Tag Archives: Palm

[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.

[WebOS] Palm/HP Slate Code Name Hurrican To Come in Q3/2010?

The Examiner.com reports that they got information from HP insiders. Under code name “Hurricane” it is rumored that HP and Palm are prepping a slate tablet running Palm’s latest operating system WebOS. Their timeline says Q3/2010. Read more on Examiner.com. With HP in the back that slate could become a real competitor to the iPad. We are very curious about it…

[WebOS] Palm Owner HP Abandons Windows 7 Slate Project

Although Steve Ballmer presented an HP Slate at CES 2010 in january, HP now abandons their Windows 7 slate project. TechnCrunch reports they got an HP inside source telling HP is not satisfied with Windows 7 as a slate operating system.

This news does not come really unexpected, as HP last week acquired Palm and they indicated in a presentation a slate with Palm’s WebOS.

[Palm] Hewlett Packard To Acquire Palm For US$1.2 Bill

According to Hewlett Packard’s press release Palm is gonna be acquired fo US$ 1.2 Billion. This means besides HP smart phones, which are running Windows Mobile, they are now entering the smart phone market with Palm’s best asset: WebOS. Anyway PreCentral.net picked that HP don’t intend to give up on selling Windows Mobile phones as they

intend to continue to be a strategic partner for Microsoft.

According to PreCentral.net Palm will operate as a business unit besides groups like the “Imaging and Printing Group” or “Personal Systems Group” within the HP organization.

Golem.de reports that HP sees WebOS as an ideal platform to strengthen their mobile strategy. The merger is intended to be finished in July 2010.

Our Comment

It’s complicated to estimate the situation of HP and Palm, but HP now bought a company that has lots of patents for the mobile age. We suppose $1.2 billion is not too expensive for a company that also with WebOS offers a superior operating system for mobile devices. HP clearly sees the mobile market is the market of the future. Apple showed how a business model for mobile devices looks like and now all the companies are moving into that direction. With buying Palm, HP tries to take the short cut. Until now they haven’t played a serious role in the mobile App market.

Anyway Microsoft is a strategic partner for HP – has been explicitly said by HP officials – and HP is using Windows Mobile currently on their mobile devices. Moreover Microsoft is to release Windows 7 Mobile to the market at the end of 2010. Windows 7 development will be quite easy as it will be based on Microsoft’s Silverlight technology.

We don’t want to sound too pessimistically but that might bring a new situation to the future of WebOS. As HP is company who then has to estimate if it is cheaper to license another Microsoft operating system – namely Windows 7 Mobile or the put money into developing an own operating system – namely WebOS.

Let’s hope for the best. We really like WebOS a lot and we feel the brand Palm still sounds very good worldwide.

[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] 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