Tag Archives: Palm Pre

[Pre] Palm Pre 2 Coming to France on October 22

German Heise.de and american Precentral.net report today, that HP finished upgrading their smartphone flagship Palm Pre. Interestingly the Palm Pre 2 will be first released to the french market on october 22 on SFR‘s network. Sadly there is no reliable information about when it will hit other markets like the US, Germany or Canada.

The Palm Pre 2 will feature:

  • 1 GHz CPU
  • 5 megapixel camera
  • 3.1″ screen size with 320×480 HVGA display
  • Glass screen
  • 16 GB memory
  • Touchstone backcover included
  • HP webOS 2.0

It is rumored the price will be about 100€ on contract and about 450€ sans contract. HP rebranded Palm’s webOS to HP webOS. The Pre 2 will be shipped with webOS 2.0 preloaded.

Adobe Flash in webOS 2 (video is courtesy of Precentral.net)

Boot time and multitasking in webOS 2 (video is courtesy of Precentral.net)

webOS 2 vs. webOS 1.45 – incl. overclocked (video is courtesy of Precentral.net)

[Pre] Palm Pre Jailbreaks PS3

A coder going under the nick “black_zero” ported the PS3 jailbreak to the Palm Pre. Find his instructions for “PS3 Freedom for Palm Pre” on the PSX-Scene.com.

[Update] In contrast to “PS3 Groove” this version also seems to enable the possibility of backups – means circumventing of copy protections. It is legally not allowed to apply this in most european countries and the U.S.

Our Comment

Sony’s protection has been compromised, no matter what they’re gonna do in the future. It is likely that there will be an update soon to stop the stack overflows in the USB code. But it won’t help them anymore.

The reason is simple: Sony will not be able to make that insecure system secure again. Because of the jailbreak the PS3 now allows accessing all features. That means that any update to come will be decrypted first, analyzed, modified to re-enable debug backdoors and then installed with all the debug features enabled again. Custom modified firmwares are the next logical step.

So although this seems to be good news for the homebrew scene, since there is hope now for a universal media center based on the PS3, the downside is still that some versions of the jailbreak also enable to play illegal backups.And since Sony’s biz model is selling licenses and games they will fight the jailbreak by trying to detect it and to block jailbroken devices from accessing the Playstation Network. And this means: permanent updates. For people playing a lot this will not be an option as they will have to wait again and again for custom firmwares that are likely to not work very long.

In the meantime check the Palm Pre vid:

[Pre] Palm Testing Final Version Of Adobe Flash 10.1

Adobe.com today announced, that Adobe Flash 10.1 for mobile devices has been released to mobile platform partners:

Flash Player 10.1 was also released to mobile platform partners to be supported on devices based on Android, BlackBerry, webOS, future versions of Windows® Phone, LiMo, MeeGo and Symbian OS, and is expected to be made available via over-the-air downloads and to be pre-installed on smart phones, tablets and other devices in the coming months.

Palm/HP: keep testing Flash, your userbase is keen on finding Flash on the App Catalog soon.

[Pre] Comprehension Of Palm’s Developer Day

The diligent ppl from PreCentral.net report, what this automn will come from Palm:

  • Microphone Access via API
  • Camera Access via API
  • Bluetooth Serial Port Profile
  • Bonjour/Zeroconf support
  • Background services are gonna be switched from Java to Javascript to speed up processing
  • HTML5
  • Mojo Core: web Apps can include a little portion of added lines to offer Mojo services (like Geolocatation etc.)
  • Improved App Catalogue

Read all of the news in detail at PreCentral.net

[Pre] Baseband Downgrade Tool For Rebel SIM Unlock

The proxy unlock seller of the Rebel SIM has just released a tool to downgrade the Palm Pre’s baseband to re-allow proxy SIM unlocking with their Rebel SIM. Find the manual here.

As we don’t have exact information about how the Rebel SIM works we suspect it’s based on the same background as the iPhone proxy SIM’s.

As there are serious security and legality implications concerning using proxy SIM unlocked devices on networks, you’d better stop by here to read what the iPhone Dev Team found out about proxy SIMs.

[Pre] WebOS Vulnerable To Several Attacks

Researchers from Intrepidus Group said in an advisory published on Friday last week that Palm’s WebOS operating system is subject to web application vulnerabilities.

These bugs can all be traced back to that fact that WebOS is essentially a web browser and the applications are written in JavaScript and HTML.

The bugs and vulnerabilites released are for WebOS 1.3.5. Palm has fixed all of them in WebOS 1.4. Anyway the Intrepidus Group said there are still undisclosed bugs in WebOS 1.4.

Via Intrepidus Group

[Pre] Prices For German Pre Plus and Pixi Plus Revealed

German carrier O2 just revealed the price tags of their latest Palm gadgets: the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pixi Plus. Distribution will start April 28th, 2010.

  • Pre Plus: 509€ (or 29€ as down payment and 24mth x 20€)
  • Pixi Plus: 389€ (or 29€ as down payment and 24mth x 15€)

Both devices come straight unlocked from the factory to your hands and can thus be used on any GMS/3G network anywhere on this planet. Buying phones at german O2 stores don’t require O2 subscriptions.

[Pre] Palm Pre GSM Unlock For Sale Now

Precentral reports that a user has eventually made to unlock european GSM Palm Pre’s. This unlock is not proxy SIM based, it is a software unlock.

Luckily this unlocking thing does not apply to german Palm Pre’s as they we got factory unlocked Pre’s anyway.

Read more on PreCentral.net

[Pre] Recommended Incomplete Preware Packages List

As of version 1.4 it seems Palm has managed to get WebOS out of beta status. Anyway there are still some things that could be a tiny bit better. We therefore compiled an (incomplete) list ;-) of packages, we are currently using on our Pre’s.

The Requirements

These packages require a Palm Pre put into developer mode and an installed Preware installer.

  1. Putting Palm Pre into Dev Mode by simply entering the Konami Code – see here how to do it
  2. Install WebOS-Internals’ Preware installer – see here how to do it.

Both steps are easy as saying “1, 2, Pre”…

The Incomplete Preware Packages List

Done and happy? Ok then, here we go:

Package Description PreWare Folder
Battery Saver Turns on airplane mode each night at a defined time Application
Brightness Unlinked Brightness of Keyboard and Brightness of Screen can now separately be adjusted Applications
MyTether Turns your Pre into a WiFi to 3G router. Extremely helpful on vacation. Not on PreWare, get here only…
Terminal Allows Accessing the Linux Terminal from within the Pre Applications
4×4 icons v4 No Arrows Plus More 4 Icons on Launcher Screen per line Patch
Ad Blocker Being on GRPS/Edge sometimes, you definitely don’t want to spend bandwidth on ads Patch
Capture with Volume Keys Shoot Images with the Volume Keys Patch
Confirm Delete Confirm Deleting an Email Patch
Fullscreen Mode Browser No Urlbar, No Application Frame, No Notification when scrolled down. Extends the browser to the full screen size Patch
Reduce Minimum Brightness Changes Minimum from 10 to 0 Patch
Fullscreen Mode Browser No Urlbar, No Application Frame, No Notification when scrolled down. Extends the browser to the full screen size Patch
Send All Contacts via Email Creates a vCard containing ALL contacts and attaches it to an Email Patch

Shouts fly out to the WebOS-Internals team and the guys at the Precentral Forums. That’s awesome work you’re doing.

[Pre] Open Office Running on Palm Pre

Notorious WebOS Internals Team has managed to compile and run an X-Server on our beloved latest gadget Palm Pre, thus allowing to run Open Office. As Rod Whitby states:

Just a note to say that we do have a roadmap of being able to install native Debian X11 GUI applications (like OpenOffice) via Preware. But don’t hold your breath, cause it looks like we need to write a whole new FUSE filesystem driver to be able to do it. Think weeks to months, rather than days.

Via PreCentral.net