Palm’s webOS 1.4.5 update hasn’t exactly had the smoothest of rollouts – arriving in Europe and Canada on July 14th, Sprint on August 11th, and the Verizon Pixi Plus on August 31st - not to mention that pesky bug that breaks some games. Meanwhile, Verizon Pre Plus and AT&T users are standing by, unable to get their Angry Birds on.

Well, Shad emailed us (and others) to let us know that somebody from Verizon corporate is telling him the update should hit in about two weeks. We’ve heard plenty of empty promises from mid and high-level carrier employees before, though. However rwinger in our forums points out that Verizon’s very own OTA Update Information page for the Palm Pre Plus sports screenshots showing 1.4.5.

We can’t have much longer to wait now, can we? This rollout stands in stark contrast to previous webOS updates that managed to hit multiple carriers in multiple countries in fairly short order. The delayed rollout on Verizon and AT&T also seems to be putting a damper on the PDK Hot Apps $1 million giveaway – if folks can’t install the apps, it makes it quite a bit harder to generate buzz for the latest and greatest – only 20 days left in that contest.

Update: Shad points us to this PDF on Verizon’s support site that indicates updates for 1.4.5:

webOS 1.4.5 Build 171 update includes numerous enhancements. [...]

+ Better Mobile Hotspot connectivity
- Your Palm Pre Plus can easily connect through the Mobile Hotspot application even when using Windows Vista® 64-bit with Windows LiveTM OneCare.

+ Better Web functionality
- Preview all ringtones on the Verizon Mobile Web 3.0 site.

+ Overall improved battery performance

Thanks, Shad and cantaffordit!

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Here’s some of the latest talk in the forums: 

• People have been clamoring for new hardware for what seems like a year now, and wv06 wants to know if they’re alone in wanting the design of the Pre to stay.
• Forum hero HardBeatZ wants to know which software bugs in webOS annoy you the most.  Here’s one of mine:  I have, on occasion, closed the phone app to end a call only to have it get rid of the UI for the app, but remain on the call.  Annoying!
• Forum members are talking strategy: Should Palm do what Samsung is doing with its Galaxy lineup of phones?
• boogaloo1 wants to know if they’re crazy for pondering the switch from the Pre to the Evo.

We look forward to seeing you in the forums!  Hit the registration link if you’re not a member – it’s free!

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Bevcraw points us to a PreCentral Forum thread where several members are reporting that they woke up this morning to devices that had been forced into being wiped clean and needed to be restored. That’s the bad news, but we’re not hitting the panic button just yet. The good news is that Palm architected webOS from the get-go to make reliable, daily backups so data loss is at a minimum, instead users are just made to re-sync their devices with their Palm Profiles to restore their data.

Near as we can tell, what’s happening is that some phones are getting disconnected from their associated Palm Profile. As anybody who has switched up webOS devices knows, you can only have one phone logged in at a time to any given Palm Profile and any other phone will get prompted to be reset and wiped clean (leaving the data on the USB storage there, of course).

We’ve reached out to Palm for comment, but in the meantime we’re still collecting data points here. If you’ve recently had your Pre randomly tell you that you’re logged out of your Palm Profile and had to go through the initial setup again to get things working, please hit up this thread and let the community know what you experienced, when it happened, on which network, and heck, a general idea of where you live wouldn’t hurt. 

Thanks bevcraw!

Update: Palm has released a statement on the issue and it’s pretty much as we suspected. Some users are getting logged out of their Palm Profile, but data loss is at a minimum:

"Palm has heard reports from a small number of customers that they are being inadvertently signed out of their Palm Profile. These customers are able to sign back in and sync their data by tapping the restart button on the screen. We are working to diagnosis the cause."

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webOS 1.4.5 has landed for Europe and Canada and as we mentioned in that post, the new PDK features bring with them a new PDK bug that may affect people who update over-the-air (OTA) – however thankfully it should only affect a small number of apps.

Here’s the deal: 1.4.5 is designed to allow any developer to submit PDK apps. This means that these apps need to be "jailed," which is to say that they are not allowed to run willy nilly around the entire operating system doing whatever they want. Instead these apps become "users" just like a user on Windows and only have permission to write to certain areas. 

Unfortunately, the OTA update doesn’t fully get all those permissions right, so some PDK apps are unable to write their save game data to the media/internal drive – so some apps may be unable to save and others may simply crash.

Palm has decided not to delay 1.4.5 due to this bug, but instead are exhorting PDK developers to update their app to use a workaround. If you have an app affected by this bug, you have a few options:

1. Ask the developer to update their app with the workaround
2. If you are a homebrewer, Rod Whitby of WebOS Internals has created an "Emergency Fstab Fixer" app that can update your device with the correct permissions (it’s up in Preware now)
3. Check to see if the webOS Doctor for your phone is up to date with webOS 1.4.5, if so, you can wipe and doctor your phone and the permission will be fixed
4. Grit your teeth, shake your fist at the gods of fstab, and wait for an update from Palm.

US Carriers don’t have webOS 1.4.5 yet and though we can’t say when it will arrive, it does look like they will be affected by the bug. Have a crashy app with 1.4.5? Let us know in the comments!

Source: Palm Developer Forum

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For about a day now we’ve seen a little problem on webOS: Google search is displaying something closer to their full desktop search results instead of a mobile-optimized version. Their desktop results have a lefthand sidebar, which means that searching Google is the opposite of a fun experience at the moment. 

There’s a thread up in our forums on the Google search formatting issue, @RayHollister notes it too (and proves it with the above image), and several other tipsters (thanks, Isaac!) also confirm that the whole thing isn’t in our heads. To be honest, we assumed it was a result of an over-patched device until now.

How about you? Google search looking a little weird lately?

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We’ve received a ton of reports from nearly every carrier in every country all with the same message: trying to install apps from the Palm webOS App Catalog are consistently ending with "Install Failed" once the app download is complete. We’ve confirmed it on our own devices. The issue applies equally to free and paid apps.

The silver lining to this dark, dark cloud is that it doesn’t appear as though you’ll be charged for failed purchases. Update: we did get charged for an app we purchased but were unable to install, however it does appear with a big "warning" symbol in our app listing. We imagine once this gets resolved re-downloading and installing won’t be a problem. In the meantime, now’s probably not the best time to go shopping. Update 2: rlopin makes a great point: best not to try to update apps right now either, as that will render the apps you already have installed inoperable as well.

We’ve reached out to Palm for comment and they let us know "it’s under investigation" right now. Feel free to share your pain here or in this PreCentral forum thread.

Update 3: the party continues. Palm’s Developer Center site is down for the count. In our comments below, mtv757 suggests a fix for people who updated apps and therefore lost the ability to access them:

All you have to do is open the non working app. Press the update bar on the buttom and quickly press the "X" on the right to cancel the update. It should work then

Jensbob in our forums has found a temporary fix, however: Open up your "Date & Time" preferences, turn off "Network Time," and then set the date back to something before today (Say, May 10th). You will then have the wrong date on your phone, but app downloads will work. Jensbob and others speculate we’re looking at some sort of expired certificate issue.

Update 4: Palm has acknowledged the issue on their official blog, "We believe the situation will be resolved soon, although some apps may begin working properly sooner than others."

Update 5: After a wild Saturday, we’re getting reports that some users are having success installing apps without resorting to changing the date on their devices. We’ll let you know when we get official word, but in the meantime kudos to the App Catalog team for apparently fixing this major bug. Are installs working for you yet?

Thanks to everybody who sent this in

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The (long-awaited) release of webOS 1.4.1.1 for Verizon devices had us provisionally hopeful that we had a fix for the persistent and persistently annoying issue of trying to get a quick and reliable GPS fix on the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus on "The Network."

Sadly, in the ensuing days we’re finding that GPS is as dodgy as ever. GPS issues are notoriously difficult to diagnose accurately – whether it’s really working but you can’t grab a satellite or whether there’s a problem can be a tough thing to pin down. It’s enough to make a guy want to spin up conspiracy theories. We can’t help but notice a troubling dichotomy:

• VZ Navigator: exact and near instantaneous lock on our exact position.
• Google Maps / Foursquare / name-an-app-that-uses-GPS-but-doesn’t-send-Verizon-$10-a-month: best they often get are generic cell-tower location. 

We’re not ready to hurl any accusations at the big V just yet (despite their spotty record when it comes to GPS), but it does look like there is some connection between running VZ Nav and GPS fixes. It may just be some sort of technical problem, so rest assured that the GPS wizards in our forums are currently investigating all angles. Meanwhile, the not-too-thinly-veiled conspiracy theory above has seen plenty of discussion in our forums.

For now let’s leave that aside and just ask: Verizon webOS users, how is GPS for you after the 1.4.1.1 update? 

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Everyone know that webOS 1.4 brought with it many welcomed features and additions.  Unfortunately it also brought with it a few bugs.

When 1.4 arrived, several people took notice that both the PDF View app and the Doc View app now suddenly were missing multi-touch.  Given the recent legal new with App and HTC, some worried it may have been removed intentionally.

Thankfully, Palm Tech Support employee and PreCentral forum member HardBeatZ, popped in to tell us Palm has this tracked as a bug in their system. Furthermore, a few days later, Palm’s own Ben Combee posted in the official Palm forums, saying

I checked on this. The lack of pinch zoom is a bug with some common code in PDF and doc viewer that wasn’t updated for 1.4, and it looks like it’s been fixed for a future release.

Not only was that an unintentional bug, but it sounds as though it’s already been fixed and will be in a future update (presumably webOS 1.4.1). Big ups to Palm for allowing their people to be out there in the community, letting us know we’re not crazy and that fixes are coming.

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We’ve been working on this one for several days now, but it seems that every time we’ve got it ready, a new bug crops up and we have to do some revising. Enough is enough, we say, it’s time to put this out there. We’ve already covered the confusing, inconvenient, and frustrating Daylight Savings Time bug that many webOS users have run into; now is the time to look at what other new problems have afflicted Pre and Pixi phones across the world. There surprisingly, and somewhat disappointingly, a lot of stuff to point out. While not everybody is experiencing any or all of the issues listed after the break, we’ve heard from enough of you (and seen some of these problems ourselves) that we know there are some distinct issues out there. It’s a wordy list, as we are wont to do, so if you’re interested in finding out if you’re not alone in your glitchy nature, head past the break for the scoop.

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With all of the attention on Windows Phone 7 Series’ lack of true multitasking, we wanted to point out that figuring out multitasking on webOS is still a work in progress.

Being able to do background processing is one thing the webOS is know for. So when 1.4 changed how background processes worked, developers took notice.  Absent from the list of 1.4 changes was an alteration that widely affected applications that work in the background.

Essentially, before 1.4, background applications wouldn’t close unless the developer specified them to. Makes sense, however some reports suggest the built-in javascript garbage collector wouldn’t be called on background applications, causing memory leaks, and potentially leading the "too many cards" error.

Developers were the first to notice this changed with webOS 1.4. Now, after 15 seconds, applications without an active stage are automatically closed. Naturally this caused a bit of frustration; getting an active GPS location alone can take 30+ seconds, so how could a background applications get everything done in 15 seconds?

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