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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Rejoice webOS faithful! Reuters is reporting that HP’s senior vice president, Eric Cador, has been quoted as saying, “You will see us coming early next year with new phones.” The part that made us all warm and tingly inside was when he said “phones” — plural. Mr. Cador reiterated the importance of the Palm acquisition and the hordes of intellectual property HP is now holding. Use said IP wisely Mr. Vice President, and bring on the hardware!

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This video definitely isn’t as good as seeing webOS 2.0 running on smartphone hardware, but if you’re looking for something to hold you over, this should suffice. A video of an emulated webOS 2.0 has made its way onto YouTube. The video demos several of the new OS’ features, including: card stacks, universal search, and application pages. The video is ready for you after the break.

[Via FoneFrenzy]

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What do we have here? Chinese website wibozi.com has posted a plethora of screen shots — 24 to be exact – of the highly anticipated webOS 2.0. Form the screen shots we can see the addition of: multiple IM account types, Cisco VPN support, Dropbox and Google Docs support, remote files storage with QuickOffice, and a boat-load of other additions. Hit the read link to peruse the full screen shot gallery and drop us a comment to let us know what you think. Looks pretty sexy to us!

[Via Engadget]

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Finally! Palm has announced that they will begin to roll out the webOS 2.0 SDK — in a limited capacity — to developers starting today. The company isn’t talking about what webOS 2.0 will bring to consumers, but they are touting some of the major overhauls and additions that developers can look forward to. Some of those improvements include:

• Exhibition for Touchstone– Exhibition will allow developers to code their applications to perform custom actions when your webOS device is plugged into the Touchstone charger. If you have a Touchstone on your bedside table, and want your custom alarm program to be activated when the device hits the charger, this is now possible.
• HTML5 Improvements — The HTML5 abilities of webOS will be improved with geolocation support and offline caching among other niceties.
• Deep JavsScript access– Developers will be given access to lower level JavaScript functions. This will allow program creators to control a plethora of low-level I/O data.
• Just Type feature — Palm has decided to give “universal search” a new tagline, Just Type. Just Type will have an API open to developers that will allow them to harness the functionality using their applications own data. The Just Type feature will also have something called “Quick Actions.” Our understanding of this feature is typing something like: “send tweet I love webOS” will result in said Twitter message being pushed out without the application ever being opened.
• Stacks feature — Stacks is going to allow actions taken within the same workflow to be grouped together into cards. If you are in an email and click on a link, the browser card and email card will be “stacked” together. You can custom order cards into stacks if you wish but by default webOS 2.0 will be doing this for you.

This all sounds really, really promising. We just hope this snazzy sounding OS is paired with some new hardware… and fast. Hit the read link to read the good news yourself.

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Might as well keep the webOS news coming, no? If you have a Verizon Palm Pixi Plus you’ll be happy to know that your friends over at VZW are pushing out webOS 1.4.5 to your device. The update’s change log looks like this:

Version information
Version: webOS 1.4.5
Release date: 30 August 2010

New applications
NONE

Feature changes to existing applications

System
Palm Pixi and Palm Pixi Plus phones can now run 3D games and other apps developed with the webOS PDK. Check App Catalog for titles that are compatible with your phone.
This release includes minor fixes and enhancements to support the public release of the webOS PDK.

Web
If a user enters text in a field on certain websites, the screen focus now remains on the text being entered.
This release fixes a rare problem so that podcasts now download correctly.

Security
This release addresses several security issues with the Palm webOS software.

The new code weighs in at around 14 Mb and can be had by hitting the System Update button in your phone’s preferences.

Thanks, Steve!

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Today, Palm announced an update to its webOS Facebook application, version 1.3. The update brings with it selectable news feeds, revised photo tagging, support for landscape viewing, the ability to clear multiple notifications, and fan pages. We have more details on some of the changes after the bounce. webOS aficionados, let us know your thoughts.

Hi all,

The team’s been hard at work finalizing Facebook for Palm webOS 1.3, polishing and packaging new features from the most recent beta releases. What’s part of this official release?

1) Selectable news feeds. Now you can select which news feed you’d like to view by type (i.e. status updates vs. photos vs. links), networks (i.e. workplace or school), locations and lists. You can also switch comments in the feed on or off by swiping down from the top-left corner (to bring down the app menu), tapping on Preferences & Accounts, then switching Show Comments in Feed on or off.

2) Revised photo tagging. Users can now tag both themselves and their friends in photos. To tag someone, simply upload a photo, then view it on your profile. Tap on the photo, then tap on the tagging icon that appears below it. Begin typing someone’s name to select them from your friends list, then tap Done.

3) Support for landscape viewing. Just tilt your Palm webOS phone to the side and Facebook for Palm webOS will switch orientations accordingly.

4) Clearing multiple notifications. To clear all of your existing notifications, tap on the notification globe at the top-left corner of the app, then tap See All Notifications, then perform a back gesture (by swiping from right to left below your screen) or tap the Facebook logo.

5) Fan pages (under Search , more under the hood fixes, tweaks and performance enhancements.

Grab it here: http://developer.palm.com/appredirect/index.php?packageid=com.palm.app.facebook

What do you think of this release? What else would you like to see in a future release? As always, our team’s listening closely so sound off in the comments below!

Justin

P.S. If you currently have a beta release installed and choose to update (rather than download the official release separately), you’ll soon be able to update to 1.3.1 (Beta Release). This is identical to the official 1.3 release, differing only in names and versions.

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If you’re a webOS die-hard, and are looking for a game so addictive it should come with a warning label, look no further. Palm and developer Rovio have just announced that the wildly popular game Angry Birds, which is already available for iOS devices, can now be purchased for your Palm Pre or Palm Pixi. The basic premise of the game has you slinging birds, who happen to look angry, towards obstacles in an effort to kill green pigs. The official game summary looks like this:

“Lemme tell ya, these ain’t no ordinary finches we’re talkin’ about. These here are the Angry Birds, the ones that’s gonna kick you in the ‘nads. And they’re the ones on your side. They must be from Galapadapados, or sumptin’.” – Col. Angus, Bird Expert. The survival of the Angry Birds is at stake. Dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds’ eggs. Use the unique destructive powers of the Angry Birds to lay waste to the pigs’ fortified castles. Angry Birds features hours of gameplay, challenging physics-based castle demolition, and lots of replay value. Each of the 150 levels requires logic, skill, and brute force to crush the enemy. Protect wildlife, or play Angry Birds!

The game can be purchased for $1.99 and requires webOS 1.4.5 or higher. If you need a new game on your Pre or Pixi we suggest giving Angry Birds a shot. Oh… if you figure out how to get past level 3-15 on the first board, do let us know.

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A few weeks ago, we told you about a foursquare application developer that discovered traces of webOS 2.0 in their application logs. While the information would have been very hard to fake, it would have been technically feasible due to the fact that foursquare’s API is open source. Today, PreCentral is reporting that a closed-source game titled Cloud Hopper has discovered traces of webOS 2.0 in their logs, along with a device that has a screen resolution of 640 x 960; the same resolution as the iPhone 4′s Retina display. Whether this device is a prototype of the fabled HP webOS tablet or – fingers crossed – Palm’s next webOS smartphone, no one knows. It is nice to finally get a few snippets of information (as small as they are) to let us know that webOS hardware development is marching along… even if it is very slowly.

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Here is a fresh webOS 2.0 rumor for you. Developer Zhephree is the author of a Foursquare application for Palm’s beleaguered mobile operating system, webOS. Recently, while checking the logs of his Foursquare application, he noticed an entry for webOS 2.0 on a device listed as “Roadrunner.” A webOS 2.0 launch is rumored for the end of this year and we all know that some new hardware is way overdue. Zhephree did tell PreCentral that the information could be forged, but as he put it:

[...] the source for foursquare is open and on GitHub. Someone with the knowledge could easily download the source, modify the Metrix JS library I have included, and force it to post to my Metrix stats with whatever string they want. Granted, it would take some effort, but it’s doable.

Seems like an awful lot of work to hope a developer checks their application logs. We’ve got an image of Zhephree’s application metrics after the break.

[Via PreCentral]

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According to Engadget, “several trusted sources” have informed them that an HP webOS tablet is due out in Q1 of 2011. The report says that HP’s VP of the Personal Systems Group, Todd Bradley, informed employees of the release timeline yesterday during an all-hands meeting. The report goes on to say that the mysterious tablet will be known internally by the code name “Hurricane.” Not a lot to go on here, but if you are a webOS junkie waiting for something bigger than webOS 1.4.5, it’s better than nothing!

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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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Wondering about the future of HP’s current iPAQ lineup of Windows Mobile handsets in light of the upcoming launch of Windows Phone 7? In an interview with CNBC, HP’s Executive Vice President Todd Bradley confirmed that the hardware giant will not be producing a Windows Phone 7 or an Android handset. As expected, HP will focus entirely on webOS for its smartphones and use its engineering, manufacturing, and distribution power to lift the struggling mobile OS. Bradley also confirmed that HP is still building the once dead, now resurrected Windows-7 tablet in a move that will presumably smooth over any feathers that were ruffled by HP’s decision not to support Windows Phone 7.

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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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