During the ongoing HP/Palm webOS Developer Day in New York City today, Palm Engineer and Developer Relations rep Josh Marinacci has confirmed that Palm’s current lineup of webOS devices in the Pre and Pixi along with the Plus variants will be updated to webOS 2.0 in the next few months.
The timeframe is another adjustment from its previous end of year estimate given during the summer developer conference before the purchase of the manufacturer and developer by HP.
Palm had announced prior to its merger with HP, that webOS 2.0 would be released for all devices, and eluded to it launching alongside the transaction of the merger with HP.
And this kind of BS is exactly the reason why I’ve moved (grudgingly) from webOS to Android. Way to go HPalm…
Palm, really really really screwed up. They did so many things wrong that were obvious.
Launching on sprint was the worst decision they could have made. WHY, because Sprint at the time was in a dire situation with a poor customer image. If they went with Verizon and gave them an exclusive, Verizon would have ate it up like they did the droid. The Pre’s physical hardware was the worst palm phone I have ever owned. I’m on my 6th palm pre now with sprint. My other family members are on there 3rd Pre’s. So many problems with hardware. The pixi was a poor excuse also. So underpowered, it wasn’t the centro best seller they thought it would be.
HP better be pouring millions into WebOS. They need to spit out phones like HTC and put webOS everywhere. The smartphone OS war is going to take a long time and a lot of resources. MS finally knows this and is going to keep pouring money into Win 7 even if it flounders for a coupe of years. They did the same with the original xbox. HP better follow suit.
I disagree with the above post. The arguement that the Pre failed because it was released on sprint is flat out wrong. It’s because the hardware and software wasn’t satisfactory. Look at the EVO on sprint. It was a home run. Look at the Kin on Verizon. It was a debacle. So much so Verizon canceled it. Besides the Pre came to all major carriers 6 months later anyway. Plus Verizon is giving everyone free wifil hotspot on the Pre and it’s still not selling. It’s because of the device, not the carrier.
Making the Palm Pre the first smartphone that required an Everything plan certainly hurt Palm. Early adopters, who would have flocked to Palm’s new Pre, were hesitant as it would cost them their grandfathered plans… which early adopters are much more likely to hold on to.
As such, Palm was stuck with an exclusive on Sprint, but denied an iPhone-grade geek following. That loss of momentum snowballed when the Pre Plus landed on Verizon. At that point, Palm was low on cash and couldn’t re-engineer the Pre to compete with the likes of DROID, which early adopters on Verizon then flocked to.
Totally agree with c on.
Riiight. The Everything plan killed the Pre. And I guest the awesome hardware of the Evo attached to an Everything data plan plus the $10 data premium add on made the Evo a flop also. Agree with c. The average consumer, not the geek crowd will get the shiny new device every time regardless of price. ex. iPhone
I’m surprised people are saying the Pre “died/failed/etc”.
Palm did much better than many expected. However, nobody can deny that the initial feedback about Pre was very muted, because tech savvy customers couldn’t get the device, because of plan restrictions. Ask Palm. We did.
With iPhone, the effect was the opposite. Tech-savvy customers flocked to iPhone and its flat-rate pricing, which gave Apple the popularity to drive sales of iPhone 3G to mainstream customers.
It also amuses me that people compare Pre’s marketing situation to EVO 4G. EVO 4G benefited from three simultaneous ad campaigns; HTC’s breakout ad campaign, Sprint 4G’s ad campaign, and retailer’s own EVO 4G campaigns. All three campaigns on their own eclipsed the marketing dollars that were allocated to Pre. Not to mention the fact that EVO 4G stood alone as the only 4G phone in America, which muted competition from other devices… something Pre didn’t have in the 3G smartphone era. The two situations are starkly different, and not reliable comparisons.
This is my 1st time in many months reading this site. It’s been over a year in making a comment here, because I still see it still stands no opinion matters but Mr Price. Never wrong; and wow you guys are still crying over the SERO plans.
So, talking with readers is considered a bad thing? There’s no doubt I’m outspoken, but this is the first time that I’ve heard all year someone discouraging the editor-in-chief from engaging and debating with readers.
Thankfully, I chose to weigh ken’s commentary with everyone else’s and disregard it. Thanks to everyone that choses to challenge me, it helps make the industry a better place. Decision makers at each and every carrier read these comments, and they do matter.
The way I see it, Palm hurts itself with the long drawn out wait it makes customers endure to get their new phones. When I first heard about the EVO I was intrigued and interested in getting it, until I heard of the new Palm phones. Once again though just like the Pre i waited forever to get, here we go again having to wait almost a year to get one. The EVO came out a few short months after I intially heard of it, so why does it take Palm proverbial ‘forever and a day’ to drop. I need a phone like yesterday and I really don’t know how long I am gonna be able to wait Palm this go around, even though I prefer WebOS.
i just think it’s hilarious that anyone thinks OS 2.0 is coming functionally to first gen Pre’s. it’s not gonna happen anymore than we’re gonna get functional Flash. The phone can’t handle it. Too little memory…too little CPU power, which is the real reason that the release has been pushed back…pushed back…pushed back…yet of course comes ready to go on the Pre 2.
also lol @ every other smartphone successor coming out with larger screens, higher resolution, front and rear cameras, etc…while the pre 2 just has a nice little straight thing at the bottom instead of a round metallic-painted plastic button. Wow, i’m blown away…i HATED that button!
Flash Lite handles 90% of Flash 10 on devices like the HTC Hero, which pretty closely match the Pre in terms of processing power. Don’t bet on watching Hulu shows though.
I suspect webOS 2.0 for the original webOS family (Pre (Plus) & Pixi (Plus)) will provide improvements, similar to how an iPhone 3G gained improvements from the recent release of iOS 4.
It took a long time for Apple to fine-tune iOS 4 to run well on iPhone 3G, but iPhone 3G users are now benefitting from hundreds of new features and improvements. It is in Palm’s interest to keep original users in the loop, as it will help bolster HP’s position that webOS is a unified front, as it moves into a greater range of devices… especially as the Pre 2 slowly rolls out.
[…] With both support documents receiving the updated instructions for the new software version, the rollout for the update is getting closer by the day, though HP/Palm have yet to officially confirm update timelines for any Pre model at this time outside of “in the coming months“. […]
[…] Manager of the newly merged Palm Global Business group Jon Rubenstein has confirmed that the long promised update to webOS 2.0 for the first generation of webOS products in the Pre, Pre Plus, Pixi and Pixi Plus will not be […]