The HP Pre3 launched in Europe today, and oddly enough, HP had very little to say about it. With the TouchPad price falling like a rock, you’d expect that its intended complementary device — and HP’s flagship phone — would launch with more fanfare. But instead HP let the device land in its EuroStore and gave a short response to PreCentral, the first publication to notice its availability. Either way, the most important thing is that the SIM-free smartphone is ready to roll. → Read More
Industry sources at Foxconn Technology and Compal Communications are stating that they are currently manufacturing multiple WebOS devices including the so-called PalmPad. → Read More
Sometime today, Feburary 26, 2010, Sprint Pre and Pixi owners should get a nice little surprise on their handsets. It seems like Sprint and Palm are ready to deliver the latest webOS update, which should bring the aforementioned updates along with a bunch of other enhancements conveniently listed for your perusal after the jump. → Read More
If you’re in the market for a WebOS Plus device then they’ll cost you $150 for the Pre and $100 for the Pixi whenever Verizon launches them. → Read More
Someone’s gotta help Palm out. After the somewhat lukewarm response to the Pixi and the Pre, it’s rather surprising that Verizon would decide to place a big order. Word is though, that’s exactly what they did. → Read More
Amazon is running a deal on the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi, selling the new-ish Sprint smartphones for $80 and $25, respectively, with a two-year contract and free activation. → Read More
Wow, it’s on. I thought that Palm was going to work out an alternate solution after that official reprimand from the USB Implementers Forum, but they’re going right ahead with iTunes compatibility again. I suppose they feel that it’s more of a crime for Apple to restrict device access than it is to spoof a device’s maker. At any rate, the conflict just got escalated. This will be remembered, 24-style, as the moment Palm went rogue. → Read More
When your smartphone drops from $299 ($199 with contract) to $79 over a summer, you have to wonder what’s going on. Two rumors are circulating this AM, one that Palm is laying off folks, perhaps in the Windows Mobile team.
UPDATE from Palm: “We are not laying people off. As we continue our transformation we are better aligning our staff with our business objectives.”
The estimated sales for the Pre topped out at 375,000 somewhere in the 810,000 range (Palm reports it sold 810K units last quarter and states at least half of those where Pres) at the end of August and they went from $299 ($199 with contract) to about $79 in about eleven weeks. While this might be normal for a feature phone – the subsidy kicks in once they’re sure that the early adopters who simply must have the LG Chocolate have had their fix – this isn’t good for a smartphone that was supposed to be the lead invasion force for a new WebOS smartphone renaissance.
UPDATED with word from Palm. → Read More
The latest version of the WebOS was released today, with some minor improvements to the bluetooth, email, and the calendar. They still haven’t worked out that pesky iTunes problem though.
As far as updates go, this one isn’t terribly exciting. Palm added support to phone downloads from the Amazon music store (you used to have to use WiFi), backed up your bookmarks to your profile (so you won’t lose them if something bad happens), added a location feature to the calendar function, and added the ability to search to your emails based on the folder. → Read More
So ya think that the Pre is still overpriced at $100 from Amazon, eh? Well, if you’re willing to buy the Pre at Walmart and deal with mail-in rebates, you can snag one for only $79.99. → Read More
So ya think that the Pre is still overpriced at $100 from Amazon, eh? Well, if you’re willing to buy the Pre at Walmart and deal with mail-in rebates, you can snag one for only $79.99. → Read More
In a move akin to Herman’s Hermits opening for the Rolling Stones, Palm has decided to announce the new Palm Pixi, a phone akin to the Palm Centro of yore in price point and features, on the very day Apple will eat up the rest of the news cycle. This is in line with the intelligence we received earlier yesterday about the Pixi launching in time for Fashion Week.
The Pixi is a non-slider with touchscreen and full keyboard. It will cost about $149 with two year contract and rebates on Sprint. You have 8GB of on board storage and it takes 2-megapixel pictures – down from the Pre’s 3-megapixels. → Read More
Pre-thinking brings us the latest Tamara Hope Pre Ad with young Tamara talking more to her Pre than directly at us. Interestingly, Tamara looks much better when she isn’t Palm’s ghoulish Pre homunculus. Click through for a pleasant surprise. → Read More
When it comes to keyboards, you just can’t make everyone happy. Provide a virtual keyboard, and people complain of inaccuracy and difficult of use. Provide a physical keyboard, and people complain because their dainty hands only have enough strength to slide out the keyboard three times a day. You’ve gotta provide both, or you’ve just given the Internet something to rant about. Such is the case with the Palm Pre. Almost immediately after launch, the fan forums were filled with flames regarding the handsets lack of an onscreen keyboard. Well, the Palm Pre does have a virtual keyboard; it’s just limited to a handful of fairly rare characters. The guys over at WebOS Internals have figured out a way to patch into this to add the standard QWERTY keys and make it pop up and stay open at the appropriate times, thus saving dozens of seconds per year that would otherwise be spent sliding the actual keyboard open. The patch is in a shaky state (pre-alpha) as of now, but it mostly works as intended in both portrait and landscape modes. If you’re up for a bit of hackery for the sake of some onscreen tippity-tappin’, read this and then this for details on how to make it happen. [Via PreCentral] → Read More
This is going to end well, and no one will be upset about this. Also, everything I said in that last sentence is probably wrong.
When Debian developer Joey Hess started tinkering with webOS, he noticed that it was sending something to Palm once a day. Surely, Palm wasn’t sending anything too potentially incriminating without making it blatantly obvious to the user, right? Wrong.
Update: Updated with Palm’s statement on the matter → Read More
Lets say you just finished hacking and cracking your myTouch 3G through the just unveiled rooting process. With the myTouch lagging behind some other in the looks department, your first quest is to retheme it. You’d heard about a Palm Pre skin, which decks Android out with Pre-esque visuals from top to bottom. Partly out of spite and partly out of genuine curiosity, you set out to find it. Sorry Charlie, it’s too late. Earlier this week, the developer of the Palm Pre skin, L3wish, received a letter from the Sunnyvale mothership. “You should probably take this stuff down, or we’ll stop pretending you’re not infringing all sorts of copyrights,” it read – except spread out across 714 words. Citing the potential for “widespread consumer confusion” and the usage of Palm’s trademarks (the skin was outright called “Palm Pre theme”), Palm demanded that all materials be taken down. The developer has since pulled the download, and any instances of it we knew of have disappeared. You can probably find them in a few minutes with Google – but then again, so can Palm’s lawyers. [Via EngadgetMobile] → Read More
Didja hear that RadioShack is rebranding? The hoopla will of course include some sales to drive traffic. Apparently the Pre will be part of this upcoming sale and will be only $150 for new customers. Nice. → Read More
Palm has hired the smallest SVP in the world, Jeff Zwerner, to be in charge of its branding initiatives. As Brand Design SVP, Zwerner will use
[...] his significant expertise in strategic brand design and management to Palm’s global advertising, marketing communications, PR, events and web design.
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. -John Wanamaker Advertising and branding are very complicated and very unpredictable fields, and success can be measured according to any number of metrics. Modernista, the ad agency behind the soft-talking-lady ads that only occasionally seem to be talking about phones, seem to be measuring success based on attention. Of course, the attention is almost entirely negative, but that doesn’t faze them. In an article in Ad Age, Executive Creative Director at Modernista, Gary Koepke, discusses the oft-maligned “Ms. Hope” spots. → Read More
