Author: Dieter Bohn

Gameloft has really been rocking the Plugin Development Kit (aka the PDK), which allows for native, graphically-rich gaming apps. On top of Asphalt 5, Brain Challenge, Oregon Trail, and my personal favorite, Let’s Golf, they’ve just added Assassin’s Creed – Altaïr’s Chronicles to the official App Catalog. It’s $6.99 and will hopefully satisfy any latent tendencies towards violence you may have stored up after reading one too many iTablet rumors this weekend.

Palm Pixi and Pixi Plus owners: the above is one of the reasons we’re able to handle what would otherwise be insane jealousy over your thin and tiny form factors: the Pixi just doesn’t have the horsepower to run Assassin’s Creed, so you won’t see it available.

If you’re into meeting people without stabbing them (we know there are a few of you out there), the Foursquare Beta got a rev in the Official App Catalog too (as Derek so kindly noted this morning), so go on and check in at your local cafe.

Thanks to techgnoll for the tip!

New Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus users: Congrats and welcome! You’re about to embark on a journey of awesomeness, there are a TON of great features on your new phone, so many that it can be a lot to take in. We thought it might be nice to help you find some of the best stuff and learn about the best features of your new device. We also figured that since PreCentral.net has gotten fairly large, it might be helpful to show you some of the stuff you can find and learn here.

Read on to find out what you need to know about your new phone! (If you’re still on the fence, our Palm Pre Plus Review and Palm Pixi Plus Review are a great place to start researching)

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As many-a-reader let us know, the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus are now live and available for purchase at http://www.verizonwireless.com/. Pricing with a 2 year contract: $149.99 w/ $100 mail-in rebate for the Pre Plus, $99 with a $100 mail-in rebate for the Pixi Plus. Don’t forget that both should come with a free Pixi if you are thinking you’d like another Verizon line.

One thing we haven’t mentioned (or knew for sure, technically) are the prices without a contract. That’d be $599 for the Pre Plus and $399 for the Pixi Plus.

PC HQ in sunny Florida is lining up late today, we imagine there won’t be long lines for what is a relatively quiet launch. Perhaps we’re wrong, though – if you have a line, drop us a line at [email protected] – we’ll update this here post with your images.

Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

It’s safe to assume we’ll see webOS devices in the first half of the year because AT&T said so and because they’ve popped up on server logs. Now that we have the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pixi Plus, there’s another question to ask: which webOS devices?

Short version: it’s no surprise, but we’re expecting that there will be Plus versions of the GSM Palm Pre and Palm Pixi. Hopefully they’ll arrive in time for AT&T, but it’s no lock yet.

How do we know? Enter Scaredy (Hi back atcha, Scaredy!), who had previously spotted the CDMA Pre Plus make its way through Canadian testing. Now he’s found the P101UNA and the P121UNA pop up at TÜV Rheinland, a testing and certification company. Both received a "US + Canadian NRTL certificate," which is TÜV’s way of of saying that OSHA and Canada’s SCC  probably won’t bring the hammer down (in other words, we’re not talking FCC just yet). As we’ve learned, the P101 is the Pre Plus and the UNA is the the GSM version, ditto P121 for Pixi Plus.

As much as we like Verizon around these parts, it would be a shame if AT&T didn’t get the Plus versions of the Pre and Pixi. Heck, it would be as much of a shame for Europe to not eventually see some Plus action. So while code numbers showing up TÜV Rheinland doesn’t do much more than suggest such models exist out there somewhere, that’s enough to whet our appetite and give hope to the GSM holdouts here in the US of A.

Thanks to Scaredy and ToniCipriani for the heads-up!

Dieter, Derek, and Keith discuss the Pixi Plus and Pre Plus on Verizon, plus answer more questions than is reasonable.

• Download it directly with this link
• Subscribe via iTunes
• Subscribe directly to the Podcast feed with your favorite Podcatcher here
• Listen to it here with the player above

Thanks to everybody for writing and calling in!

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Sure, your trusty PreCentral pals have already put up a Palm Pixi Plus Review, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get a little excited about a Verizon Palm Pixi Plus sighting out in the wild.

This Blurrycam comes from an anonymous teacher thanks to his even more anonymous student. (Students seem like a good demographic for the Pixi, actually.)

Anyhow, it’s got us wondering: will you be picking up a Palm Pre Plus or a Palm Pixi Plus?

Thanks, Mr D!

Palm has updated the Pre for Verizon, slightly tweaking the hardware and upping the RAM available to run apps. The Pre Plus is exclusive to Verizon and in addition to the noted hardware updates, the Pre Plus also will have an innovative and crazy-cool piece of software available for it called "Mobile Hotspot," which turns the Pre Plus into a mobile WiFi router. The Palm Pre Plus arrives January 25th on Verizon, exclusively, for $149.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a two-year contract.

We’ve had the Palm Pre Plus for a few days now and our initial take is quite simple: it’s definitely better than the original Pre, but is it so much better that current Sprint subscribers should switch to Verizon? Read on to find out!

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It’s been just over two months since the original Palm Pixi landed on Sprint and already we have the Palm Pixi Plus hitting Verizon: January 25th, $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a two-year contract. We’ve already thoroughly reviewed the original Palm Pixi and so strongly recommend you check that out – what we’re ‘reviewing’ here are the differences.

Read on for those and for a gallery of hot hot Palm Pixi Plus action!

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The Palm Pre Plus on Verizon is little, black, better. Click on through to see why!

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New to webOS? Verizon customer looking to replace that janky BlackBerry and wondering what all the fuss is about? You’re in the right place – the video above has everything you need to know about webOS in ten minutes.

Looking for more information? Our original Palm Pre Review has a bootload of information – just be aware that Palm has added a ton of new features since we wrote it. If you’re intrigued by any of the concepts mentioned in the video above, you can find out more details in our Palm Pre Guide.

Of course, the real knowledge lives in the biggest Palm forums on the internet, so don’t hesitate to try a search there!

Above, we compare the multitasking prowess of the new Palm Pre Plus on Verizon to the original Palm Pre on Sprint. How much of a difference does that extra RAM make? Preliminary results are in and the difference is: a lot.

We can’t tell if maybe Palm sent us a ringer for a review unit, but you can see above that, no fooling, it’s 13 cards on the original Pre vs 50 on the Pre Plus.

Yes, the Pre Plus did slow down quite a bit when we started getting over 30(!) cards, but it kept on opening apps like a champ and never brought us the "Too Many Cards" error.

What do you think?

We didn’t go all-out in this Palm Pre Plus vs. iPhone 3GS smackdown, instead we picked the three things that best show the differences between the platforms, to wit:

• Browser load and rendering time
• Loading up and playing a 3D game
• Multitasking

The results came in pretty much exactly how you’d guess: the iPhone 3GS edges out the Palm Pre Plus on both the Browser speed test and loading up Need For Speed Undercover. The iPhone also, incidentally, blows the doors off webOS when it comes to the number and quality of available games.

But the Palm Pre Plus did some door-blowing of its own – you’re able to pause the game and pick up right where you left off because of the card multitasking system.

We now know the cost of the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pixi Plus on Verizon – available everywhere on January 25th:

• Palm Pre Plus: $149.99 after $100 mail-in rebate and 2 year contract
• Palm Pixi Plus:: $99 after $100 mail-in rebate and 2 year contract.

In addition to Verizon’s new calling and data plans, we also know the cost of the Mobile Hotspot service: $40 per month for 5 gigs with a 5c per meg overage fee. This compares well to Verizon’s standalone mobile broadband plan, which clocks in at $59.99 for the same amount of data.

We’d like to gripe about the mail-in rebate, but them’s the breaks in our subsidized day and age. Be sure to check out our full review of the Palm Pre Plus and our full review of the Palm Pixi Plus – to us it looks like there’s more than enough differentiation between the two phones to justify the price difference.

But wait, as they say, there’s more! Verizon also confirmed to us that there will be a "Buy One, Get One" offer: Buy a Palm Pre Plus or Palm Pixi Plus, get a Palm Pixi Plus for free after mail-in rebate. The offer is good through February 14th. In other words, the earlier rumor was exactly correct.

What do you think?

It’s the penultimate week of the Smartphone Round Robin and my task this week is to try to understand where Windows Mobile / Windows Phone is at these days.  I’m seeking advice from Windows Mobile users over at WMExperts, so if you’re in that camp, go on and give me a shout-out there.

If you’re looking to get the final word in on the comparative looks at webOS, Rene Ritchie of The iPhone Blog has it this week and he’s looking for assistance himself.

After the break, Phil Nickinson of WMExperts walks me though the latest and greatest Windows Phones

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Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Smartphone OS available on a variety of carriers in an ever-increasing array of devices, with powerful but difficult-to-manage multitasking, a user interface that can be a little cluttered and confusing yet is highly customizable, integration with the company’s own email solution that’s second-to-none, and apps that lack polish but get the job done.

Despite what you’re thinking, I’m talking about Android and not Windows Mobile here. Both are facing similar issues but have similar appeal, though. Read on for the Smartphone Round Robin review of Android from PreCentral.net!

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PalmCast Live is back tonight, 8pm Eastern. We’ll chat up the latest rumors and get ready for the upcoming Verizon extravaganza.

Join Dieter, Derek and Keith as we talk webOS and whatnot. Don’t forget to tweet your questions with the #palmcast hashtag for our lightning round. We’ll give away a Palm Spare Battery Charger, too, because we love you.

8pm Eastern tonight. We’ll see you there.

At CES, Palm decided to stay mum on the question of webOS devices hitting AT&T, but AT&T did cop to two devices arriving in the ‘first half’ of the year. Not convinced? We have received some server logs showing some visits from both the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi running on AT&T IP addresses sporting – get this – webOS version 1.3.8.  Naturally, we headed over to the logs at DSL Reports (note: link dynamically changes, you’ll need to page through to see it for yourself) and sure enough, you can see both the Pre and Pixi running on AT&T and sporting webOS 1.3.8.

We’re guessing that’s just an interim, internal version and that when webOS devices do land on AT&T, they’ll have the 1.4 update we’re all expecting in February. Meanwhile, we’re wondering just how long Verizon will have the webOS spotlight – no offense to The Network, but we’re hoping it’s not too long.

Thanks, Anonymous!

Scaredy over at HoFo took a look around Industry Canada’s Certification and Engineering pages and found a couple new approved devices. First and most interesting: the P121EWW – that’s the CDMA Palm Pixi Plus to you – cropped up back on December 14th, WiFi and all. Both join the standard CDMA Palm Pre and the original CDMA Pixi, already in the system.

Second and also interesting, the GSM variant of the Palm Pre was also approved – the P100UNA on December 2nd, to be exact.

If the above devices to appear on carriers in Canada and aren’t just up on IC for approved roaming purposes, it does sort to throw the clean division of webOS devices off-kilter. We know plenty of Canadians who would prefer a GSM Pre to the CDMA one that’s currently offered on Bell. As for the CDMA, WiFi-enabled Pixi Plus – we suspect Bell customers will be pleased, Sprint customers miffed, and Verizon customers nonplussed that big V’s exclusive is apparently US-only.

Thanks to Kyle for the tip!