Palm Pre - SlashGear

Posts Tagged ‘Palm Pre’

Palm 2009 financial results: “Save us Pre!”

By Chris Davies on Friday, Jun 26th 2009 No Comments

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.

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Pre App Catalog passes 1m downloads mark 18 days in

By Chris Davies on Thursday, Jun 25th 2009 No Comments

Palm have notched up one-million downloads from their App Catalog just eighteen days into the public availability of the Pre. The figures, which have been collated by analyst Medialets rather than from Palm themselves, suggest that the estimated 150,000 Pre users have each downloaded 6-7 apps each.

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Pre apps installed on non-hacked phone

By Chris Davies on Monday, Jun 22nd 2009 No Comments

Developers playing with Palm’s webOS have discovered a method whereby software can be installed on an unhacked Pre. The system emails a .ipk link to the app, and seemingly takes advantage of a loophole in the platform to bypass Palm’s security.

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Palm respond to iTunes Pre sync threat: ball’s in Apple’s corner

By Chris Davies on Wednesday, Jun 17th 2009 1 Comment

Say what you like about the Pre, Palm aren’t holding back when it comes to positioning their new smartphone in the best possible way. After Apple released a support note warning non-iPod users (e.g. Palm Pre owners) that their ability to sync with iTunes could be broken with future software updates, Palm have described such an action as “a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience.”

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Palm curtail Pre tethering hack to pacify Sprint

By Chris Davies on Monday, Jun 15th 2009 No Comments

Hacking the Pre isn’t just about running Doom on the smartphone: it also promises to unlock currently forbidden functionality such as tethering. The Pre Dev Wiki had been one such team working on that, but after a “polite” warning from Palm themselves have ceased publicly discussing it: it seems Palm is concerned, not that webOS might be modified, but that Sprint may demand the manufacturer step in and prevent users overstepping their contracts.

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SlashGear Week in Review – Week 24 2009

By Chris Davies on Sunday, Jun 14th 2009 2 Comments

After Palm’s big moment last weekend, Apple once again seized the headlines with their WWDC 2009 keynote on Monday morning. We showed up to liveblog the whole announcement, expecting a new smartphone, and the company delivered in the shape of the iPhone 3G S – twice the speed, twice the storage, and the same styling as the iPhone 3G – together with a launch date for iPhone OS 3.0. However, Apple weren’t content with just that: they also brought along a new MacBook Pro range complete with integrated batteries; check out our video unboxing and first-impressions.

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Palm Pre runs Doom [Video]

By Chris Davies on Friday, Jun 12th 2009 1 Comment

palm pre doom A platform can’t really be taken seriously until it runs Doom, and so we’re glad to report that Palm’s webOS has graduated with (almost) flying colors. Software tinkerer Sargun has managed to port the classic game to the Palm Pre, and it carries across “most of the functionality” of the original onto the new smartphone.

To do so, Sargun used the open-source version of Doom, PRDoom, which uses SDL for its rendering backend. That meant he had to rework the game to use webOS’ DirectFB graphics library, something which sounds difficult but which Sargun describes as “actually fairly trivial”.

Video demo after the cut

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Palm Pixie launch fate depends on Pre sales

By Chris Davies on Friday, Jun 12th 2009 No Comments

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.

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After the cut, how the Pre’s “complicated mechanical design” impacted availability

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Seidio extended Palm Pre battery promises roughly double the juice

By Chris Davies on Thursday, Jun 11th 2009 1 Comment

Reviews of the Palm Pre have been generally positive, teething problems notwithstanding, but a common source of complain among reviewers and owners alike is the smartphone’s battery. Accessory manufacturer Seidio are never one to let an opportunity like that slim them by, and so they’ve announced that an extended battery for the Palm Pre, offering nearly twice the capacity of the standard pack, is in development.

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Palm Pre Jailbreak: Sprint activation edited out

By Chris Davies on Thursday, Jun 11th 2009 No Comments

The Pre hacking continues, with what seems to be the first reported Jailbreak of the new Palm handset. Developer Steve Troughton-Smith was in the US for Apple’s WWDC 2009 but was tempted into buying the Palm Pre; since he lives in Ireland, far beyond the reaches of Sprint’s EVDO Rev.A connection, he did the obvious thing and crafted his own hacked webOS firmware bypassing Sprint’s activation process.

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