Author: Tim Carroll

  • Palm Pre & Pixi Plussed On Verizon, May Add Voice Dialing

    Here’s two tidbits on the upcoming Verizon webOS debut for you, one surprising and one not-so-surprising. Under the latter category, The Boy Genius Report today reports that the Pixi is “100%” locked in for Big Red along with the Pre, and will also be adding a “Plus” to its title. BGR also claims that the hardware specs are identical “in terms of size”, so those hoping for a memory upgrade may be disappointed. (Your correspondent, however, has heard differently on this matter – although whether the Pre Plus is the proper second-generation model I’ve been told about is still unconfirmed.)

    Far more tantalising is this screenshot from Verizon’s internal database, leaked to PreCentral, which has an intriguing little “Y” in the voice dialing column. As they note, carrier spec sheets – especially pre-release ones – frequently get these kind of small details wrong, so it’s hardly a guarantee. But it is interesting, nonetheless, and if true raises the question: would Palm really deny a software feature to the rest of their userbase just to please Verizon?






  • Mojo SDK & webOS Doctor Get Upgraded To 1.3.5, Too

    Pray For MojoIt’s all in the headline, baby: both Palm’s Mojo SDK and oh-so-useful webOS Doctor repair tool (for Sprint users, at least) have now been upgraded to the latest webOS version 1.3.5. What’s new in the SDK? Here, have some bullet points:

    • Apps are now installed on the media partition, allowing available space to be used for apps
    • The emulator enables keyboard shortcuts to simulate device orientation changes and shake events
    • Palm has released an API to request high-frequency accelerometer events
    • Numerous developer-reported issues have been addressed

    Point 3 is especially interesting, given that one of the bigger complaints about webOS development was the low frequency of accelerometer polling, essential for some high-performance apps. Full release notes for the SDK after the break. Or are they? Much like Schrodinger’s famous feline, you’ll only know once you look inside the box…






  • Foundations Laid For OpenGL GPU Support In webOS 1.3.5

    OpenGLThere’s always a bit of a mad flurry amongst the Palm community whenever a new webOS update is pushed out, as the techies and uber-fans dig deep and try to discover every little change. Rod Whitby of WebOS Internals tweeted out a particularly interesting observation: two new binary packages have appeared in webOS as of the latest version 1.3.5: opengles.ipk and opengles-omap3.ipk.

    What does this mean? It means that GPU support is inching ever-closer for the Pre. As a famous philosopher or something once said: sweeeeeet.






  • Palm webOS 1.3.5 Released, Full Changelog Now Online

    Further to this morning’s news, webOS 1.3.5 is now officially available for Sprint Palm users and the full changelog has been posted on Palm’s support pages (Pixi here, Pre here). No GSM or Bell love yet, so far as your correspondent can discern. Thanks to Palm’s use of a new compression method, it weighs in at a tiny 13mb and now has a new “unpacking” step when installing.

    The most interesting fixes? Posted after the break, along with the Pre changelog.






  • webOS 1.3.5 Hitting Sprint Today?

    If you believe the “last updated” section of Sprint’s Pre support page, it’s apparently been public knowledge that webOS 1.3.5 is arriving today (December 28th) since Tuesday last week (the 22nd), so this may not be news to some of you. But for the rest? webOS 1.3.5 is coming to Sprint today! What goodies does it bring to the table? Try these on for size:

    • Improvement in battery life optimization when in marginal coverage areas.
    • QCELP capability fix to allow play and audio of video sent via MMS.
    • Launch Google Maps or Sprint Nav when tapping an address from contacts.
    • Minimized package of MR size through binary difference. Customers can now download over 2G connections if necessary.

    Fingers crossed that other carriers are not far behind.






  • App Catalog Returns For Pre Importers

    Exactly one month to the day after having (accidentally) locked us out of the App Catalog, Palm has an early Christmas present for importers of the unlocked German Pre: we’re once again able to access it. The fix? As we suspected, it was an oversight on Palm’s part in implementing the latest version of the Catalog, which didn’t know how to recognize phones that had been activated on unapproved carriers. The glitch appears to have been put to bed.

    Following up on the other side of webOS geo-restrictions – namely, the way the number of apps available to non-U.S. users was summarily cut in half recently – we got a brief quote from Developer Community Manager Chuq von Rospach on the subject:

    We’re continuing to work to bring paid apps to all geographies and are working with the developers to make sure their apps get distributed to all regions where it’s appropriate.

    It’s just a question of patience, wethinks…