a smartphone from circa 1985. It's a Palm Pre with a battery that just might last until you're six feet under if you choose not to chat much. After one-upping Seidio's 1,350mAh battery with a 1,400mAh version, the company has now hit back with a new duo that redefines your vision of "bulging." Both the 2,800mAh and 3,800mAh cells ship with (and thus require) new backplates to contain the extra girth, and neither of them support Palm's Touchstone charger. PreThinking is currently testing 'em out, but considering that it just might be 2015 before they're able to report any results, they've hosted up a litany of product shots for the time being. Head on down to the read link if you're looking for laughs.
