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.
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.
German Palm.de site reports that the Palm Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus are going to be released in Germany on April 28th, 2010. The exclusive partnership between Palm and O2 in Germany is over, Vodafone is going to offer the Palms aswell.
There is currently no information available about pricing.
Read more on investor.palm.com…
I. Summary
Quite a bunch of news for the Palm community has been presented by Palm’s CEO John Podfather Prefather Rubinstein. Find the whole video presentation at the end of the summary.
II. WebOS Update 1.4
WebOS 1.4 will be released in February, 2010 (in the US at least, we Europeans are still waiting for 1.3.5). WebOS 1.4 will feature:
III. WebOS Plug In Development Kit
For developing native 3D games Palm secretely extended their development tools with a plug in kit, that allows to write code in C or C++.
IV. Native 3D Games
Moreover Palm showed they are in the know what their customers will like and how to explore more markets besides the Linux community. As of today some 3D games have been released to the U.S. American AppCatalog:
IV. Palm Pre Plus coming to Verizon
A special version of the Palm Pre is coming to Verizon Wireless, only 7 months after the initial release of the Palm Pre to the Spring network. Verizon’s Palm Pre Plus is coming with 16GB Ram, a reworked slider mechanics and a tethering plan. Verizon is said to have one of the best 3G coverage in North America. We suspect the Palm Pre Plus to be SIM locked.
V. The whole video presentation on the CES 2010
Enjoy Mr. Podfather Prefather John Rubinstein…
European customers are still waiting for webOS 1.3.5 update. The European carrier Telefonica (o2 and MoviStar) seems not to have approved it yet.
Meanwhile it seems versions 1.3.5 had issues. According to PreCentral.net, Palm Pre customers on Sprint (USA) and Bell (Canada) are able to update to version 1.3.5.1 since Januar 5th, 2010. Version 1.3.5 has been released in the US and Canada on December 29th, 2009.
Issues with homebrew apps on 1.3.5 and 1.3.5.1
It is known, that webOS 1.3.5 breaks homebrew installer PreWare. Known workaround is using WebOS Quick Install to remove and then reinstall PreWare. It should be working well again.
There are also issues with homebrew apps that don’t contain an appinfo.json file. Apps not properly prepared would not be getting moved from /var to /media/cryptofs/apps. Package Manager Service 0.9.24.3 has fixes for this problem.
And the latest 1.3.5.1 also breaks myTether. This seems not resolved yet.
Amazing news
In the meantime people from the WebOS Internal forums have discovered, that webOS 1.3.5 includes Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL). SDL allows hardware accelerated graphics and sound and is available on different platforms for free and open source. Via homebrew installer PreWare a playable alpha version of Doom using SDL has already been released.
Europeans still waiting
Although Palm is said to be unveiling something big on the CES 2010 tomorrow, we don’t expect Telefonica to approve 1.3.5 until then for Europe.
It is rumored, on the CES Verizon Wireless will be officially named the new partner for a device called Palm Pre Plus (Palm Pre 3).
Links
» PreCentral: webOS 1.3.5.1 Available for OTA Download…
» PreCentral: webOS 1.3.5.1 goes live for Pre users on Bell…
» PreCentral Forums: Status of Preware and 1.3.5…
» PreCentral Forums: Preware + mytether unavailable after 1.3.5.1…
» WebOS Internals Wiki: Doom on Palm Pre…
» Wikipedia: Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)…
» WebOS Blog: Was kommt zur CES 2010 von Palm? (Google translated link)…
» PhoneArea: Verizon to get Palm Pre Plus…
Video