The Palm Pre 2 will soon be available from Verizon Wireless (can be pre-ordered now), but the HP Pre 3 is the WebOS smartphone that truly represents the new beginning for WebOS as far as embracing mobile professionals is concerned.

Where the Pre 2 offers a 3.1-inch HVGA screen, the Pre 3 offers a 3.6-inch WVGA screen. That’s in line with other smartphones targeting mobile professionals. Other key specs include a 1.4GHz Snapdragon processor, 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and 720p HD video recording, VGA front-facing camera, 512MB RAM, as well as 8/16GB internal memory. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi Wireless-N, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR as well as Wi-Fi Mobile HotSpot functionality for up to five devices. The HP Pre 3 also offers dual-mic noise cancellation for improved voice quality.

If you happen to buy the HP TouchPad, the Pre 3 will offer Touch-to-share with that device. HP says you’ll be able to simply tap your Pre 3 phone to the TouchPad to share Web addresses between devices. A Touchstone charger that is sold separately also supports WebOS 2.0′s Exhibition feature, which lets you use specifically designed apps while charging the phone (such as accessing the phone’s calendar). Additionally, the HP Pre 3′s Web browser supports Flash Player 10.1 beta.

Read the full story on Info Sync World

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• Palm Pre 2 vs. HP Pre 3: what’s changed? (engadget.com)

Bluetooth · Flash Player 10.1 · Graphic display resolutions · HP Pre 3 · Palm Pre 2 · PalmPre · Snapdragon · VerizonWireless · WebOS · Wi-Fi

Nearly four months since the initial “in the coming months” Pre 2 announcement, the long-delayed Verizon Pre 2 will finally hits the market today, February 10th.

This quiet bit of news, straight from the mouth of Jon Rubinstein via yesterdays webOS event, is especially ironic considering that the long-awaited iPhone 4 hits Verizon stores on the exact same day. No word as of yet on pricing but last week’s reported $100 on 2-yr contract figure seems to be just about right. It’s unclear whether or not the free wi-fi hotspot feature found on the existing Pre Plus and Pixi Plus will be maintained with the Pre 2.

Read the full story on Palm Info Center

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• No Web OS 2.0 for Palm Pre, Pixi, or Plus devices (venturebeat.com)

Hewlett-Packard · iPhone 4 · Jon Rubinstein · palm pixi · Palm Pre 2 · PalmPre · Verizon · Verizon Communications · WebOS

HP has explained how it is going to develop the WebOS platform after it acquired smartphone manufacturer Palm.

HP has now announced that it will be integrating the WebOS platform into some of its other product lines, including network printers. This means that smartphones will no longer be the only devices powered by the WebOS platform.

“You’ve now got a whole series of web-connected printers and as they connect to the web you need an OS. We prefer to have that OS, in our case, be our IP where we can control the customer experience,” said HP’s Mark Hurd during a conference this week.

Read the full story on top10

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• HP wants Palm OS for Web-connected printers, Hurd says (infoworld.com)

Customer experience · Handhelds · HewlettPackard · Mark Hurd · Operating system · Palm OS · Smartphone · WebOS

PreCentral is running a piece from an anonymous tipster which includes a few screenshots and some brief initial impressions of the AT&T Pre Plus. The Pre Plus in question is running WebOS 1.4.2 and the AT&T Pre Plus is reportedly subjectively faster than the similar Verizon Pre Plus.

Barring any last-minute surprise spec bumps, the only two major remaining unknown factors are the devices’ release date and pricing. Speculation for the AT&T webOS launch has ranged from May 10th per FCC documentation research to the 14th to the 16th. At any rate, it appears nearly certain that the official AT&T launch for the WebOS twins is imminent at some point later this month.

Source: Palm Info Center

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• AT&T will release the Palm Pre Plus and the 3G MicroCell on May 16 (mobilecrunch.com)

at&t · AT&T Pre Plus · Federal Communications Commission · PalmPre · Pre Plus · PreCentral · Video Games · WebOS

Verizon Wireless will today be rolling out the latest version of Palm’s webOS, version 1.4.1 to the Palm Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus. The update will be delivered sometime today and it comes with a number of bug fixes and new features.

Source: Geeky gadgets

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• Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus Coming to AT&T (mashable.com)

Handhelds · Palm OS · palm pixi · Palm Pre · Palm Pre Plus · Pixi Plus · Verizon Wireless · WebOS

Lenovo – with Huawei and ZTE reportedly out of the picture – may be the most likely to bid for ailing smartphone-maker Palm, according to a report. Palm, meanwhile, insists it can still be just fine on its own – thank you very much – but would consider licensing out its webOS platform. Palm is also working on new smartphones to complement the Pre and Pixi.

HTC, Nokia, Motorola and Research in Motion have all been named as companies that might benefit from purchasing smartphone-maker Palm, which has struggled for some time to keep a foothold in the market it initially helped create.

However, an April 23 Reuters reported finds that Lenovo appears to be the most likely candidate to place a bid.

Source: eWeek.

Handhelds · HTC Corporation · Huawei · Lenovo · Nokia · Palm OS · Smartphone · WebOS

CNN Money has an interview with Palm’s CEO; here are some of the highlights:

The conventional wisdom is that Palm has blown it and either is going to run out of money or get sold or both.

Clearly we’ve hit a speed bump. No question about it. It’s really disappointing, and it’s frustrating. But, the company has tremendous assets.  We’ve got a great team we’ve built over the last couple of years.  Remember this whole thing was a transformation story.  It  wasn’t like we took something that was working and didn’t run it well.  We started off with a company that had no future, and we have been transforming it. We have arguably the best mobile operating system out there. It’s clearly the easiest to use and has the most intuitive user interface. We’ve got good products that get critical acclaim.  It’s in its early stages still, but we’ve got great quality of apps, and new apps coming all the time.  By the time you get this published, we’ll have commerce going in Europe, which is a big milestone for us.  We’ve got good relationships with carriers.

We’ve got all those things going for us, and what we need to do is get more commercial success and get to scale.  And that’s going to take longer than we’d hoped, obviously, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get there.  We do have $590 million in the bank, and we have a plan that carries this company forward. Now, we need to be frugal and we need to invest in those areas that have the best return for us, but when I read that we’re going out of business or our stock is worth zero or those kinds of things, it defies logic to me.

One Wall Street analyst says the [Palm] webOS no longer is a major differentiator because there are enough good mobile operating systems. You obviously disagree.

I would disagree.  Look, webOS, has all the capabilities you’d expect from a world-class smart phone. It does email and messaging. It does Web browsing and video capture.  And then it has some things that most don’t have: capabilities to share and edit video, and immersive 3D gaming.  There’s a whole list of things that you’d expect the top tier to have, and we have those all in webOS. Then we have additional things, like real multitasking. So, if you’re playing 3D games and you want to go check your calendar or email, you can just switch between tasks and come back to your game.  And then if you have multitasking, you really need unobtrusive notifications so that when you’re doing something you can get a notification of what’s going on in the world without interrupting what you’re working on.  We also have a feature called Synergy that gives users the ability to have a single view of their data from various sources in the cloud, from Facebook and LinkedIn and Exchange and Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO). We have universal search, so you just start typing, which goes back to Palm’s original DNA of really minimizing the number of steps you have to take to accomplish it. And it goes on and on.

Please forgive the downer questions, but here’s another …

That’s okay, go ahead.  I’m bummed out too, by things like not taking off at Verizon.  One of the analysts on our earnings call asked if we had launched when Droid launched, and Droid launched when [we] launched at Verizon, would the story have been opposite?  I said I think we have a better product than Droid, and customers would have been happier with it.

Was it a mistake to debut with Sprint in the first place?

Hindsight is always 20/20, but you have to understand that we had a long-term relationship with Sprint. Sprint wanted to do an aggressive launch on webOS.  They were willing to invest significant marketing dollars.   But the quid pro quo for that is that we had to do an exclusive with Sprint. Now, if I sit today and I kind of roll back the clock and go, okay, now if I could have launched in October with Verizon, and done a shorter exclusive with Sprint, and the world would be completely different today, yeah, I mean, that’s easy to say. But you don’t know these things at the time. And Sprint has been a really good partner for Palm.  They continue to be a really good partner for Palm.

Business · Handhelds · Palm · Palm OS · Sprint · Sprint Nextel · Verizon · WebOS

Verizon slashed the cost of its 3G Mobile Hotspot feature for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus all the way down to $0, effectively giving you a broadband modem for your laptop, iPod touch, and up to three other devices for $60 less per month than you’d pay with a MiFi that accomplishes exactly the same function (and $50 less than any other tether-capable Verizon handset). Here’s Verizon’s official statement on the matter:
“Customers who purchase or upgrade to a Palm Pre and Palm Pixi will get the Mobile Hotspot for free. Existing customers who already have the service will find charges on their next bill will be $0.00.”
Add that in to the fact that the Pre Plus is now $49.99 and the Pixi Plus is now $29.99, both with buy-one-get-one-free deals tacked on.

Source: Engadget

3G Mobile Hotspot · MiFi · palm pixi · Palm Pre · PixiPlus · Pre Plus · Verizon · WebOS

AT&T announced this week that it is going to be offering the Palm Pre Plus in the coming months. This model was on display at the CTIA tradeshow this week, and Bright Hand has a preview for the phone. Here are some of the highlights:
AT&T’s version of this device isn’t going to be dramatically different from the one Verizon released in January. What makes it significant is that it will bring the webOS to a third wireless carrier in the U.S. The Pre Plus offers a 3.1-inch, HVGA, capacitive touchscreen, HSPA 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a sliding keyboard. It is a decent device, but would be better if it had a larger keyboard.

at&t · CTIA · Model · Palm Pre · Palm Pre Plus · United States · Verizon · WebOS

Palm could be asking a fan of its Pre mobile and webOS platform for advice after he made a professional-looking ad for the phone that many believe to be superior to the official campaign. His labour of love has already gained plenty of attention on social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter and has been attracting thousands of hits on YouTube.

Facebook · Online Communities · PalmPre · Social network service · Social Networking · Twitter · WebOS · YouTube