Listings for several new devices have appeared in Verizon’s inventory database and been leaked courtesy of a phoneArena tipster. While the handsets include the BlackBerry Storm 2, HTC Touch Pro2 (XV6875) and Samsung Omnia II, all of which we’ve known for some time will be arriving on the network, also mentioned are the Palm P101 and Palm P121.
Since the release of the Palm Pre, analysts have been all over it. For the better and the worse, as it turns out no one can figure out whether or not the Pre is making any kind of headway in the market, if its being returned at alarming rates or not, or if people are even happy with their devices. Either way, the Pre isn’t the only device coming down the pipeline wielding the webOS, but according to those pesky analysts, it’s looking like the Eos might not be showing itself until 2010.
Palm have announced their Q4 and full-year 2009 financial results [pdf link], covering the period up to the end of May 29th. Palm chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein revealed full-year revenues of $735.9m and gross profit of $159.8m; he went on to describe the launch of the Palm Pre and webOS shortly after the period finished as when the company “officially reentered the race”. That’s good news, because while smartphone shipments in Q4 rose 6-percent from Q3, year-over-year decline for the quarter was a huge 62-percent.
Digging through the leaked webOS ROM has confirmed that the Palm “Pixie” is in development, but that doesn’t mean that the device – believed to be the Palm Eos - will actually launch any time soon. According to TechCrunch’s sources in Asia, Palm are waiting to see how Pre sales continue before green-lighting the Eos project.
After the cut, how the Pre’s “complicated mechanical design” impacted availability
Palm’s webOS ROM has only been in the wild for a matter of hours, and already the first homebrew apps are showing up. A developer going by scm6079 has put together a test app that displays a simple “Hello World!” message and runs a five-second timer; meanwhile others are trying to disable the Pre’s otherwise unassailable camera shutter sound. Meanwhile, there’s also talk of a third device codename (after “castle”, the Pre, and “pixie”, the Eos), as the ROM apparently contains reference to “zepfloyd”.
Palm’s “webOS Reset Doctor”, the tool intended to be used to reflash broken or bricked Palm Pre handsets, has leaked, and with it the full webOS ROM. Intended only for internal use, the ROM has already been cracked over in the PreCentral forums, and it’s throwing up not only some interesting tidbits about Palm’s intentions for the Pre but about the rumored Eos second device said to be launching later this year.
Mention has been found in the code of both “castle”, assumed to be the Pre’s internal codename, and “pixie”, which has previously been tipped as the codename for the Eos. Palm have never hidden the fact that the Pre is to be the first device of many to use webOS, but the presence of “pixie” in this first-gen code does seem to suggest that the handset is set to arrive sooner rather than later.
It’s been another week dominated by cellphones here at SlashGear, with our exclusive review of the HTC Touch Diamond2 plus plenty of news from the rival Android smartphone camp. The HTC Magic launched on Vodafone Spain, but we were more interested in the Samsung I7500, a super-skinny slice of 5-megapixel Android loveliness. Check out the live demo video here.
Palm is just full of surprises. According to information over at PhoneNews, Sprint insiders are now saying that the Palm Eos will be making its way to Sprint by the time summer rolls around. Note, this is a CDMA carrier, as opposed to a GSM one.
That means we’ll see EVDO Revision A instead of HSPA for 3G on the Eos on Sprint. Beyond this development, we don’t know much more, like what other carriers might possibly be getting their hands on the device.
The Palm Eos is set to be the Palm Pre with fewer features. It’ll have a set keyboard, a 2.6-inch screen, 4GB of storage and Wi-Fi will be missing. The price tag is estimated around $99, hitting home in the budget market.
Hot on the heels of the tiny, blurred preview shot of the second webOS smartphone comes this, a far more impressive render of what’s said to be the Palm Eos. A quadband GSM/HSDPA candybar headed to AT&T, the Palm Eos has a 2.63-inch 320 x 400 capacitive touchscreen, 2-megapixel camera and measures just 10.6mm thick.
An image believed to be of Palm’s upcoming second webOS smartphone has leaked, and while both small and blurry it nonetheless suggests that the handset will have a Centro-style form-factor. Unlike the Pre, the hardware keyboard of which is on a slide-out section under the display, this new smartphone is a candybar with the QWERTY ‘board fixed under the gesture area.
Recent rumors claimed that another Palm device that would be smaller than the Pre was “very far along” in development, and would likely be launched this year. According to the source of this new image, that timescale is narrowed down to fall 2009, although no specifications or details regarding the device were forthcoming.
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