Once you get starting down the path of homebrew and patching, it can become pretty addicting to tweak the heck out of your device with your own mix of patches and apps. PreCentral forum member snowdizx put together his list of patches and tweaks that truly make his Pre a power user’s dream.

After the break, find his list of patches and tweaks and settings, all done, we might add, without the need to flash a ROM, unlock a bootloader, or ‘get root’ on the device. Yeah, webOS is truly open even if it’s not opensource.

Since today is the homebrew-aversary, we thought it would be a good time to ask our Power Users: what is the mix of patches and tweaks that make your webOS device yours?

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As we discussed in prior tips, Universal search is an extremely powerful tool that lets you search for your Contacts, Applications, the web and Google Maps from anywhere on your phone and in a matter of seconds. For those Homebrewers out there, there are also a wide-range of patches that are available to further enhance Universal Search. After the break, we will dive into some of the more popular Universal Search patches that are available to you via webOS Quick Install or Preware.

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Palm has really been out and pounding the pavement to get in touch with developers lately. In addition to having a booth at Google IO to show off the Ares development environment, they also recently presented at the CELF Embedded Linux Conference.

The presentation was called "Engaging Developer Communities, Lessons and Opportunity from webOS" and from looking at the slides (PDF link), the title doesn’t lie. Matthew Tippett of Palm (and formerly of AMD) gave the talk and in addition to talking about Palm’s own efforts, the presentation drills down into communities. Specifically, Tippet talks up WebOS-Internals, patches, themes, and the like. The key from Palm’s perspective is that webOS doesn’t require rooting, jailbreaking, or other extreme hackery in order to get into hombrew, instead you just put the sucker into development mode, plug it into your computer, and you’re in. In other words, webOS is open, almost radically open.

The key for us (besides the warm fuzzy feeling from seeing PreCentral called out) is that the ratio of devices in the field to excited and engaged developers and hackers is as high as we’ve ever seen on any platform. 

If you’re interesting in learning how to install Homebrew apps and patches, here’s a nice how-to article for you.

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The Homebrew Hot Apps Telethon, wherein the webOS community got together and decided that homebrew apps and patch developers needed to get some love (in the form of cash) for all their hard work is officially a success. They’ve reached their goal of raising over $5,000 in less than a week, much of which will be distributed amongst the top app and patch developers. 

We didn’t hit the Homebrew Hot Apps Telethon too hard here on the blog because what made this telethon so great is that is came from the grass roots – it was homebrew. What we are doing, however, is giving anybody who has donated more than $30 to the cause a new title in our forums – "Top Homebrew Supporter." Even though the telethon has reached their goal, you can always feel free to donate now – anybody who reaches that $30 amount before 9pm Eastern tonight will qualify.

So donate, hey?

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After we officially confirmed that 3rd party software cannot access full Assisted GPS on Verizon webOS devices, the race was on to find a fix. That fix in now in, thanks to epic work by Ebag333 with an assist from our very own Darth Pooh.  In my testing, Ebag333’s patch gives Google Maps and the general ##GPS# phone code a solid GPS lock in under 30 seconds.

Long-time Windows Mobile users may find the technical explanation for what the patch does both interesting and familiar. Apparently on Verizon webOS devices, the standard location request isn’t aware of the necessary host and port parameters for A-GPS. All Ebag333’s patch does is include those parameters in standard location calls.

Developers of GPS apps shouldn’t assume that users will have this patch installed, of course, so Palm’s official guidance for your apps is to request the ‘low resolution’ location fix first.

Standard warnings apply: this patch has only been tested on a very small number of devices, should only be installed on Verizon devices, and is an at-your-own-risk kind of thing. It’s not up in Preware just yet, so grab it from this forum thread and install via WebOS Quick Install. Oh, and please do let us know how it works for you!

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It’s a solemn act taken up after every update to webOS: reapplying all of your patches. While things have gotten to be significantly easier since the advent of Auto-Update Patch Technology (otherwise known as AUPT), there’s still some work that needs to be done. Or at least, some clarification.

So here’s the deal, as explained by WebOS Internals’ Rod Whitby: AUPT makes things easier for the end-user, but patience is still needed. As with webOS 1.3.5 and webOS 1.4, the version of webOS 1.4.1 that was pushed to users was different than the version distributed earlier to developers. While it’s not a major difference, the numerical difference is enough that the patches the WebOS Internals crew had prepped for release were no longer registered.

AUPT works like this: A log of your installed patches is stored on the device, when you perform a webOS update, Preware then references that log and redownloads the patches. If a patch hasn’t yet been ported to the new webOS version, then a dummy placeholder patch is downloaded merely to stand in place for when the update is made available. When the different version of webOS 1.4.1 was shipped and users attempted to reapply patches before they had been reverified, they simply downloaded a bunch of placeholders. A word of advice: don’t panic and doctor your phone the next time webOS is updated and none of your patches work. It takes time for the patches to be checked against the new version, and even then your favorite patch may end up broken.

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Some months ago, developers created and released a number of patches for the Pre that were meant to speed it up in various ways (known as CPU scaling and SmartReflex) beyond its standard 500 MHz processor speed. Unfortunately, the patches were somewhat unstable, and caused a number of users (myself included) to brick their Pres to the point of needing to run webOS Doctor and restore their Pres to factory status before they could be used. These patches were also incompatible with more recent updates to webOS, and are not recommended (as indicated by the “Dangerous” category into which they’ve been put in Preware).

Over the past couple of weeks, though, there have been a series of forum posts describing and demonstrating new methods for accelerating the Pre that seem to be much more stable than the earlier efforts.

UPDATE: caj208 has provided some important additional detail about the development effort and extensive testing process for these patches and scripts, which may address many potential users’ concerns. Definitely read his comments below for the full scoop. If you’re not following caj208’s webOS development efforts, you really should be.
 

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We’re all aware webOS 1.4 is coming soon. Ever since CES it’s been dangling in front of us, just out of reach. Thankfully, in the time we’ve been waiting, the fantastic "Auto Update Patch Technology" (AUPT) was released, in both Preware and WebOS Quick Install. The basic idea behind AUPT: you don’t need to remove your patches before you update webOS.

However not many people actually know what that will mean when the update happens. Thankfully, by nature of the AUPT scripts’ versatility, there many ways to deal with an over-the-air update.

So here’s the scenario: you’ve just updated to 1.4. What now? The most straight-forward way is to go into Preware or WOSQI and go into the patches area and hit the "Update All" button.

For your patches that are available for 1.4, they’ll be updated to the current 1.4-equivalent patch on the feed. And for the patches that haven’t been updated for 1.4, the update wil install a "dummy" package. "Dummy" packages are just that; they do nothing and contain nothing. The point of "dummy" packages is that when the patch eventually does get ported to 1.4, you see it in the "Available Updates" section. Clever, eh.

Of course, updating patches works fine with the webOS-patches feed, but what about patches not on the feed. Patch files installed via WebOS Quick Install are on the AUPT system, but of course, the process is a bit different.

Open WOSQI after the update and go into the Tweaks section. The version change will be detected and a special Update Helper will popup. All .patch files installed via WOSQI will be removed and reinstalled if it can be successfully reapplied. In addition, any on-feed patches that haven’t been updated for 1.4 will be updated as well. Two birds with one stone.

And lest we forget, it’s worth noting that you can adjust for OTA updates the manual way. The AUPT scripts are strong enough that after an update, you can simply uninstall each patch via WOSQI or Preware without error, and then reinstall the 1.4 equivalent. Lastly, if you haven’t updated to the latest version of Preware, you really ought to.

Currently, it seems that almost 30% of those polled don’t trust AUPT. That’s really unfortunate, as countless weeks and months were put forward freely by many many developers to make sure everything works well. Thankfully the 1.4 OTA update experience should help assure users for updates after that.

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Interested in Homebrew apps or patching? The single best way to start is with WebOS Quick Install. A few days later than expected, WebOS Quick Install v3.0 has been released (well, technically 3.01, but who’s counting)! This update brings along with it many user-requested enhancements and several long-overdue updates. Here are the more important items from the change log:

- added support for AUPT
- added update checker
- fixed issue where patch settings were saved to a wrong directory
- added patch updating on Online Repository tab
- fixed "This is a webOS application." nametags in Device Management
- added dynamic webOSDoctor downloader
- fixed issue preventing webOSDoctor jar detection

First and foremost the big change brought with v3.0 is that patch updating in WebOS Quick Install has been overhauled to conform to the current AUPT format. If an update is available, it’ll show as such on the Online Repositiory tab of the Tweaks section. Best yet, with AUPT, you won’t need to uninstall patches prior to webOS updates.

Also notable is that WebOS Quick Install now periodically checks for updates, so you won’t need to keep checking the forum thread for version changes. In addition, the webOSDoctor downloader has been updated so it’ll always download the current webOSDoctor for your devices.

The full change log, download link, and the rest of the details can be found in the official PreCentral forums thread.

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Preware Main Screen

Preware is a free Homebrew Installer from WebOS Internals for your Palm Pre or Pixi. Preware lets you download Homebrew Apps, patches, and themes directly to your phone. Once Preware is installed you do not need to be connected to a computer because Preware does it’s magic "Over The Air."

In a few minutes you will have access to hundreds of free Homebrew Applications, Patches, and Themes right from your phone!

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