Author: Derek Kessler

On this day where the Pre Plus and Pixi plus are coming to Verizon, we would have expected – or at least hoped – that Palm would push out some impressive apps to make a splash with the new customers. We could be wrong, but three chauvinist wallpaper packs, a movie soundboard, and a geocaching logger don’t seem like impressive material. At the very least we would have thought that the fancy 3D games like Need For Speed and NFL 2010 would have received a non-update update to bump them up to the top of the recent apps list. Then again, we’re not working at Palm, so their rhyme or reason doesn’t have to make sense to us. Thankfully, the nonsensical rhymes and reasons have become fewer and farther between in recent months, so we’ll let it slide and merely reference you to the list of new and updated apps waiting after the break.

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Even in these days of instant communications through text messages, instant messaging, and Twitter, there’s something to be said for the robustness (and openness) of email. Thus, when email goes wonky you can be assured that there will be noise made of it. While this blogger’s Gmail-not-pushing issue managed to magically resolve itself, other users have noticed a different problem with their email: push simply doesn’t work over WiFi, and for some in that group their email pushes very late (10-15 minutes) over EVDO. And of course, there are those who simply can’t get push email to work at all.

We feel your pain, and even though signs point to the issue not being a widespread one, we would be remiss if we didn’t ask around. So here we are, asking, with the preferred mass data gathering method of politicians and the media alike: the poll. And as an added bonus, you can also comment on this article (like any other). In particular, if you’ve had this sort of issue and figured out how to resolve it, we’re all ears.

More and more patches arrive every week on WebOS Internals, and with each patch comes plenty of new and useful functionality. A new patch aims to alleviate a painful problem that has afflicted some Palm owners: getting your contacts out of the Palm Profile. As we’ve reported before, some users have run into an issue where a glitch between the Palm servers and your phone results in the Palm Profile’s personal data getting wiped.

The “Send All Contacts via Email” patch by bsiegel provides a way to get your contacts out of the Palm Profile and into whatever you want. The patch adds the menu option to export your contacts into a standard vCard file (which can take a while if you have a lot) and then attaches that file to an email for you to send to wherever you desire. We’ll use Google as an example here: once exported you can save the vCard file to your computer, and then upload all the contacts to Google by opening Contacts and clicking on Import.

Apart from transferring your contacts from the Palm Profile to Google, you can also use the patch to perform backups of your contacts data, as the patch does not discriminate between sources like Google, Palm, and Exchange.

Thanks to Matt for the tip!

Has AT&T gained a reputation in the past few years for having a network buckling under the load of their smartphone userbase? Probably. But the question of how to handle that load is a quandary that has divided customers and executives. Customers simply want an upgrade of the network’s capacity and reliability, while the suits want to institute a tiered/metered pricing structure for data access (a concept that while perfectly logical is repulsive to customers used to an unlimited data buffet).

It sounds like AT&T may have actually listened to the customers and is not only working to buttress their network to handle the pounding that millions of iPhone owners have inflicted, but also the prepare for the release of new, and as-of-yet unannounced, smartphones. Or at least so says Boy Genius Report. What do we expect in that mix? Well, webOS for one, as AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega has indeed that two webOS devices will come to his network in the first half of this year. Also, that Android thing too.

So how much is AT&T going to have to spend in order to come close to Verizon’s coverage and reliability? If you ask Gerard Hallaren, director of research at TownHall Investment Research, they’re looking at a $5 billion investment. That’s a big chunk of change, though not out of AT&T’s price range – the carrier is expected to report a profit of close to $4 billion for the last quarter of 2009.

[via: PreCentral sister site The iPhone Blog]

Thanks to Lee for the heads up!

Another day, another app drop from our friends at Palm. What did yesterday bring? Well, we got an app to watch the Hope for Haiti Now telethon live, and even though the star-studded event is over we still encourage you to donate to charities supporting the relief effort. We also got a new 3D game in the form of NFL 2010, which all we can say is “about time!” with the Super Bowl coming up. Apart from that, there’s plenty more, so hop on after the break to check it all out.

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The Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus may not be launching on Verizon until Monday, but don’t let that lead you to believe that they’re not already out there. Engadget has noted that the two refreshed webOS handsets are landing in stores across the United States in preparation for the release, including purveyor of all things electronic: Best Buy.

Of course, they’re not for sale at Best Buy just yet, but they are showing up in stock rooms (which should be little surprise, considering that weekend shipping costs more than weekday). Anybody feel like moseying on down to their local big blue box and convincing a hapless Best Buy employee that they need to sell you the phone now?

Thanks to Complex Pants for the tip!

We had an inkling that the Palm Pre was not doing well on Bell in Canada after third party reseller dropped the smartphone down to $0.00. But at that time, Bell was still charging $100 for the Pre. But there’s nothing like a vote of no confidence like dropping a flagship smartphone to free on contract just five months after it hit your network. Of course, it’ll still take a three-year contract to get it for free. If you’re not interested in shacking up with Bell for three full years, you can still get a Pre for $99.95 on a two year contract, $199.95 for a one year contract, and just $349.95 with no contract at all.

So what’s going on here? For one, it seems clear they’re having trouble selling the Pre. But two is the hope/fear that the Pre (or Pre Plus) may very well be available on another network – like Telus – in the very near future. If you’ll think back to late August when the Pre finally launched in Canada, Bell admitted that they had a six-month exclusive on the Pre, and that soon will expire. Do they have excess inventory to clear, or is this just a ploy to secure more smartphone subscriber customers before webOS becomes available on other Canadian carriers? Hard to say.

[via: Mobile Syrup]

Thanks to Bryan for the tip!

If you were to ask us who has the best reviews of the new Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus on Verizon, we’d probably tell you that there is no such thing as the “best” review (even though we trust you’re fond of what can be found here at PreCentral). So even though we do have reviews of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on this awesome site (there’s that hubris again), it’s always worth looking at what others thought. At least, those others who lucky enough to get their hands on the hot new handsets before their release next week. Those thoughts are all waiting after the break.

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I swear, Palm is playing some sort of Jedi mind tricks on me, because last night when I hit the sack the newest apps were dated as being "yesterday," as in Wednesday. When I got up this morning, not only where there more apps under "older" (i.e. before Thursday), but there were apps under yesterday (Thursday) as well that sure as heck weren’t there yesterday. Am I losing my mind? Well… that is a distinct possibility, assuming that it hasn’t already been lost. While we ponder that likelihood, you can check out all the App Catalog newness after the break.

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Are you looking to see what’s new in the App Catalog? Well, then you’ve turned to the right place. While not all days in the App Catalog are filled with exciting apps, it’s still exciting to get new apps. And new apps we did get. So should we be excited? Well, we did say that new apps are exciting, so yeah, we suppose excitement is in order. Want to know what you ought be excited about? It’s all after the break (excitement not guaranteed).

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Since launch day, every Palm Pre and Pixi on Sprint has come with a little app that launches into a custom Sprint portal with news and links to information about your account. It looks as if Bell is going to follow the same route, though their app will be of the optional App Catalog variety. As reported over at Mobile Syrup, Bell is releasing a “Self Serve” app that will do the same for owners of Palm Pre phones on Bell. Self Serve the app will give Bell customers one-click access to Self Serve the website, where users can manage their accounts and track minute, text, and data usage. webOS users won’t be the only ones getting in on the action, as Bell is also releasing the app for the BlackBerry Storm and Tour (through BlackBerry App World).

Thanks to mtsem for the tip!

While Palm’s spiffy new PDK (Plug-in Development Kit) is right now limited to bringing fancy binary apps to webOS only from a few select developers, that isn’t going to stop Palm from showing it off to the masses. To that end, Palm will be presenting at this year’s Game Developers Conference. GDC will be taking place in March in San Francisco, just up the road from Palm’s Sunnyvale headquarters.

The hour-long presentation, scheduled for 3:00 pm on March 12, has a title that tells us pretty much everything we need to know: “An Overview to Creating Games with Palm’s Plug-in Development Kit (PDK)”. But that’s not all, there’s also a description if that left you hungering for more:

“Come learn how to take full advantage of the advanced hardware capabilities of Palm’s webOS devices–including full OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 support–using the recently announced Plug-in Development Kit (PDK). This technical session will provide an architectural overview of Palm’s hardware and software platforms and then provide hands-on details for how the PDK exposes these capabilities.”

Which makes us say “Ooooooh.” Will we see new game announcements? Considering that they’re planning to demonstrate the PDK to game developers, we wouldn’t be surprised if the PDK becomes widely available around that same time.

Thanks to Baryn for the tip!

Slowly but surely the app count trudges forward, with several new apps and a dozen or so updates hitting the App Catalog in the period of time that we humans refer to as ‘yesterday.’ There’s no telling how beings that may operate out of linear time may look at the pace, but for us it’s not bad. Of course, we’d prefer faster, plentiful, and better…er, but we’ll also take what we can get. As per usual, we’ve got the list of yesterday’s App Catalog activity after the break. Click it, you know you want to…

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Terrorism serial super drama 24 is back, and while Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) is retired, that doesn’t mean that Palm is out of the game. If you’ve been watching, Sprint has been a long time sponsor of 24 and in the past hero Jack has used his own super Treo. While we haven’t been able to pin down what phone retired Jack is using this year (looks like it may be a Samsung Moment), we can say for sure that Dana Walsh (played by Katee Sackhoff) is sporting the original webOS handset: the Palm Pre. And for those of you wondering, the guy she’s talking to in the video after the break has a Sprint Hero, not a Palm Pixi.

Now here’s a hypothetical: If Jack Bauer had a Pre, what would it do?

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Apparently the folks in Sunnyvale don’t take all federal holidays off. Which is fine, because after the three updates that landed over the weekend we were starting to feel a little app deprived. Regardless, we now have new apps, and while there may be the standard compliment of less-than-useful background and ringtone packages, there’s some useful and fun stuff buried in there. What stuff, you ask? It’s the stuff listed after the break, of course.

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The Incipio Leather Hipster Pouch for Palm Pre is a tank of a leather case. I don’t mean that in just that it will protect your Pre well against daily threats, it’s actually also notably heavy in comparison to some other cases, including the identically designed Incipio Sports Holster. The stitched leather case was designed specifically with the Pre in mind, so you can count on it to provide a good fit without being too tight or too loose.

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While we’re learning more and more about the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus as we get closer to their January 25th launch, what we haven’t had an inkling of until now was how much they would cost. According to an anonymous tipster at Phone Arena, Verizon is planning to match Sprint’s pricing on the Pre and Pixi, but with the faster, stronger, WiFi-ier models. That would put the Pre Plus at $149.99 on a new two year contract, and the Pixi Plus at $99.99 on contract, though both do come to that point after a rebate of some amount (familiar territory for Sprint customers).

What could really drive sales, though, is the hint that the Pixi Plus may also be included as part of Verizon’s ongoing Buy One, Get One Free promotions. In the past the “BOGO” deals have been available with BlackBerry devices and received due credit for vaulting the BlackBerry Curve to the top of monthly best-seller lists. Verizon is currently running a BOGO promotion for the Motorola Droid and HTC Droid Eris, where buying one of either handset will net you a Droid Eris for free. If such a promotion were to be put into place for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus (with the Pixi Plus being free with a Pre Plus or a Pixi Plus), we can see this as being a huge boon for Palm’s sales numbers.

Of course, no matter how much sense this rumor may make, it is still a rumor of the unconfirmed variety (as all rumors are), so take this with the requisite grains of salt.

Interested in hopping on board with that Palm Pre Plus or Palm Pixi Plus on Verizon later this month? Well, Big Red is looking out for you and with their brand new plans you can get away with sacrificing only a single limb instead of an arm and a leg. Boy Genius Report got the scoop on Verizon’s new plans, and not only have they been made less expensive, but made fewer as well through means of consolidation (from sixteen choices down to six). How it breaks down is all after the break.

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It hasn’t taken long after the opening of the App Catalog to all developers to see some new faces in the mix. In fact, yesterday’s app drop brought us ten new developers. Cool, eh? Yeah, we thought so. It’s an exciting time for apps, and in addition to those ten new developers we have some already established ones pushing out new apps and updates to their existing apps. More cool stuff, and it’s all waiting for you after the break.

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One thousand one hundred eleven. Eleven eleven. Eleventy eleventeen. Or just 1,111. That’s just a wacky number to roll out of bed and see. But that’s how many apps there are in the Palm App Catalog right now, at least on the Palm Pre on Sprint – no saying how many you’ll find in other locales (except that it is depressingly less). Hopefully that’ll change sooner than later, but in the meantime we do have one thousand one hundred eleven apps to peruse, with the newest all listed after the break.

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