Remember how we told you about Palm’s rumored upcoming devices? Well, the folks over at WebOS Internals have been pouring through SFR’s webOS 2.0 code and have stumbled upon five device code-names: Stingray, Mantaray, Broadway, Windsor and Roadrunner (Palm Pre 2). The code-names were  found in string of code that displays: “temporarily not restoring logs for newer devices.” The holiday season is fast approaching, and we would love to add some HP-Palm hardware to our respective wish lists.

[Via Engadget]

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If you’re a webOS/Palm Pre die-hard, and looking forward to the refinements of the Pre 2, we have a little something for you. It looks like a thirty second advert for the updated, pebble-shaped handset has made its way onto YouTube. The official spot, dubbed Sizzle, features some of the new niceties in webOS 2.0 and several critical applications — including Angry Birds and Facebook. The clip is waiting for you after the jump. Enjoy.

[Via PocketNow]

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While AT&T and T-Mobile subscribers are beginning to enjoy their first taste of Windows Phone 7 devices, Verizon Wireless reportedly has a bundle of new smartphones ready to help keep subscribers’ minds from wandering this holiday season. New rumors place four sexy new smartphones on Verizon Wireless store shelves early next month: the Motorola DROID Pro, DROID 2 Global and CITRUS, and the just-announced Palm Pre 2. All four of these fine phones are said to be launching on November 11, leaving plenty of time for shoppers to get familiar with them ahead of the holidays. While none of the aforementioned handsets have the hype or $500 million marketing blitz enjoyed by Windows Phone 7, they’re all respectable offerings that will help bolster Big Red’s lineup ahead of you know what.

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The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise following a series of leaks, but HP finally made the Palm Pre 2 and accompanying webOS 2.0 official this morning. Starting with the latter, the newest iteration of Palm’s highly acclaimed OS boasts features such as “True Multitasking” (zing!), “Just Type”, the rebranded “HP Synergy” and more. WebOS 2.0 also introduces us to “Exhibition”, a feature that allows apps to trigger events when a Palm phone is placed on a Touchstone dock or removed from the dock. As for the Palm Pre 2, there are really no surprises as far as specs are concerned. The rumored 1 GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera and glass touchscreen are all present and accounted for. Further details are scarce, so the only surprise is the fact that the Pre 2 will launch this Friday, October 22, in France. U.S. availability is still unclear, unfortunately — HP says the handset will launch “in the coming months” from Verizon Wireless.

Of course most were hoping for a more significant hardware refresh when HP’s first post-Palm smartphone announcement came around, but we have to start somewhere. Hit the jump for the full press release with all the juicy details.

UPDATE: More specs for the Plam Pre 2 are now available. Highlights include a 3.1-inch HVGA multitouch glass display, 16GB of internal storage, GPS, Exchange support, an accelerometer, ambient light and proximity sensors, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and a 3.5mm audio port.

HP Introduces webOS 2.0, the Next Generation of Mobile Innovation

Coming first on new Palm Pre 2 in France, the United States and Canada

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 19, 2010

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HP today announced HP webOS 2.0, the most significant update to the platform since its launch in 2009 and a substantial step in HP’s vision to transform how people think, feel and connect.

The first device to run webOS 2.0, HP’s new Palm Pre 2 smartphone, will be available Friday in France from SFR and is scheduled to be available in the coming months in the United States from Verizon Wireless and in Canada.

“With webOS 2.0, we’re advancing the innovations we introduced 16 months ago, expanding the features that make webOS great for consumers, enterprises and developers,” said Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president and general manager, Palm Global Business Unit, HP. “We’ve made tremendous strides since the platform launched, and now we’re taking our biggest leap forward with powerful new features that make it easier to get more things done with your webOS device.”

webOS 2.0 offers consumers compelling application experiences not available on any other platform, while providing developers an unparalleled level of openness to integrate their applications and services. The next generation of webOS makes it easier to get more done:

• True Multitasking – Pause a game, tap an email notification, check your calendar, read a restaurant review, send an email reply, then switch back to the game without closing anything.^(1,2) webOS lets you easily manage multiple open applications and notifications using natural touch gestures. New in webOS 2.0, Stacks logically groups together your open apps so they work the way you do. Whether you’re reading email or planning a night on the town, Stacks keeps related items together so managing multiple tasks is even easier.
• Just Type – Start an email, create a message, update your status, search your favorite websites – all before you’ve even opened an app.⁽¹⁾ With webOS 2.0, whenever you want to do something on your phone – whether it’s emailing, texting, searching or almost anything – just type. And Just Type is open to developers, so they can integrate with the search function and add their own user-customizable shortcuts, called Quick Actions.
• HP Synergy – webOS was the first mobile OS to connect you seamlessly to multiple web services. With the Synergy feature, you just have to sign in to your Facebook, Google, Microsoft® Exchange, LinkedIn and Yahoo! accounts and your information automatically populates your phone.⁽³⁾ webOS 2.0 will extend the support for Synergy so developers can easily plug new Messaging, Contacts and Calendar application sources directly into the core webOS experiences.⁽⁴⁾
• Exhibition – A new way to use your webOS phone, Exhibition lets you run apps designed specifically for the Palm Touchstone Charging Dock, turning charge time into useful time.^(4,5) Set your phone on the dock and Exhibition launches automatically, showing you anything from today’s agenda to a slideshow of your Facebook photos. Exhibition will enable developers to display aspects of their existing app experience or create specialized apps for use when users have their webOS device in charge mode on the charging dock.
• Adobe® Flash Player 10.1 Beta – With version 2.0, webOS now supports a beta of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 in the browser, which provides access to rich, Flash-based web content.⁽⁶⁾

webOS 2.0 also includes many more new features, including the following:

• Favorites – With webOS 2.0, you can tag your favorite contacts so they appear as favorites in Phone and Contacts views. When you search for them by name, they instantly show up at the top of the Contacts, Email, Messaging and Phone apps. Favorites make it simple to get in touch fast.
• Skype Mobile™ (Verizon Wireless only) – For Verizon Wireless customers, webOS 2.0 supports Skype-to-Skype calls and messaging while in the United States to anywhere in the world, and low-rate calls to international landlines and cell phones.
• Text Assist – webOS 2.0 offers greatly expanded capabilities to spell check, auto correct, set up macros and customize the dictionary.
• Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite – An all-new document viewer from the leading provider of mobile document viewers offers support for Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and provides integration with a variety of services, including Google Docs and Dropbox.
• Facebook 2.0 – Available via the Palm App Catalog, Facebook 2.0 will support Facebook IM via Synergy in the Messaging application,⁽⁴⁾ as well as Stacks, status updates via Quick Action and the Exhibition feature.
• Browser – The browser adds support for more HTML5 features, including geolocation support. OpenSearch plug-in support makes it easy to add your favorite websites to Just Type web search.
• Messaging – The unified Messaging app in webOS 2.0 adds Yahoo! IM and buddy management. Customers can now connect to their buddies through SMS, MMS, Google Talk, AIM and Yahoo! IM.
• VPN – webOS 2.0 supports the most popular ways to connect to a corporate network, including IPsec and Cisco AnyConnect mobile-optimized VPN, which supports SSL (TLS and DTLS).
• App Catalog – The redesigned Palm App Catalog makes finding and discovering great apps even easier.⁽⁷⁾ And the new Software Manager helps you keep your apps up-to-date.
• Launcher – A redesigned app launcher lets you add, label and reorder launcher pages.
• Phone – The webOS 2.0 Phone app lets you easily dial your favorites and offers reverse area code lookup and Skype Mobile integration (Skype Mobile for Verizon Wireless only). Accounts – The new Accounts app provides a single place to manage all your Synergy accounts.
• Bluetooth® keyboards – webOS now supports Bluetooth keyboards and Bluetooth SPP peripherals, enabling applications such as barcode readers and realty lock boxes.
• A host of developer features – In addition to Exhibition, Just Type and Synergy APIs, webOS 2.0 adds Node.JS, enabling developers to create services in JavaScript. They also can now use the webOS Plug-In Development Kit (PDK) to combine C/C++ with web technologies in a single app.

More information about the features of webOS 2.0 is available at www.palm.com/softwareupdate.

Introducing Palm Pre 2

HP also introduced the Palm Pre 2 smartphone, the latest evolution to the Palm Pre lineup. Pre 2 is the first Palm phone with a gigahertz processor and features a 5-megapixel camera, a glass screen and a sleeker, streamlined design that still gives users the ideal combination of a vivid touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard.

More information about Palm Pre 2, including features and specifications, is available at www.palm.com/Pre2.

Availability

Palm Pre 2 featuring webOS 2.0 will be available Friday in France from SFR and is scheduled to be available in the coming months in the United States from Verizon Wireless and in Canada. The webOS 2.0 update will be delivered to existing customers in the coming months, with exact timing to be announced at a later date.

Developers will be able to purchase unlocked UMTS versions of Pre 2 in the United States to use as a canvas to build the next generation of webOS applications and services. More information about the purchase program will be available at http://developer.palm.com/devdevices.html.

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Today, HP announced that AT&T’s Palm Pixi Plus would — finally — be getting the webOS 1.4.5 update. The new bits add several new bug fixes and, most notably, add support for Palm’s Plug-in Developer Kit (PDK). Hit the “Updates” application on your AT&T Pixi to manually grab the new code.

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It seems as though French mobile carrier SFR has shed some light on the unannounced Palm Pre 2. According to the telecom company’s website, the device will rock a 1 GHz processor, have 512 MB of RAM, and run the very sensual webOS 2.0. There isn’t any indication of when a potential launch could occur, but the fact that SFR has published – unintentionally or not — details of the Pre Deuce has to be a good sign. What do you think webOS fans? Is this good news or are you looking for a little bit more hardware creativity from HP and company?

[Via PreCentral]

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If Palm — now HP — is going to take their sweet time bringing you new hardware, you might as well work with what you’ve got, no? PreCentral is reporting that a new UberKernel hack for your aging Palm Pre can get the pebble-shaped cell phone running at a blistering 1 GHz. The site describes a Pre running at this new, and improved, speed as “blazingly fast.” The kernel hack also has a handy feature called “screenstate overclocking,” which spins your processor up to a full 1 GHz when the screen is on, and back down to its intended speed when the screen is off. If you are thinking about giving this a shot, be careful. A cell phone designed to run at around 600 MHz, running at close to 1 GHz, could melt a hole right through your Levis!

[Via Know Your Cell]

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According to a Sprint support document uncovered by the folks over at PreCentral, Palm Pre owners could start seeing webOS 1.4.5 pushed out to their handsets as early as today. Some of the changes listed in 1.4.5 include:

• Web podcasts download correctly
• Correct entry of text on Web
• Sprint branded default email signature corrected
• Power use and battery optimization
• Send video via multimedia messaging from Video application
• Video trim feature now works to send in a message
• SprintTV upgrade to V 3.5.4 and enhanced parental controls

The last update Sprint’s Pre saw was back in March, so we’re sure any new code will be welcomed with open arms. Hopefully, we’ll get some details on what webOS 2.0 will look like in the very near future. Any Sprint Pre owners still out there? How are you holding up?

[Via PreCentral]

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According to a USPTO document, HP has recently submitted a trademark application for the term “Palmpad”, a moniker that would be fitting for its first attempt at a webOS tablet. The application form lists the target goods/services as “Computers, computer hardware, computer software, computer peripherals, portable computers, handheld and mobile computers, PDAs, electronic notepads, mobile digital electronic devices”, a category of devices that describes a tablet to a tee. Another circulating rumor suggests that this “Palmpad” may ship with a capacitive touchscreen that supports digital pen input. A carryover from HP’s popular lineup of TabletPCs and Palm’s PalmPilot devices, this pen input would serve to set the webOS tablet apart from its primary competitor, the iPad. Anyone interested heightened by the possibility of inking or perhaps even graffiti on this rumored webOS tablet?

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Anyone who owns a Palm Pre Plus on Verizon Wireless is painfully aware of the poor GPS performance. It especially hits you when trying to get a GPS fix in any location-based application. VZ Navigator works flawlessly and many people launch VZ Navigator to the splash screen in order to activate the aGPS on the phone and then use this data in a third party application like Google Maps. Though it works, this technique needs to be repeated each time you need an instant GPS fix. Thanks to James Harris and his GPS Fix application, those days of constantly launching VZ Nav may be over. This new application activates the GPS and keeps its alive in the background by pinging the GPS for location data at user-determined intervals. It is a crude workaround that may drain your battery but it works in a pinch and is a better alternative than hacking your phone with QPST and modifying the settings for the GPSOne chipset, a technical procedure that could brick you phone. Yeah, we went there. For those that are interested, the GPSFix application is available from the Palm Beta Feed

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Now that the dust from the HP Palm merger has settled, some new details are starting to emerge. The Business Insider is reporting that Apple, Google, and RIM all had serious conversations with Palm about a potential acquisition. An anonymous source “familiar with the matter” tells BI: Apple and Google were interested in Palm’s 450+ patent library and pending patents, while RIM “had the deal in their hands” before things went south. The report goes on to say that Nokia was no where near the deal. Hit the read link for the full report.

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Palm confirmed on Thursday that the rollout of  webOS 1.4.5 has stalled after discovering a programming error that caused some PDK applications to crash. After releasing webOS 1.4.5 to O2 Germany and SFR in France, customers began reporting that their PDK-based applications, mostly games, were crashing. Palm halted the rollout of webOS 1.4.5, investigated the problem, and discovered that webOS 1.4.5 did not update a key system file, “/etc/fstab.” As a result, the “/media/internal drive” is viewed as read-only by PDK applications, a situation which causes the apps to throw an error when they require a storage location that is read and write-enabled, not read-only. Despite the presence of this error, Palm has decided not to delay the update any longer and is going to roll out webOS 1.4.5 in its current state. Palm confirmed that it is working on a fix but it will not be available until the next version of webOS is released. Application developers whose apps are affected by this bug are encouraged to re-write their apps to store game data in another location. Wow.

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Changewave’s latest smartphone survey results are out and the compiled data confirms what most tech savvy people know: Apple and HTC are on the rise while Motorola, RIM, and Palm are on the decline. The survey queried over 4,000 consumers and questioned them about their future smartphone buying habits. Not surprisingly, the survey revealed that Apple is a driving force in the smartphone market with more than half (52%) of the respondents indicating that they would be purchasing an Apple iPhone as their next smartphone. HTC came in a distant second with 19% showing interest in HTC smartphone offerings. HTC was followed by Motorola (9%), RIM (6%), and sadly Palm (0%).

Looking historically, the survey reveals that Apple and HTC are the only two manufacturers which are generating increased interest in their handsets. Interest in Apple has skyrocketed from 31% to 52% due to the hype surrounding the iPhone 4 launch; while HTC has been propelled upward from 12% to 19% due to the interest in the EVO 4G and the Droid Incredible. Motorola, RIM, and Palm all show a decline as none of those three manufacturers released a new handset in months between March and June 2010. With the myriad of problems affecting the iPhone 4, the low inventory of HTC’s android offerings, and the launch of the Motorola Droid X, it will interesting to see how these figures shape up in the next survey.

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Good news for webOS owners as Palm has extended its half-off application sale until July 23rd. Slated to end on July 9th, this sale slashed the price of almost all apps in the app catalog by 50%. Lest you start worrying about the financial implications of such a sale on the struggling webOS developers, this developer-friendly promotion is being subsidized by Palm with each developer receiving the full price for every purchase. So webOS owners what are you waiting for? Fire up the app catalog on your handset and support the webOS developer community by taking advantage of these two extra weeks of discounted applications.

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Reports are circulating that Palm is releasing webOS 1.4.5 for its Pre and Pixi handsets. The update is reportedly being pushed out to handsets worldwide including those on Sprint and the French carrier SFR. The update addresses several security flaws, fixes an error when downloading podcasts, improves text entry in web page text fields, and provides support for webOS PDK. Palm’s website is a bit confused on the update with the SFR update appearing on the support page for Sprint. Thankfully, most webOS owners will receive the update over-the-air and have the proper version delivered to their handsets. Verizon Wireless and AT&T customers will have to wait for webOS 1.4.5 as the two American carriers are apparently not included in the first wave of updates. Any webOS owners not on Big Red or Ma Bell have webOS 1.4.5 delivered to their handsets yet?

[Via Mobile Crunch and Phone News]

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