If you were in the market for a Verizon Pre Plus, you might want to start a desperate search, because it seems that the device has all but fell down the online retail memory hole. Both it and the Verizon Pixi Plus no longer show up in the HP Wireless Central store. The Verizon Pre Plus is also no longer available from Amazon.com, and has disappeared from Verizon’s own online store (the Pixi Plus is still available at both). This follows the recent EOL’ing of the Sprint Pre.

We wouldn’t fret, however, as we know there’s a replacement coming. It’s called the Palm Pre 2, and it’s due out sometime in “the coming months” - though, really, shouldn’t it have appeared by now? 

If Verizon’s managed to run down their Pre Plus inventory to the point that it’s no longer available, perhaps its glass-screened gigahertz processor brother isn’t far behind to take the Verizon webOS throne (assuming it hasn’t gotten lost).

Source: HP Wireless Central, Amazon, Verizon; Thanks to kepaloa and Brian for the tips!

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Now, you might be thinking, huh, it was Verizon that purchased Alltel, and Alltel was a CDMA network… Well, a little reported part of the Verizon purchase was that the FCC required Verizon to divest (give up) 105 of the markets it acquired from Alltel in order to maintain a level playing field. AT&T picked up 79 of those markets. Yes, you’re thinking CDMA and GSM are like oil and water, and you’re correct.

So AT&T is in the process of transitioning their acquired Alltel customers to their GSM network, and that means they’re going to need new phones. So AT&T is offering them a deal: get one of our phones for cheap (or free) before we shut off your service. The deals by-and-large aren’t much better than what you can get as an AT&T customer, but it’s at least nice to see the Palm Pre Plus touted as available for pickup – and for free at that. One benefit: switchers will be allowed to drop their new AT&T contract after thirty days without facing an ETF.

Source: Engadget Mobile

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The upcoming AT&T “Meet the Expert – webOS Q&A” webinar this Thursday, November 4th, just got more interesting for those considering attending.  AT&T has announced that they will be giving away a Palm Pre Plus to two lucky webinar attendees.  Free Palm Pre Plus phones, an overview of webOS 2.0, and an in depth Q&A with expert webOS developers Greg Hrebek and James Harris are helping shape this webinar into a very worthwhile event.

AT&T is clearly making strides to continue support of webOS development.  The intent of this November 4th webinar, as reported previously, is to continue the momentum gained among developers of other OS platforms from previous webinars and to capitalize on both the announcement of webOS 2.0 and upcoming new webOS devices.

Let us summarize by saying one word, "free."  Free is good, as in free to register with AT&T’s developer program, free to attend this webOS webinar and last but not least, two free Palm Pre Plus phones up for grabs for attendees. 

Source: AT&T Developer Program; Thanks @mahootzki

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Welcome to Round Table, which is in fact not a table at all. Round Table is a continuing series on PreCentral where we pose a question to the staff and they provide their thoughts and insights. The question could be something simple like “what’s your favorite webOS RSS reader?” or something a bit more complicated, like “where do you see Palm in a year?” Or maybe we’ll just end up chatting about how we miss the cartoons of our childhood. Today, however, we’re going to take a look at the latest hardware from Palm: the Pre 2.

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Or should we say “ǝdoɥ ƃuısıɐɹ :ƃuıʇʇods ɯןɐd”? Either way, it’s another Pre Plus sighting, and this time it’s, well, it’s both upside down and sporting a custom UI that boggles our minds. We can see how it was needed for the episode, as an incoming call to a sleeping webOS phone doesn’t give the option for “ignore,” but seriously, you couldn’t even make it right side up? And you gave it such a bland UI – it looks like something you’d find on a feature phone pretending to be smart. Sheesh. Another shot after the break.

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It seems the baddies need to get some multitasking smartphone action too. NBC’s more-than-likely-doomed US Marshalls series Chase has featured the Palm Pre a few times, but never too up close. Now it has, with the Pre Plus (yes, not the Sprint original, mind = blown) getting some screen time after getting picked up from the fleeing criminal’s car. What’s there to look at? Home movies, of course.

Have you recently spotted the Pre, Pixi, or another Palm device on your favorite show? Drop us a note at pretips@precentral.net with the show and a few relevant details like air date, time in the episode, and an online video link if you’ve got one!

Source: Hulu; Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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Current Pre, Pixi, and Plus variant owners: relax, you’re getting webOS 2.0 too. Same “coming months” line as before, though hopefully we won’t have the same debacle that we had with the super-long webOS 1.4.5 roll-out. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Speaking of updates, @webosinternals noticed that "the fine print" on HP’s massive webOS 2.0 / Palm Pre 2 Press release makes it clear that the Pixi and Pixi Plus are not compatible with Flash:

(6) The Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta is compatible only with Palm Pre devices; not compatible with Pixi or Pixi Plus.

That’s a situation we’d like to see fixed but, deep down, don’t think will be.

Source: Palm (Pre, Pixi); Thanks to everyone that sent this in.

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It’s a happy headline, and a sad headline, all wrapped into six delightful and painful words that boild down like so: Skype support is finally coming to webOS, but it’s only coming if you’re on Verizon. Thanks to an exclusive deal between VoIP giant Skype and American cellular behemoth Verizon, only phones on Big Red get to have access to the sweet Skypes. Blessedly, at least current Verizon webOS devices should also get access to Skype, as soon as the webOS 2.0 update is pushed down to the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on that network.

Read the Press Release

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It’s a bit of a surprise to us, but the first carrier to have the new Palm Pre 2 will be none other than France’s SFR. Granted, they were the first to out the Pre 2, and SFR was on board with Palm for the launch of the Pre Plus. SFR’s executives have also indicated that the Pre Plus sold very well for them, so maybe there’s something to it. Regardless, October 22nd, French webOS lovers will be able to get their hands on the latest and greatest from Palm and HP: the Palm Pre 2 running HP webOS 2.0. Exact pricing (i.e. any pricing) was not revealed at press time, thanks to the leaky nature of SFR, we were able to find that out anyway: 99€ on contract and 449€ off contract. What we are less certain about is if the Pre 2 will make its way to other European carriers in the near future.

Read the Press Release

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Considering how tight of a lid Palm and HP have been keeping on details about the next Palm device, we were surprised to see it pop up on the website of French carrier SFR (who recently disappeared the Pre Plus). It’s official: the Palm Pre 2 is coming.

Yeah, you’re interested. Here’s what details SFR dropped:

• 1GHz processor
• 512MB RAM
• Same design as the current Pre series, but with a “flatter screen” (we’re supposing glass) and “more refined design.”
• Update: as arthurthornton notes in the comments – if you look closely that finicky USB door has been removed and replaced with a simple, exposed MicroUSB port. Looking more closely the finish on the edge is matted – so it looks like that crack-prone plastic we’ve been dealing with is a thing of the past.
• Update 2: PreCentral member thomas92 notes via email that SFR also says that webOS 2.0 will bring a faster boot time. We really need to work on our French, it seems.

Additionally, our rusty French translation yielded this until-now unannounced webOS 2.0 feature: push. Specifically, SFR is talking about Facebook push integration (touting it as “the great innovation of 2.0”) with messages, events, wall postings, and chat. We’re not going to read too much into that, as we would hope that Palm would integrate push into more than Facebook. So either SFR is overreaching, or they’re not telling us everything about push and instead are focusing on what customers want to hear about, i.e. Facebook.

Of course, there are battery life and performance improvements, but if the way SFR is writing it, these might be better than the usual negligible bumps. And if you were wondering what the device codename could be, SFR’s given it away in their unedited image name: Roadrunner.

And, before you ask, no mention of price or release date.

Source: SFR; Thanks to JMM for the tip!

UPDATE: SFR wised up and pulled the page down, but we’re the crafty evidence-preserving types. Screenshot after the break!

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