France is running around crazy with their new telephones today, all jumping into the air, swinging around signposts, falling down into train station holes. Why? Because today is the day they get their Palm Pre 2, launched on the SFR network. The pricing is between € 99.90 on contract and on up to € 399.90 off-contract. This lovely little device is rocking the P102UEU, which means it’s a wild animal.
This Palm Pre 2 has a AZERTY keyboard, which, if you’re not familiar with, is very similar to the QWERTY you’re used to, but a bunch of the keys are switched around to be more friendly to the French dictionary. This French version is also working on European 3G bands, which means that between these two rather important factoids, it seems that it’d be much to the benefit of developers, unlocker hackers, and crazy people who cannot wait a single moment until they have the newest device to wait that extra amount of time and get the US version when they can.
And just like that, the rumor mill smirks. HP has just come clean with a device that we’ve been hearing more and more about over the past few weeks, and with it will come the next generation of webOS that we’ve been hearing about for even longer. The Palm Pre 2 will be the first device to ship with HP webOS 2.0, with the revamped and renamed (presumably to use on more than just Palm smartphones) mobile OS promising “true multitasking,” Stacks (for organizing apps) Just Type, HP Synergy (links your email and social networking accounts), Exhibition (enabling users to run apps designed specifically for the Palm Touchstone Charging Dock) and support for Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1 Beta. It’s also bringing along a new Favorites tagging option, Skype Mobile (on the Verizon version only), text assist, integrated Quickoffice, VPN support, a redesigned launcher and full support for Bluetooth keyboards and SPP peripherals.
As for Pre 2 itself? Little is being revealed at the moment, but we’re told to expect a 1GHz CPU, a five megapixel camera (LED flash, extended depth of field, geotagging, and video capture), glass display and a “sleeker, streamlined design” that still combines a touchpanel with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. In other words, it’s a faster, slimmer Pre, and some would argue it’s what the Pre Plus should’ve been. At any rate, SFR customers in France will get first dibs on Friday, with Verizon and an undisclosed carrier in Canada scheduled to get it “in the coming months.” Oh, and as for US-based developers? They’ll be able to purchase unlocked UMTS versions of the Pre 2 (!) in their homeland, though pricing remains elusive.
Update: The Pre 2 portal is now live, showcasing a 3.1-inch 480 x 320 (HVGA) multitouch display, a black enclosure, Exchange support, built-in GPS, ambient light / proximity sensors, an accelerometer, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 16GB of inbuilt storage space, a battery good for around 5.5 hours of talking and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
It seems like we’re getting closer and closer to the arrival of the Palm Pre 2 and webOS 2.0, and it looks like Verizon will be in the mix — we were just sent this image of Big Red’s internal VZLearn portal showing Pre 2 device training. We still don’t know when it’ll actually hit or what pricing will be like, and we don’t know if it’ll hit Sprint and AT&T as well like the OG Pre, but we’re guessing we’ll find out soon enough — keep a sharp eye, we’ll let you know.
The questions swirling around the upcoming unveiling of the Palm Pre 2, or Mansion (or something else entirely) haven’t been about whether or not the device exists, but what the features would be. What would be the defining characteristic of the next webOS-based device, that would make the customers fall in line for its release? [...]
Palm’s new webOS smartphone looks to be another step closer to launch, with the European 3G/UMTS version crossing the FCC as the Palm P102UEU. Tipped to be Europe’s Palm Pre 2, the test results apparently suggest a slider with very similar aesthetics to the existing Pre (since the two share the same part number for the Touchstone-compatible battery cover) and a 1GHz processor.
The news follows a sighting of the Palm P102UNA and Palm P102EWW in a European test database last month, which were believed to be North American versions of the same device for GSM and CDMA networks respectively. The FCC filing adds another tidbit about the battery, which at 1,150mAh is the same capacity as the existing Pre power pack.
HP recent said that the company expects to launch new webOS smartphones in early 2011, but it’s unclear whether this particular refresh is the device in question. There are also rumors of the Palm Mansion, tipped to be a touchscreen-only handset with a larger, WVGA resolution display.
Two weeks ago you’d have to pay an Australian importer for a specialized USB key. Four days ago open-source software let you roll your own. Today, there’s no need for any of that — you can hack your PS3 with a tethered smartphone. Working closely with the PSGroove team, hacker Kakaroto adapted the same jailbreak to the Nokia N900, and the open-source community lost no time porting it to the Palm Pre as well. If the videos after the break are any indication, both versions work just as well as the original, and you too can get your game on with downloads and detailed instructions at the source links below.
Sadly, the aforementioned Australian importer OzModChips is a casualty of this little story, with all its shipments of the PS Jailbreak dongle seized (and the item subject to injunction) by an Australian court, but we suppose knowing its product has enabled the hardware hacking community thus might somewhat soften the blow.
We feel your pain: you love your BlackBerry at work and your iPhone for personal use, but as hardware goes, nothing gets your motor running quite like the Pre’s pebble-esque shell. Trust us, we’ve all been there! Well, a new clone out of China seeks solve all your technological woes by combining an iOS-inspired user interface and the Pre’s body — with an iPhone home button thrown in for good measure, of course — and when the time comes to throw on the suit and tie and head to work, you can switch the UI over to BlackBerry mode. As far as we can tell, it still functions like an iOS clone here, but at least the skin will remind you of the good ol’ Bold days. Looks like you can’t buy this thing online, but considering how well the software works in most of these things, it’s probably for the best.
WebOS device hacking has reach some considerable heights recently with a mod to bring WiFi to a Sprint Palm Pixi, but it looks like even that’s now been topped by this hack that finally brings the Pre Plus to Sprint. As you can probably guess, that involves a Sprint Palm Pre, a Pre Plus (from either AT&T or Verizon), a slew of software tweaking, and plenty of tricky hardware modding to get the Sprint Pre coms board into the Pre Plus. Will it actually work? We can’t say we’ve gone so far as to try the mod ourselves, but PreCentral forum member livinofframen says his modded phone behaves perfectly, right down to the stock Sprint applications. Hit up the link below for the complete details to try it yourself — at your own risk, of course.
HP can’t get a break lately, with Friday’s news that CEO Mark Hurd had been asked to resign amid allegations of sexual harassment not only prompting a significant ditch in their share price but scorn from at least one high-profile name in the industry. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison spared no feelings in his comments to the NYT, describing the HP board as having made “the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.” Meanwhile, HP has lost another significant name from the Palm team, with Peter Skillman – VP of design at Palm, and responsible for the Pre’s design – leaving the company.
“The H.P. board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago. That decision nearly destroyed Apple and would have if Steve hadn’t come back and saved them. In losing Mark Hurd, the H.P. board failed to act in the best interest of H.P.’s employees, shareholders, customers and partners. The H.P. board admits that it fully investigated the sexual harassment claims against Mark and found them to be utterly false.” Larry Ellison
It’s worth noting that Ellison and Hurd are friends, but the Oracle CEO also raises questions about a vote the HP board supposedly took over whether or not to disclose the sexual harassment claim. Meanwhile other insiders have confirmed that this was indeed the main point of tension between Hurd and the HP board, and that the relationship soured significantly when the decision to go public was made. HP maintains that their primary complaint was Hurd’s falsification of expense reports, done to disguise the extra-marital relationship.
As for Skillman, it’s unclear what he’ll be doing next, but eleven years at Palm probably don’t look too bad on the CV. The news of his departure fits in with rumors earlier in the year regarding several executives’ plans to abandon Palm in the aftermath of the HP acquisition.
Still feeling abandoned, webOS users? Take heart, as the good folks over at THQ Wireless are working hard with that recently released PDK in order to port a number of its titles over to Pre and Pixi users. We aren’t being clued in just yet as to what games are undergoing the all important conversion process, but a tweet from the company’s official account has made it abundantly clear that it has “a number of [its] games in development for webOS.” We’d caution you against hoping for Star Wars: Trench Run and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but we’re fully aware that it’s too late for that.
Palm’s new webOS smartphone looks to be another step closer to launch, with the European 3G/UMTS version crossing the 
