Five hundred twenty eight days after first landing in the hands of thousands of eager customers across the world, Sprint is done with the Palm Pre. The launch may not have been the blockbuster iPhone-matching success that Sprint and Palm had hoped it would be, but Sprint soldiered on with the Pre as their flagship device for quite a while.

Today we’ve received word from a trusted Sprint source that the end is here for the original Palm Pre, with Sprint marking the device as EOL (End of Life). It’s not a surprise after it already disappeared from their site, but it’s still a blow: we still find that the largest and most loyal webOS contingent lives on Sprint.

Quantities of new Palm Pre phones in Sprint warehouses are very low (we’re talking hundreds of units here), so it shouldn’t be too much longer before the phone is completely sold out.

Those interested in picking up a webOS device on Sprint will be left with the diminutive, underpowered, and Wi-Fi-lacking Palm Pixi. There is no word yet whether or not Sprint will carry the Palm Pre 2, but webOS-fans filling Sprint’s Facebook page (at Palm’s behest, no less) and official forums with requests for the device haven’t appeared to make a dent in Sprint’s decision not to carry the device.

Sprint sat out the Pre Plus, Pixi Plus, and appears primed to sit out the Pre 2. Maybe we just don’t want all our Sprint readers (and staff) to be left out in the cold, but we’d like to think Sprint and HP/Palm won’t make Sprint users wait until next year for another webOS device on their network. In the end, only time will tell.

Thanks Anonymous!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

The original webOS handset, the one that started it all, appears to be headed the way of the dodo, or at least Amelia Earhart. The Sprint Palm Pre, on sale since June 6, 2009 (522 days ago) has vanished from Sprint’s website. While there are still plenty of references to the phone in various pages (it still shows up in a search for Palm), the phone itself cannot be selected for viewing, purchase, or reminiscing. With no new webOS handsets yet announced, or even rumored, for Sprint, any potential webOS conversion will have to pick up a Wi-Fi-less Palm Pixi if they want to be on Sprint. With how much focus Sprint has been putting on Android handsets and their growing 4G WiMax network, we can’t say we’re too surprised to see the original Pre fading quietly into the sunset. But it still makes us sad.

Non-Source: Sprint.com, Thanks to Dan for the tip!

Update: The Pre Plus is gone from Verizon Wireless as well, several readers tell us. That situation is less dire: we’ve seen the Pre Plus popping on and off Verizon’s site for some time now and (more importantly) we know for sure that the Pre 2 is hitting Verizon soon.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

HP’s continuing to use their new consumer property – Palm – in adds for other products. Just recently they launched a new series of printers including an ePrint feature that lets your print photos over the web, from your computer or smartphone. Now before you get excited over that “printing” dialog shown on the screen of the Pre (really, an original Sprint Pre?), we’re going to tamp down your enthusiasm with a dose of “the ad agency did that for effect” realism.

HP’s ePrint system is unique, but it’s not as integrated as the commercial would make it seem. With ePrint the printer is essentially assigned an email address to which you send your file or picture as an attachment, which the printer then takes and prints. So it’s compatible with any device that can send emails with attachments, including webOS devices and every other modern smartphone, and of course all manner of laptops, desktops, and other computing devices. Though we do like the idea of setting our grandparents up with an ePrint printer and just emailing them pictures that will print automatically without their having to fuss with downloading attachments (or checking their email).

The Pixi’s also been also included in an ePrint email sent out to HP customers. Amusingly, HP also features the eStation printer-tablet combo thing in both the commercial (after the break) and the email flyer. We have to wonder which HP will have more (or less) success pushing: old Palm hardware or a quirky hard-to-rationalize hobbled Android tablet and printer device.

Source: YouTube, HP; Thanks to everybody that sent these in!

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Palm Pre owners have been enjoying ridiculous overclocking benefits for some time now, while our Pixi-toting friends have been left to look in from the outside. Thanks to the work of WebOS Internals, that’s changing, with the possibility of the 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7627 processor hitting up to 900MHz. This is all thanks to, of all groups, the Android community’s hacking of the LG Ally, which uses the same processor. Who says we can’t all just get along?

Rod Whitby of WebOS Internals let us know that they’re still working on getting the overclocked Pixi kernel up to its full potential, but a recent teaser screenshot posted on their Twitter feed shows they’ve already broken the 800MHz barrier. Homebrew developer WartHog Kernel is taking the lead on development, which bodes well for the Pixi kernel. Further testing is in order, and for that more Pixi devices are needed.

As always, WebOS Internals provides all of their awesome kernels, services, and patches free of charge to the community, relying on your donations to stay in business. In particular, they’re looking for donations to help finance the purchase of a few Pixi devices to give the new kernel a thorough testing. So if you haven’t donated before (or are a Pixi owner with dreams of overclocking dancing through your head), head on over and give a few bucks to further the awesomeness they bring.

Thanks to Rod for the heads up!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

The tall portrait touchscreen has become a mainstay of the modern smartphone. When manufacturers wanted to add a keyboard, they made it a slider, either vertical like the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Torch or horizontal like the Motorola Droid 2, T-Mobile G2, and all manner of Android devices. But mixing the keyboard in without a slider was a recipe for a smaller/shorter screen, like the Palm Pixi, all manner of BlackBerry devices, and a smattering of Android phones.

That changes now, with the introduction of the Motorola Droid Pro. As you can guess from the Droid branding, this new phone resides on Verizon. There’s nothing particularly special about that (except for Verizon’s special and somewhat corrupted love for Android), what’s different is the form factor: tall portrait screen with attached non-slider keyboard. This sucker comes with a 3.1-inch screen (same size as the Pre) overtop a keyboard that looks like it was lifted off of a BlackBerry.

Stuffed inside is a 1GHz processor, 2GB storage (really, that’s it?), a 2GB microSD card, and a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash. Otherwise it’s a fairly typical Android 2.2 phone, if you can get your head (and hands) around the shape – it’s right around 4 ½ inches tall. There’s one spot where we are jealous: this sucker’s a world phone. If you’re not familiar with what that means, we won’t fault you, as it’s not something we’ve heard a lot of in webOS land: a phone with both CDMA and GSM radios. The idea is that you can use it on your CDMA network in the US of A, and then when you head out to places where CDMA roaming doesn’t happen (i.e. the world outside of the United States) you can slap in a SIM card for some international calling and internets.

If that’s not to your fancy, Motorola’s got another phone in line for you, so long as you (1) like Android and (2) live in Brazil. The GSM-powered Pre-sized vertical slider smartphone is called the Motorola Spice, and was designed and built in Brazil, with that country as the target market for the phone. It runs Android 2.1 with MOTOBLUR (yay.) and is packed with fairly ho-hum hardware: a 528 MHz processor, 512MB storage plus whatever you can fit via microSD, a 3 megapixel camera, and a 3-inch 240×320 screen.

So, two new portrait keyboard-toting Android phones, one with hardware outclassed by the aging Pre, the other with hardware that handily outclasses the Pre, plus some goodies we don’t yet have on our webOS devices. Anybody tempted, or is the promise of new webOS phones enough to keep you in the Palm camp

Source: Android Central [Droid Pro, Spice]

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

While HP may be the biggest consumer PC seller out there, they’re also tops when it comes to business purchases. We’re talking both big corporate and small shop buys – this is what we in the business refer to as “diversification” and “scale,” wherein HP is capable of selling their products to large and small groups across multiple industries and revenue levels.

With such scale, we’re pleased to see HP using their multitudinous business contacts to push webOS. In fact, not that long ago the HP’s “Small Business Education Series” email newsletter heavily and exclusively featured Palm smartphones. Very smartly, the email focused on the benefits of webOS, noting:

• webOS multi-tasks like no other. HP was sure to put emphasis on flicking between “apps & docs,” as business users don’t just care about multi-tasking with browsers and games.
• You can add up to sixteen email accounts. Yeah, we didn’t think about that either, but we can see how some small businesses can have multiple accounts (sales@, support@, admin@, etc) with one person managing them all.
• Touchstone!
• Wireless cloud syncing magics, otherwise known as Synergy. No need to plug in, unless you want to transfer files, that is.
• “Zero-touch IT support,” as in Palm manages for you the security “from the server, to the cloud, to your phone. Simple.” Granted, that’s a big of an over-simplification, but we’ll allow it.

And then there’s noting that every Palm phone, be it a Pre, and Pixi, or a Plus variant of either, is available for free on your choice of major American cellular carriers (excepting T-Mobile, of course). And the oh so lucrative accessories too, like the above mentioned Touchstone charger, fancy colorful backs for the Pixi, and the requisite cables, batteries, and Palm-branded cases. Though we’ll take the opportunity here to point you to our own PreCentral accessory store for that – we’ve got a bit more diversity and scale in that department.

Source: HP

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Sometimes we see a Pre, sometimes a Pixi… but both? In the same scene? Right next to each other? Unheard of, at least until now. It was the pilot episode of the new television series The Defenders on CBS that brought this crazy random happenstance, and we even get to see the Sprint Pre running a native UI (unsure what’s going on in with the motion-blurred Pixi). Granted, the show’s producers took some liberties to and made the phone’s background appear to be a super-huge-letters text message (and what’s this, a missed call?), but we’ll give them a bit on artistic license there. But here’s a question… why’s Jim Belushi the one with the Pixi?

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: CBS.com; Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Earlier this month Sprint finally got with the price drop program for the Palm Pre ($50) and Pixi (free), but they still resided in the land of $100 mail-in rebates. 

No more for the Pixi, which now sports an instat web rebate in lieu of the Mail-in rebate. It’s featured in an email with three feature-phones, which is a little sad from a positioning standpoint – but given that the Sprint Pixi lacks WiFi, we suppose we can understand. In any case, it’s a phone that some of us guys would be caught dead with, so good to see it’s free.

Source: Sprint; Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

We’ve been covering alternatives to iTunes for Pre/Pixi music syncing since Apple finally defeated Palm’s efforts to spoof iTunes into supporting the Pre, and we just got word of the latest version of another fine choice. Version 1.8 of Songbird, a free player for Windows, OS X and Linux, has just graduated from beta, and is available for download at the Songbird Web site.

Although the release notes for this latest version discuss the new devices it supports (Storm, Evo, Magic, etc.), Songbird has officially supported the Pre since last December, and the current version continues that support. With video, playlists, and syncing all built in, Songbird is definitely worth a look for your music and media management.

Source: Songbird (Thanks to rmausser in our forum for the heads-up!)

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>