It’s the curse of the modern smartphone: a zillion chips and sensors and a bright powerful screen and umpteen radios all sucking power from battery tech that hasn’t seen drastic improvement in the last decade. And it’s also one of the biggest Achilles’ heels of the Palm Pre and Pre Plus. It’s been a while since we last visited this area, with the Pre and Pixi having now launched onto several new networks across the world, it’s high time we revisit the land of electricity. After the break, we break it down…

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The recent update to the Facebook app brought many desired featured a was a huge step forward from before. One thing notably missing was the lack of Facebook Chat.

Sure, it may not be on the usual list of Facebook app features that most platforms seem to follow, but for the webOS, something like Facebook Chat just seems to fit the mold, especially with synergy in the Messaging app.

Up until now, the only way to get Facebook Chat was via the messaging plugin, which may be a bit too much so someone only wanting Facebook Chat.

Well now, Facebook chat can be added with a single small patch! Robvanvliet in the forums discovered the neat little method of getting this to work and I released it in patch form.

Basically, apply the patch the go into the Messaging app. In there, add a new account with the username in the format <username>@chat.facebook.com with your password being your facebook password.  So take note, you’ll need to enable/set a Facebook username on your Facebook account if you haven’t yet.

This patch works by altering the hosts file on your device to make your device think "chat.facebook.com" is "talk.google.com". Thanks to Facebook’s chat service now using jabber (the same that GTalk uses) just adding a GTalk account in the Messaging app gets full Facebook Chat working!  Oh, and don’t worry, regular GTalk accounts will still work fine; there doesn’t seem to be any negative side effects of the patch.

Between the Facebook app and this Facebook Chat patch, webOS certainly has developed into possibly the most full-featured Facebook mobile OS out there!  While I’m not a Facebook fanatic myself, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if this attracts some new webOS users. Good new all ’round.

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On Saturday we reminded you that thousands of web apps work right now on the Pre and present a nice stopgap between now and the official release of the SDK.  Here are two of our favorites in the department: Yahoo IM and Facebook Chat

It’s not Synergized messaging magic, but it’s better than nothing for the time being. Those who so desire can take advantage of Yahoo Instant Messenger and Facebook Chat on their Palm Pre smartphones, but there’s one caveat: you’ve got to do it in the browser. With Yahoo all you need do is head over to Yahoo’s mobile page (that’s m.yahoo.com) and sign in to get instant access to your Yahoo IM contacts for chatting goodness. For Facebook you get to take advantage of the Pre’s powerful browser and use the full Facebook website, where you can simply scroll down to the bottom right corner and click on the “Chat” bar where all of your online Facebook friends are hiding – and sorted by group at that. It’s not the best solution, but it will do until Palm [hopefully] adds these chat protocols to the native messaging application.

Thanks to Timothy and John for the tips!

Update: Whitesmoke in the comments points out a link that will give you direct access to Facebook chat: http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php . nhavar also points out that you can get your meebo on here: http://www.meebo.com/mobile.

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Just yesterday we broke the news of the impending addition of Yahoo support to Synergy, and now our code adept forum members have already ripped the recently discovered recovery tool webOS ROM to shreds and in the wake have found some interesting bits, including a find by Jay1234: icons for [drum roll] AOL and MSN. I don’t know about you, but to me it screams Synergy update [UPDATE: though they may very well be for the mail app].

That’s not all: jeffgus and emkan found that the Messaging app also contains support for gloox (Jabber/XMPP) and libpurple chat protocols. Jabber/XMPP is an open-source chat protocol used by many corporations and Google Talk, and libpurple (the basis of the popular Pidgin IM client), which could add support for anything from Windows Live Messenger to Yahoo chat to even Facebook chat.

webOS appears to be ripe and even prepared for expansion in future updates. While the Pre is a fairly awesome device as it is, if Palm implements just what we’ve discovered tonight we’re going to have to make up some new adjectives to describe just how cool the Pre is. I’m thinking precentric…

UPDATE: PreCentral member wlmoore has tipped us that the AOL icon is in the mail application. But… that’s not the end of this train. Wlmoore noted that AOL Sync is powered by Funambol, and Funambol’s CEO is excited about the Pre. So either way, it seems like it’s still just a matter of time before Synergy expands to the mighty AOL.

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