According to a report from Advertising Age, Palm has mercifully, finally, really parted ways with its ad agency, Modernista — the house responsible for some of our leastfavoriteads ever. If you need a memory jog, here’s them telling the world that they loved creeping people out with Palm ads. The AdAge article says that the company is currently in talks with various other ad shops, though there’s no clear word on who that new team will be, or when we’ll see the fruits of their labor. We don’t have much to add to this in commentary except to say that this is probably the second smartest thing Palm has done in a span of seven days — the first was striking that amazing deal on Verizon for a super-cheap Palm Pre Plus along with free Mobile Hotspot service. Now, we can look forward to a future where our children won’t cower in fear when they see a Palm ad on television, and we can sleep at night without the image of that pale woman burned into our minds. Of course, now that we’ve seen it, we can never un-see it.
It doesn’t appear to do anything groundbreaking like overclock your Pre, but it looks like the webOS 1.4.1 update is now starting to trickle out to at least a few lucky users. According to PreCentral, one of the first reports to come in was from a Pre user who also happened to be one of the first to get the webOS 1.4 update while he was in Vietnam, and has now managed to snag the 1.4.1 update while residing in Holland. That was later followed up with a second report from a Sprint customer in Washington, but things seem to have been relatively quiet since them. Still no official word from Palm either, but the update does seem to be as minor as the number revision suggestions, with it weighing in at just 6MB. Receive yours yet? Let us know in comments.
Update: So that’s what the update does — according to Recombu, the update should allow European webOS users to finally spend their hard-earned quids and Euros on paid apps. PreCentral additionally reports that O2 Germany customers can now download the Mobile Hotspot app. Cheers!
Update 2: We’re getting a 1.4.1.1 10mb patch on our Sprint Pre as we speak, while a list of changes has arrived on Palm.com with one notable difference — the old NFL Mobile App has been renamed Sprint Football Live — but otherwise it appears to be the same. Meanwhile the word on PreCentral is that Verizon customers may be in for a wait of up to a few weeks for their own update, so slowing the pace of update checks to just once every 5 minutes would appear to be a reasonable course of action.
We’ve been hearing that China Telecom would be grabbing hold of Palm and RIM’s respective stables of smartphones since early last year, but at long last we’ve some official quotes to prove those whispers correct. According to a new report over at the Wall Street Journal, Chairman and Chief Executive Wang Xiaochu has affirmed that it will offer an undisclosed amount of BlackBerry devices in China this May, while Palm’s Pre (no word on the Pixi) will hit this July. These deals could certainly bode well for the carrier; as it stands, it’s going up against China Mobile — which already sells BlackBerry handsets — and China Unicom, which is home to Apple’s iPhone. Unfortunately, pricing details weren’t available, but we’re guessing those will pop sooner rather than later.
Oh Palm. Just a little over a year ago your future seemed so bright, so renewed. You walked away from CES 2009 reborn, held aloft by a completely innovative new mobile operating system, a striking piece of hardware, and a feeling amongst the press and investors that you were back in the game and playing to win. Now, less than a year and a half later, you’ve nearly returned to the dark and desperate place you’d found yourself in at the end of 2008; a rapidly declining mindshare, the bottom falling out of your stock, and bad dips in phone sales. All of it is leaving you backed into a corner where the common perception now is that you’ve got to sell to survive at all. So what went wrong? How did such a promising launch lead to such a disappointing reality? And how can you wrestle your way back from the brink yet again? Is that even an option?
In 2007 the editors of Engadget penned an impassioned open letter to the company, pleading for many of the changes we eventually saw at Palm. This isn’t a follow-up, but it’s very much in the spirit. We’re going to take a look at the missteps that put the company in its current spot, and talk about what we think can pull it back out. Palm, it’s time for a little tough love… again.
We’ve held no punches in sharing our thoughts on Palm’s recent ad campaigns, but the one spot that was actually not heinous has seemingly served as the basis for one of Microsoft’s first-ever WP7S commercials. Debuting here at the tail-end of MIX, the ad spotlights Anna — a fictitious gal we’ve certainly heard of before — using her new smartphone to share photos with her dear lover Miles. It also features Luca, a kid with an undying love for playing Xbox LIVE titles, who seems to be caught somewhere in between the world of nature and nurture. At any rate, it’s worth your while to give the new Microsoft commercial and the Palm ad which it has oh-so-much in common with right after the break.
Oh, and Palm — we guess “Windows Phone 7 Series was your idea,” right?
Update: Yes, that definitely looks like an HTC HD2 at the 0:43 mark, but you can rest assured WP7S won’t ever come to that gem in native fashion.
Palm might be able to use a bit of goodnews right about now, but it looks like it may not be able to count on that coming from AT&T. As AllThingsD‘s John Paczkowski reports, Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek is now saying that Palm’s still as yet unconfirmed launch on AT&T has been pushed back from its rumored April debut to June or July. What’s more, Misek says that the delay isn’t one of the usual variety, with AT&T reportedly citing a “long list of technical issues with the Pre and Pixi,” and even going so far as to decrease its initial order size and “sharply reduce” its marketing budget for the launch. Of course, we are still taking about a rumored delay to an unconfirmed launch, but we should be hearing directly from Palm soon enough — it’s scheduled to report its third-quarter earnings after Thursday’s closing bell.
EA has already said that it was able to get 3D games up and running on webOS in a “matter of weeks” using the OS’ PDK (or Plug-in Development Kit), but it looks like Palm might be ready to step things up even further at GDC next week. While any official word will have to wait until then, John Paczkowski of AllThingsD says that he’s heard from sources close to the company that Palm will be now demonstrating how iPhone apps can be ported to webOS “in a matter of days,” and with virtually no degradation in performance. Not much more to go on that at the moment, unfortunately, but you can be sure we’ll be there at GDC to how this and anything else Palm might have in store pans out.
After a disappointing initial effort, Palm has unleashed version 1.1.0 of its webOS Facebook app. Currently only available via the update function but not the standard App Catalog, users will find new and improved access to their inbox, all their friends’ photo albums, profiles, direct photo uploading, friend search and a list view for upcoming events and birthdays. The first thing we noticed was the initial news feed now matches the notification preferences set on the standard webpage stopping the inevitable flood of Farmville updates we blocked so long ago. Features still missing include chat, video and the ability to respond to friend requests but with a distinctly faster and tighter experience, it’s certainly surpassed the mobile webpage as the best way to access Facebook on the Pre. Can’t reach the update button right now? Check our gallery for a few more images or this video demo from PreCentral embedded after the break.
Just hours after we wrapped our mitts around what looked to be Palm’s official webOS 1.4 changelog, along comes this: confirmation from none other than Sprint itself. According to a post on the carrier’s official forums by Sprint Admin ‘izzyks,’ both the Pre and Pixi will see the long-awaited webOS 1.4 update hit sometime tomorrow evening. As always, users will see an OTA alert when the new files are ready for consumption, and you can find a full list of the fixes and changes just beyond the break.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Update: Seems the post was yanked! The message, in its entirety, is after the break.
Update 2: We just snagged the full changelog from an internal Sprint document, which is also tucked below. For the spec hounds, the webOS version will be 1.4.0, while the Sprint Configuration will sit at 2.3 and the Build at 195.
Good news for nonplussed (in more ways that one) Pre and Pixi owners: come the day after Valentine’s, it looks like you’ll be able to capture your loved ones in moving pictures format! This comes from an alleged Sprint technician who reportedly took the above screencap promising a firmware update with all the features we’ve heard debuting as webOS 1.4, except for Flash support on the Pre. Note our use of “alleged” and “reportedly,” though — we can’t independently confirm this image, so take it with a grain of salt. Still, February was the previously-mentioned release date, and when better to release than just after the halfway mark of the month?
