The Pixi. Palm’s second webOS based phone launched on Sprint back in September with relatively little fanfare, and while there’s plenty of great information (including our very own in-depth review) covering the phone, there’s only one way to truly assess a device – and that’s to get it in your hands for at least a week, if not more.

For the first time since I began writing for PreCentral back in September, I was able to do just that, and go hands-on with the Pixi for a little over 7 days. I had the phone right on the cusp of the webOS 1.4 update, which made the overall experience much more interesting (and enlightening!), significantly changing my outlook on the device midway through my evaluation.

How was a week with the Pixi from a Pre owner’s perspective? Read on to find out.

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

The big day is here, Palm Pre Overclockers: new custom 720MHz and 800MHz Linux kernels have been released by unixpsycho and caj2008. As you can see from the demo and installation instructions video above by SqyArc, the results have been quite amazing for some users. This new version of overclocking is purportedly faster and potentially safer than previous methods of speeding up webOS – but as always with overclocking it’s caveat emptor. 

After going through a strict, detailed private testing phase (80 tester with 1.3.5.1 release, and then 40 testers with the new 1.4.0 release), unixpsycho and caj2008 have determined that they believe this overclocking method doesn’t result in excess heat. Caj tells us that heat problems actually can happen at any CPU frequency and that one especially hot time is when a Pre downloads massive 3D games after a wipe.

So what’s the downside? Well, it’s a generally accepted fact that overclocking will cut down the life of your device by some amount. There’s no real long term testing, so exact figures are a mystery. There could also be some warranty-voiding action in your future. Overclocking any device also often tends to go hand-in-hand with a reduction in OS stability (though we can’t say if that will be the case here). In addition, battery life has been observed to get a 2-4% hit. If you do decide to go ahead with overclocking of any sort, do it smartly. The homebrew BatteryMonitor app can give a temperature value of the battery, which will allow you to monitor how how you’re letting your Pre get. If your devices gets too hot, let it cool down, or slow down on usage. Though really, that advice goes for non-overclock users too. 

Still here? Then head on into the forums and see the feedback, which ranges from mildly pleased to ecstatic.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

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.

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

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?

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Oh, daylight savings time changes.  You wreak havok on our sleep schedules and evidently, our phones. A number of users (this blogger included) have been experiencing odd behavior from their phones with today’s time change.

One bug users are noticing is that the time displayed in the top bar is different than that of what’s shown on the lock screen and in the clock app.  The issue doesn’t appear to be affecting the  functionality of the core PIM apps, as calendar entries and emails are all showing the correct time stamp.  The other issue being reported is less benign, and users in this forum thread are finding that calendar entries are shifting a full hour ahead of the actual time – a major inconvenience to be sure.  

Toggling airplane mode or performing a reset has been found to remedy the issue in both cases for some, though the issues have persisted for most of those who have been experiencing them. 

So while we get to the bottom of what might be causing this, let us know in the comments: have you experienced any DST bugs today?

Thanks to everyone that sent this in!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

@palm and PreCentral reader dantex both let us know that Palm webOS devices on Telcel’s network in Mexico can now get webOS 1.4.  In just under a week Palm has managed to release webOS 1.4 for all devices on all networks – a significant feat given all the complications of carrier testing and given that there are technically five different webOS hardware types out there (CDMA Pre, CDMA Pre Plus, CDMA Pixi, CDMA Pixi Plus, GSM Pre). Palm has also released the webOS 1.4 SDK and the webOS doctor for 1.4 in the same span.

The wait is now on for the next revision of webOS – many are hoping for a small ‘point’ upgrade to fix some bugs that appear to have cropped up in 1.4 – including phone freezes, bluetooth compatibility (especially with cars), email bugs (setup screen popping up), Luna crashes, mysterious battery drain, volume pop-ups, and more. Yeah, that’s a long list of bugs and it’s tough to say which are universal and which are per-user flukes – but our official webOS 1.4 issues thread is up to 83 pages and we’ve gotten emails aplenty on the above, so we’re sure some of them are real.

So kudos to Palm for getting 1.4 through all the carriers, now let’s kill some bugs.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Coming soon to the webOS App Catalog will be version 1.5 of Pivotal Labs’ popular Twitter client Tweed. As posted on the company blog, Tweed 1.5 will come with integrated TwitVid uploads. It’ll be a beta feature, as webOS in its current form doesn’t have any mechanisms for retrying failed uploads (which can happen with large files like videos over cellular, so Pivotal Labs recommends you do video uploads over Wi-Fi). A demonstration video has been already posted to TwitVid.

Tweed 1.5 will come with a number of other changes and fixes, including updates to the Load More feature, external links, and notifications. Additionally, the price of Tweed is going to be temporarily cut from $2.99 to $0.99. This is due to problems with the free version (Tweed Trial), on which development was stopped with version 0.9.16. Changes made with webOS 1.4 rendered Tweed Trial inoperative, so Pivotal Labs is going to withdraw the app and will temporarily reduce the price of the full Tweed to $0.99 to allow for an easy upgrade path for Tweed Trial users.

Thanks to Bassam and miles4000 for the tips!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Several Canadian readers have let us know that Canadians are finally able to download and install webOS 1.4 on the Bell network. Y’all may have had to wait to record video for a few days longer, but you did beat us at hockey, so we guess we’ll call it even?

Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Verizon Pre Plus and Pixi Plus owners are reporting that 1.4 brought with it (along with the already documented additions and enhancements) the ability to change the default Web search engine for the browser and for Universal Search. Once this option is changed in the Browser preferences menu, Google is replaced with the proper Bing logo in Universal Search. We’ve only been hearing these reports from Verizon users so far – inexplicitly, everyone else  has Google as the only option in the default search engine field.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>