Palm first started telling us webOS 1.4.5 was coming “soon” back in May , but after an interminable wait it looks like Pre Pluses on Verizon and AT&T are starting to get an OTA update. The release notes page on Palm’s site is currently down, but we’re looking for better PDK support, some GPS fixes, and improved gaming action.
WebOS device hacking has reach some considerable heights recently with a mod to bring WiFi to a Sprint Palm Pixi , but it looks like even that’s now been topped by this hack that finally brings the Pre Plus to Sprint. As you can probably guess, that involves a Sprint Palm Pre , a Pre Plus (from either AT&T or Verizon), a slew of software tweaking, and plenty of tricky hardware modding to get the Sprint Pre coms board into the Pre Plus.
AT&T has finally sent out the rundown on when (and for how much) its customers will be able to saddle themselves with a Pre Plus and matching two-year contract, and the wait isn’t a long one: it launches this coming Sunday, May 16, just as we’d expected .
You’ve waited long enough AT&T customers. So long that the Palm Pre is now the Palm Pre Plus and Palm, well, isn’t even Palm anymore . But you just never mind all that, what’s important is that AT&T subscribers will finally have dibs on the Palm Pre Plus starting May 16th, nationwide.
You’ve waited long enough AT&T customers. So long that the Palm Pre is now the Palm Pre Plus and Palm, well, isn’t even Palm anymore .
Looks like Verizon is having a bit of a blowout on the Palm Pre Plus : it’s fallen to just $30 on a two-year contract. That’s the same price as Big Red’s Pixi Plus and a pretty substantial discount over Sprint and AT&T, both of which will charge you $149 — and man, AT&T hasn’t even started selling the thing yet , so someone’s going to look awful silly on launch day.
It’s pretty wild that neither Palm nor AT&T have fessed up to a release date for the GSM-ified versions of the Pre Plus or Pixi Plus yet — especially considering that there are already unboxings going on — but we’ve now got confirmation that dummy units (of the Pre Plus, anyhow) are filtering into retail stores, so it definitely shouldn’t be much longer now. Dummies of an updated version of the ultra-simple Pantech Breeze (uncreatively named Breeze 2 ) is also coming in, so between these two, you should pretty much be able to outfit every member of the family from grandpa to the newborn
We still don’t have a firm date for when Palm’s current wunderphone will be hitting AT&T’s soothingly-colored retail establishments (the site still says “coming soon”), but we do now have confirmation that at least one handset has reached its destination. A tipster was kind enough to send us these photos of an AT&T Pre Plus escaping its creamsicle confines and powering on for the first time.
If you’re a Pre or Pre Plus owner who has been watching longingly as we’ve covered the recent spread of overclocking hacks for the thing, but didn’t quite feel up to wading through page after page of forum discussions to figure out just how to apply them, the process just got a easier. Like, a whole lot easier. Super PreKernel enables you to go to 550, 600, 720, and even 800MHz with just a single tap
Time to get those speculative juices flowing again. Pre Central have unearthed the above O2 Germany promotional poster displaying a Palm Pixi stood in front of such smartphone luminaries as Sony Ericsson’s X10 and Motorola’s Milestone.
We just spent a few fleeting moments with AT&T’s just-announced Pre Plus and Pixi Plus from Palm, and they’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect: GSM remixes of the models available on Verizon (we weren’t allowed to take a peek at the SIM slots, but rest assured, there’s an AT&T carrier logo up there at the top left). Both devices seemed relatively zippy — yes, even the Pixi — though that can naturally change pretty quickly once you’ve got a few cards chugging away. We were delighted to see that Palm loaded our very own Engadget app on their demo devices — a good way for booth stoppers-by to catch up on show news, eh?
Palm might be able to use a bit of good news right about now, but it looks like it may not be able to count on that coming from AT&T. As AllThingsD ‘s John Paczkowski reports, Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek is now saying that Palm’s still as yet unconfirmed launch on AT&T has been pushed back from its rumored April debut to June or July.
Here’s a little spicy rumor for you Palm fans on this tranquil Sunday: according to TopTongueBarry who claims to work for AT&T , his company has just finished certification tests with GSM flavors of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus ahead of a possible April 26th launch — a date not far from what we’ve heard earlier . However, the bigger news from Barry is that the big A will soon be testing a third mysterious webOS device by the name of Palm Elan, which may greet us mere mortals on May 10th (but possibly in Europe first). Another forum member Shadow-360 also dug up some cached pages that claimed to have accessories for the non-existent device, as pictured above
According to a little late night tweet from Palm — and the update screen on our device — the stacked new webOS 1.4 update is making its way out into the world for the company’s Verizon-flavored devices. That’s right, Plussers — video recording (and editing) is just a small download away
You know what’s running out? February. That’s a little alarming considering that Palm had promised that totally rockin’ new cut of webOS, 1.4 , before the month was out — but while we wait for this thing to actually happen, at least we’ve now got an official (or official-looking) changelog of the build out of the good folks at PreCentral
