Author: Derek Kessler

You are a Verizon customer using a something other than a 3G smartphone and you’re not eligible for any upgrade discounts. If this describes you, Verizon has a deal for you. Effective April 6, Big Red will be running a nationwide promotion to push the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus into the hands of Verizon dumbphone users (and those that have been hanging on to that Treo 650 for way too long) at the two-year discount price. Most of you, our fantastic readers, probably aren’t in that boat, but chances are you have a friend or family member that is. Here’s what they need to know:

• The early upgrade is only to a Palm Pre Plus or Palm Pixi Plus (shucks, I know).
• You cannot currently be using a 3G smartphone.
• This will reset your upgrade eligibility – i.e. you won’t get another upgrade for a year.
• Your contract end date will be extended to two years past the upgrade date.
• The line must be at least six months old, and you can’t have used an upgrade in the past year.

As always, there’s plenty more fine print, but this promotion should be enough to spurn your living-in-the-past associates into the 21st century with a brand-spankin’ new Palm webOS smartphone on Verizon.

And yes, we have no doubt that this is in response to the lack-luster sales of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on Verizon. How this is going to be promoted we aren’t too sure about, but we wouldn’t count on seeing any on-air advertisements for such a targeted promotion.

Thanks, anonymous tipster!

While Sprint webOS users get to play around with Sprint TV, webOS users on other networks aren’t blessed with the same televised goodness. A new free app, SPB TV, aims to change that, by bringing more than one hundred live and on-demand channels to webOS from more than seventeen countries.

Not only do you get all the aforementioned television on your phone, you also get it with an integrated program guide for most channels and picture-in-picture browsing. SPB TV even features quality scaling to adapt to the variable bandwidth of Wi-Fi and cellular networks. Check out the video above for an idea of how it all works.

Attention residents of France: the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus are due to launch soon on SFR, and they’re celebrating by giving away ten of each. The contest merely requires your name, email address, and birth date, and even if you don’t win, you’re still entered to be notified of when the phones are available.

The contest’s fine print possibly has revealed two things. One: the launch date. The contest ends on May 31, 2010, which we can assume is close to, if not the exact, launch date. The date is also a a week over four months past the launch of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on Verizon.

The second is off-contract pricing. Operating on the assumption that the phone will be available off-contract, the value declared by the contest is €479 for the Pre Plus and €349 for the Pixi Plus. The phones awarded by the contest will be of the locked variety (they’re not going to give away something you can use on a competitor’s network). The on-contract pricing of €99 for the Pre Plus and €49 for the Pixi Plus was already revealed in an earlier survey.

So, our French friends longing for some webOS action, head on over to SFR’s contest website and enter for yourself. Vive Palm!

Thanks to Adam for the tip!

It’s a solemn act taken up after every update to webOS: reapplying all of your patches. While things have gotten to be significantly easier since the advent of Auto-Update Patch Technology (otherwise known as AUPT), there’s still some work that needs to be done. Or at least, some clarification.

So here’s the deal, as explained by WebOS Internals’ Rod Whitby: AUPT makes things easier for the end-user, but patience is still needed. As with webOS 1.3.5 and webOS 1.4, the version of webOS 1.4.1 that was pushed to users was different than the version distributed earlier to developers. While it’s not a major difference, the numerical difference is enough that the patches the WebOS Internals crew had prepped for release were no longer registered.

AUPT works like this: A log of your installed patches is stored on the device, when you perform a webOS update, Preware then references that log and redownloads the patches. If a patch hasn’t yet been ported to the new webOS version, then a dummy placeholder patch is downloaded merely to stand in place for when the update is made available. When the different version of webOS 1.4.1 was shipped and users attempted to reapply patches before they had been reverified, they simply downloaded a bunch of placeholders. A word of advice: don’t panic and doctor your phone the next time webOS is updated and none of your patches work. It takes time for the patches to be checked against the new version, and even then your favorite patch may end up broken.

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Want to use Google Buzz from your webOS phone, but don’t feel like installing the iPhone User Agent patch to trick the internet into believing that you’re using an iPhone? You’re in luck, as Google has decided to give you the option to use Buzz regardless of your mobile platform of choice. Pre and Pixi owners that visit buzz.google.com are now greeted with a page explaining what Google considers to be compatible platforms (Android 2.0+ and iPhone OS 3.0+), but also giving the option to continue on using your unsupported device. After several minutes of poking around, everything seems to work flawlessly on webOS, which is little surprise as it uses a WebKit browser just like iPhone OS and Android.

Thanks to Mohan for the tip!

Ah, inventory systems, they’re so bad at keeping secrets. We’ve known for a while now that the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus were certified for sale in Europe, but the question was always “which carrier?” Rumors have pointed towards current Palm Pre seller O2 picking up the Plus variants, but we were never too sure about that – we’ve yet to see a "Plus" launch on the same network as an original.

As it would turn out, it looks more like competitor Vodafone will be picking up the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. Inventory screens posted on Pre Ticker show the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus (along with replacement/exchange devices) listed in what is purported to be a Vodafone inventory screen (at the very least, it is German).

Is it possible that Vodafone could be picking up the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus? Absolutely, and it could stand to be a good thing for Palm. Vodafone has a larger footprint than O2, and behind China Mobile is the world’s no. 2 network in subscriber count. The question of “when” and “how much” is still up in the air, but given Palm’s dire predictions for the current quarter, we wouldn’t count on it being any time soon.

[via: webOS Blog.de]

We’ve got to be honest, we’re really impressed by the clip at which Palm has been pushing updates and new release apps since the international App Catalog launch. Yesterday brought us nearly 20 new apps, and 158 updates (not a typo – one hundred fifty eight). Granted, many of those updates were to bring international meta-data to paid apps that were previously only available in the US of A, but that’s no excuse now. It’s a long list, so I’ll stop my typographical jabbering and just point you past the break.

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It’s been a grueling challenge that’s seen more than it’s share of upsets (BlackBerry Tour topping the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre Plus trouncing the Nexus One (and BlackBerry Bold (and HTC HD2))), but now it’s all come down to one final match-up. For the championship. Of the world.

Laptop Magazine’s March Smartphone Madness has come to the finals, with the Palm Pre Plus taking on the Motorola Droid (hot off of crushing the iPhone-beating BlackBerry Tour). In many ways, it’s unsurprising to see two Verizon phones going head-to-head for the championship, but we have to admit that the groundswell of support for the Pre Plus has been overwhelming. Now it all comes down to this – after handily trumping the heavily-favored Nexus One during the first round, the Pre Plus is gunning for the next-best Android phone on the market today. It’s guaranteed to be a good fight.

For this to be a good fight, we need everybody to play clean. If it’s not a fair win, it doesn’t mean much, now does it?. Voting is open from now until 9 AM Eastern April 5th.

(And before you ask, no, we’re not going to pin this – but we’ll toss it up in the sidebar, which makes the poll appear on darn near every page on the site.)

Thanks to everybody that has sent (and will send) this in.

After the appapalooza that was the end of March, things got off to a decent start in April. Sure, only a handful or two of new apps landed, but on the updates front there was plenty of action. While we’re used to a lot of updates, this is still a lot. Since we aren’t diving deep to see what all has been put into place, we can only assume what all these non-updated updates mean: apps going international. And that, my friends, is a cool thing indeed. The list is in its normal position, immediately after the break.

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To awesome things happened yesterday. First with the webOS 1.4.1 update the App Catalog e-commerce system went international, allowing webOS users around the world to start purchasing apps. Secondly, with that update came many new apps, so many that when we pull together apps from Europe, Canada, and the US, the App Catalog now has over 2000 apps. 2013, to be specific. With paid apps available now in Europe, we imagine that the slowly-rising app total is going to accelerate now to a more acceptable clip. Speaking of acceptable clips, we got so many updates yesterday to enable international app purchases that the auto-sorting engine we use here to generate this list broke and only listed the two hundred most recent updates. So needless to say, there were a lot of updates, so international webOS users should be seeing a considerable jump in the number of available apps. Oh, and there were 27 new apps to boot. Interested in that truncated list? You know you are – it’s waiting for you after the break.

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We were hoping that we were going to be able to lead off today with a post saying that the App Catalog had finally broken out of beta internationally and everybody could now buy webOS apps, but it seems that Palm still has some kinks to work out. When those kinks are worked out, you’ll have plenty of apps to look at. Like the previous app drop, yesterday brought dozens (6.33 dozen to be specific) of updates bringing international meta-data into the mix, but we also were graced with more than a dozen more new apps. Among those new apps: Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. As was discussed on last night’s PalmCast Live, planes + explosions = good times. Of course, H.A.W.X. isn’t the only good time to the App Catalog – there’s all sorts of new stuff, and it’s all listed after the break. Right. Now.

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The Incipio Orion Sleeve Case for Palm Pre is a clean and stylish way to carry and protect your Pre. While similar in concept to Palm’s own Leather Side Case, the Orion sleeve executes more cleanly, not to mention being available in variety of colors.

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The Global Certification Forum, a mash-up of networks, manufacturers, and testing agencies has given its stamp to the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pixi Plus. As noticed by the:unwired, the two devices passed through the GCF’s all-knowing hands with model numbers we’ve seen and deciphered before: P101UEU and P121UEU. If you require a refresher, P101 is the Pre Plus, P121 is the Pixi Plus, and UEU means UMTS Europe (their American GSM equivalents were appended with UNA).

The certification was sparse on details, though we do have confirmation that the phones will be quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dualband UMTS/HSDPA at 900/2100 MHz, otherwise known as not compatible with AT&T.

[via: Engadget]

Are you prepared for the App Catalog to go international tomorrow? It looks like Palm is getting ready, with no fewer than eighty one apps receiving updates early this morning, or late at night, depending on your time zone and sleep cycle. There are so many updates, in fact, that the new apps section of the list is positively dwarfed. Granted, that might be because there were three new apps in the entire app drop, but we’re not going to judge. A lot. Either way, you can catch the list after the break, because it is a long one this time.

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Well, that didn’t take long. Interested in getting a Palm Pre Plus on Verizon? How about in getting it for free? Then head over to Wal-Mart Wireless for the deal you’ve been waiting for. With a new contract or a contract renewal, you can get a Verizon Pre Plus for free. At least, it’s free for now. These things have a tendency to be for a limited and undisclosed time only. 

Thanks to Rick for the tip!

Welcome to Round Table, which is in fact not a table at all. Round Table is a continuing series on PreCentral where we pose a question to the staff and they provide their thoughts and insights. The question could be something simple like “what’s your favorite webOS app?” or something a bit more complicated, like “what was Palm’s biggest mistake in getting here today?” Or maybe we’ll just end up chatting about our favorite recipe for pumpkin pie, you never know.

Today, however, we’re taking a critical look at our devices and webOS and asking, “If there was one thing you could improve about webOS, what would it be, and why?”

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[ sideways YouTube video for proper mobile viewing ]

If you’re at all into geocaching, chances are you’ve already check out the options for wayfinding on webOS. If you haven’t already looked at the demo version of Go To Tool, we’re going to point you that way now, and then to the full version of Go To Tool ($4.99) As the video above from developer Long Beach IT demonstrates, Go To Tool is chock full of useful features for geocachers, location loggers, and those who happen to suffer from chronic forgot-where-I-parked-my-car-itis.

Not only can you plug in a location or address and find your way there with Google Maps, you can do the same with a virtual GPS compass (plots your heading from your movement) and maps from open-source mapping project OpenStreetMap. With Go To Tool you can import and navigate to locations in GPX and LOC files, find nearby caches, save locations for later reference, and much much more. Really, just watch the video, there’s far more happening in those 324 seconds than you might expect.

Go To Tool is available from the Palm App Catalog for $4.99, a demo version and lite version are both available free of charge.

It’s rare for any company, even Palm, to address community hackery directly. But that’s exactly what we got today, with Palm issuing the following about overclocking kernels:

We have had a number of questions about the recently released “overclocking” patches and what Palm’s position on them are.

Palm is working hard to improve the speed and performance of webOS, as shown in our recent 1.4 update. While we appreciate the effort the webOS community has put forth to try and help us along that path, the use of this application is neither endorsed nor recommended by Palm and will likely result in a voided warranty. Palm encourages webOS users to let Palm release official updates that provide safe, reliable, over-the-air features that improve their device in a number of areas, as we have in the past at a rate of approximately once per month.

Needless to say, that’s the path we’ve treaded along as well: caveat emptor, if you will. While Palm’s statement is purposefully vague, we can read through the lines enough to see what they’re saying: if you overclock and fry your phone (no evidence of that happening as of yet, though time will tell), then you’re out of luck as far as the warranty is concerned. And that’s more or less any company’s positions on their products. If you install a supercharger on your VW Beetle and blow the engine, VW’s not going to fix it for you.

On a side note, several PreCentral forum users have reported that since they’ve started using the overclocked webOS kernels (both the 720 MHz and 800 MHz), they’ve seen far fewer “too many cards” errors. The exact cause behind the drop in memory errors in unclear, but a faster and more stable device is cool by us.

We’ll also note that Jason Robitaille has created a couple of temperature monitoring patches that are worth taking a look at: one in your Device Menu and another that checks your device’s temp every 5 minutes and alerts you when it gets too high.

There are two things that Palm owns that are of true value: webOS and a giant bucket full of patents. Either would be good reason for a larger competitor to purchase Palm, and according to some analysts, either is good reason to declare Palm to be undervalued (Palm stock plus Elevation Partner’s 1/3 share equals approximately one billion dollars).

That Montana-sized basket full of patents is good for several things. Especially when that basket of patents contain things like "Integrated Handheld Computing and Telephony System and Services," i.e. smartphone. For one, Palm can claim royalties when other companies use that patent. It also, at least to this point, has served as a barrier against most serious patent infringement cases (Hello, Cupertino). Having a lot of patents is also good for something else: when those patents are licensed by many companies, it gives the holder significant value. Palm’s veritable trove of patents has lead PatentVest CEO Anthony Mazzarella to declare to Investors Business Daily that, “Based on our metrics, the value of Palm’s intellectual property is along the same order of magnitude as Apple. The market is overlooking the IP value in Palm, which has great value.”

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ short email responses to customer inquiries have both revealed both new information and a glimpse into the mindset of the head of one of the world’s most influential technology companies. But what of Jon Rubinstein, former Apple exec and current CEO of underdog Palm? Yeah, he’ll reply to random unsolicited email too, with a plethora of exclamation points to boot. But useful insights into Palm products or strategy? Nope, that’s not coming from Jon. As with his carefully calculated replies during financial conference calls, Rubinstein’s also coy in revealing anything new or exciting from his perch in Sunnyvale. Email!!!

[via: Gizmodo]

UPDATE: For all who are doubting Gizmodo’s authenticity, we present a second email from Jon Rubinstein, this time to PreCentral reader SP. This email too, was about the above-emailed ad, and Rubinstein apparently thought it worth pointing out Palm’s ad which clearly inspired the fan-made one (- SP lets us know he was referring to a different ad.) And he was sure to include plenty of exclamation points and a bit of non-capitalization. Though, for all we know, maybe he does go by "jon." Email after the break!!!

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