Blog Posts by The Mx Web Team

1.3.5.2 Update Goes to Europe.

glorifiedg

Published: January 12, 2010

After a dozen of days of suffering following the 1.3.5 update in in US, Europeans can now enjoy the update. webOS 1.3.5.2

Much is being discussed in Precentral forums, but the big question is what does “The Phone app offers better handling of prepaid SIM cards” mean?

As a prepaid Vodafone-P SIM card user I can tell you now what has changed for me. I can’t specify the technical change behind the outcome that I’m getting but, at least, I can give you an idea of the improvements that Palm has made to my Pre.

3G enabled/disabled

Before this update, when I turned “Data Usage” OFF and then turn it ON again, my Pre wasn’t able to reconnect the server, which was a pain in the *** because I’d have to reboot the phone. Data plans for prepaid cards in Portugal are 5€ for 75MB, 10€ for 250MB and 15€ for 500MB, per month, so I can’t really waste bytes when I don’t really need to have a connection. In fact, this was a trouble that was bothering me since the beginning. Now, with 1.3.5.2 update, I can turn ON and OFF “Data Usage” without the necessity of a reboot because Pre is able to reconnect to the server as many times as needed.

Network Messages

In 1.3.1, there were a lot of bugs concerning to handling Network Messages (NM). First, it was impossible to ask for a NM when 3G was ON. Second, receiving NMs that Vodafone sends after every call with the cash available in the card and the cost of the call never worked. Now, the two bugs are gone.

I have to admit, Palm, you’re back to the trail with Europe. You even remembered that most of the EU costumers use prepaid SIM’s. I’m really excited about this update. Just let me ask two things: 1-Please make all of the free apps available for all EU countries. 2- Work hard and fast on the providing of Paid apps.

I can tell with absolutely certainty that when 1.4.0 (Flash and Video) comes out I can definitively stick my Pre in my iPhone fans friends eyes.

Comments [3]

Easy Fixes for Your Once Beloved Pre

Braden Faulkner

Published: January 11, 2010

Do you have a slight problem that's not major enough to be covered under warranty but still big enough to offer some annoyance to your day to day routine? Are you on the verge of returning you Pre because of these building annoyances? Before you put your Pre back in the box, this may be of interest to you. Yep, it's a list of simple, easy and marginally little fixes that can make your once beloved Pre beloved once again. The fixes range from unexpected shutdowns and creaky keyboards to flickering screens and malfunctioning proximity sensors. See all the fixes at the source and a condensed list of the fixes and tricks after the break!

Source: Totally Palmed

1) Pre shutting off unexpectedly

2) The Oreo Effect (Prevention)

3) Earpiece and Proximity sensor not working

4) Creaky Keyboard

5) Messaging conversations not visible

6) Flickering screen when using phone

7) Keyboard stopped responding

8) Unresponsive touch screen

For more details and the solutions check out Totally Palmed.

Comments [0]

All Things Digital with Jon Rubinstein

Yasasvi Tadavarthi

Published: January 10, 2010

Over in Las Vegas during CES 2010, Kara Swisher interviewed Jon Rubinstein regarding Palm and their past and future. Jon Rubinstein said “I think we’ve done really well this past year” in regards to Palm. Apparently Palm doesn't worry much about Apple and their progresses. Palm, according to Rubinstein, does not care much about the competition. Jon Rubinstein has apparently NEVER even used an iPhone.

In regards to media syncing, Rubinstein states that iTunes syncing was what they thought would be best for the consumers, but apparently Apple did care though Palm thought they wouldn't. When asked about making their own syncing service, Rubinstein says that he'd rather see the developer community make such apps. Asked about at&t, all Rubinstein says is that "more distribution is better" and that "[they] have nothing to announce at this time." Well since at&t's CEO already announced TWO webOS devices will be coming to the carrier with "spotty" network coverage, we know that's a resounding yes.

He was even asked to see if they were in store for a webOS tablet. Rubinstein responded, “We’re a small company, but we designed webOS to scale and it could be used in different form factors." Who knows what that sounds like, but I hope it means a YES! All Palm has to do is tidy up their media functionality on their superb operating system and the webOS tablet will be a go. On

Comments [1]

Palm CES 2010 Recap

volcom45

Published: January 9, 2010

Well, what an eventful keynote Palm delivered at this years CES 2010 event! I have to say I expected much less and was blown away at all the incredible unfoldings. Palm has been working hard and here are some of the exciting things covered:

3D Gaming - Palm has been working with select developers (EA Mobile, Gameloft, Glu Mobile and Laminar Research) on a new PDK plug-in which will give developers access to the GPU and programming in C, C++ languages. They released 7 new 3D games within an hour after the keynote and they are amazing! I myself have already fallen in love with Need For Speed Undercover and Monopoly 3D. This PDK plug-in will be released to the public at a gaming developers conference in March.

webOS 1.4 was previewed which brings us Video Recording with the ability to edit our videos as well and upload directly to YouTube, Facebook or send via MMS and email. This release will also include Adobe Flash 10.1 and a beta will be released "soon" to the App Catalog. (Pre Only) It was mentioned that battery performance will improve in this release as well. Hopefully the OS will be snappier if they make use of the GPU. This update is due in February!

Verizon Wireless is getting both the Palm Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus available January 25. These "plus" models are exclusive to the Verizon Wireless network. The Pre Plus includes 16gigs of storage and a few minor adjustments such as the center button disappearing. The Pixi Plus will include wireless. The Pixi will also include 5 different available colors including some neon's. These devices will also include a new tethering app called Hot-spot which allows you to connect up to 5 devices wirelessly. (Will cost extra money and no prices were announced yet for either devices or plans)

Palm announced a new partner SFR in France which will bring the Palm Pre and Pixi in 2nd quarter 2010

Palm announced that the development is now open to the public and showed off some new tools that include thier new open-web distrubution which allows apps to be released with no approval process via a URL. They also made their app catalog feeds available so that websites can access and view all of their apps. PreCentral was included in this. There is an app called AppScoopavailable now which lets you browse all the current instant web releases not found in the App Catalog.

Great things from Palm! Checkout the 3D games available if you haven't yet. You'll be amazed that you are using the same device which runs games such as Air Hockey or Perfect Bounce choppy. These games run perfect and look incredible! Jon Rubinstein, CEO reiterated that in 2009, Palm announced they were back, and they meant it! For those that wish to watch the entire keynote video, visit www.youtube.com/palm

Comments [11]

Review: Friendsbook – The better Facebook client!

Max Kanter

Published: January 9, 2010

Every smart phone on the market needs a powerful Facebook client. On the new webOS it took a quite long time until a Facebook client was available. It started with FriendsFlow and then the official client client from Palm. If you’re like me, you don’t want to pay to use Facebook and probably find the official client from Palm to be lacking. Luckily, x.facebook.com mobile website works quite well on my Pre. But the problem is that it is still a website, and there are no native functions from the Palm Pre device involved using x.facebook.com. According to the developers of Friendsbook, SIC! Software GmbH from Germany(http://www.sic-software.com/), these were the major reasons for creating a free native Facebook client for the palm WebOS.

Friendsbook was not called “Friendsbook” at the beginning. The first named was “palmbook”. The application was first released in the www.precentral.net homebrew galley because the official Palm App Catalog did not respond after submission. As a result of the enthusiastic feedback on precentral, Palm Inc. sent a message to the developers recommending abandoning the name “palmbook”. Palm Inc. was concerned to confuse the user – since the application is not a product made by Palm. After changing the name into “Friendsbook” the application made it in the official Palm catalog without any further problems.

The main approach for the Friendsbook application is to allow a user to utilize all the primary Facebook functions in a really intuitive and fast way. The main issue in using x.facebook.com is that the site is always fully reloaded after doing some actions. This makes it slow and causes a lot of data traffic. For users without unlimited data this can mean a higher bill from your mobile service provider. The other important aspect is to have a more responsive user interface on the mobile device, which makes using Facebook on you mobile more fun.

Lets introduce some of the main features of Friendsbook.

See what’s going on and interact

If you start Friendsbook you will first of all see your “Personal Feed”. This is most important list, where you can see what your friends have been done inside Facebook. In Friendsbook you can tap every entry, which will cause to show a popup with all available interactions for the tapped icon. These options can be:

Goto Users wall – this will redirect you automatically to the friends wall.
Create New Comment – will show a dialog which allows you to enter a comment for the tabbed entry.
Like this – if possible this entry gets marked as “you like this”
Load All Comments – if there are more comments available, tabbing this will show them all.
Remove Entry – if the selected entry was created by you, you can delete that with this option

The floating menu on the bottom allows you to do everything else you need and navigate around the app. The available commands in the personal feed are: (from left to right)

Show news feed switcher item
Show user wall switcher item
Show my friend list
More actions menu command
Refresh this view

In the menu in the top right corner you can find:

Shoot and Upload
Select and Upload
My Photos
New Post

If you travel to a friends wall, the available commands in the friend’s wall are (from left to right):

Add a new Post on the users wall
Show all photo albums of this friend
Refresh this view

Upload images with captions

Another great feature of the app is the ability to upload pictures. The screen shots are showing the “Select and Upload” feature. If you use “Shoot and Upload”, the “Input Caption” screen will follow directly after you have shot an image. With that feature you can very quickly share your moments with your friends.

Manage your notifications

On the main screen there is a number which indicates the count of the unread Facebook notifications. If you tap that number the “Notifications” screen will get displayed. There you can read and refresh your recent notifications. Just swipe a notifications entry off the screen to make the delete button visible. Tapping delete queue the notification to be marked read. If you leave the notifications screen with the back gesture, all queued notification will get marked as read. The idea here is that it allows you to mark many many items as read with only 1 http request, thus reducing network traffic.

Friendsbook is a very powerful lightweight application which allows many more features than all other Facebook clients in the Catalog. The user interface is kept as simple as possible to help keeping the focus on then essential information’s needed to quickly use Facebook on your palm!

The best of all: It is totally free!

There are a plethora of features in the application, which we didn’t detail completely. The complete feature list for the version 2.0.0 is:

Show notification count and notification details
Login through facebook connect
Personal Status updates
Display all friends
Display your news feed
Display your wall
View status und details from a friend
Display the wall from friends
Create new Message on a wall
Remove created message from a wall
Create like on a wall entry
Create comment on a wall
Show all comments from a post
Load more newsfeed and wall entries
Intelligent caching to optimize application performance and data traffic
Open videos and images from a users wall (mp4 videos not supported by palm yet)
Open the homepage from a friend
Display photo albums from a friend
Display photos from a album in image viewer with caption overlay
Upload a photo by file selection
Upload a photo by camera shoot
Logout

Comments [47]

AT&T Brings 2 webOS Devices within 1st half of 2010!

volcom45

Published: January 6, 2010

Well, it is not even Palm's big day yet at CES and the guys over at Engadget have confirmed that AT&T will be bringing not just 1, but 2 webOS devices to their network in the first half of 2010! PreCentral posted an article awhile back of an AT&T Palm Pre spotted in San Francisco which made us wonder and it is becoming a reality! This is awesome news for Palm and webOS because we've already confirmed Verizon is bringing 2 devices as well and this means a bigger user base! Bigger userbase to me means better apps, better development of webOS in the form of updates, etc.

Will this have any impact on current iPhone users? I guess that will be determined once they are available. Hopefully AT&T plans to have more units shipped than the rumored 200,000 each of Pre and Pixi that Verizon seems to be bringing. What else will we hear about tomorrow at 11AM Pacific from Palm? Here's to hoping for GPU integration, better SDK, and Flash beta!

Comments [1]

WebOS 1.3.5.1 Released on Bell

Braden Faulkner

Published: January 5, 2010

That's right, WebOS 1.3.5.1 was just released and it appears to be Sprint's 1.3.5 and 1.3.5.1 bundled all into one. This is certainly a welcome update in Canada's WebOS world. The release notes are after the break, we're still checking things out but, alike the Sprint version of the update it takes a while to download.

A big thanks to Quintus over at the PreCentral forums for finding this!

App Catalog

App Catalog significantly improves the application download experience.

A user can now download multiple applications simultaneously.

Downloads continue in the background if the user moves away from the download screen.

A user can manually pause, resume, and cancel downloads.

A user can also download all available updates for the user’s downloaded applications with a single tap.

App Catalog automatically resumes downloads in cases where a download was paused because it was interrupted—for example, if a user moves out of network coverage and then moves back into coverage.

Users can now take advantage of the full storage capacity of the phone for downloading applications. This gives the user more control over how to allocate the phone’s storage space across applications, music, photos, and other media. Downloaded applications are now stored on the phone’s USB drive.

App Catalog lists search results based on an improved search algorithm.

Calendar

In Day view, switching between days happens more quickly.

This release fixes an issue in which the Calendar app displayed no events for any account after a user synchronized Calendar with an Exchange account. With this update, Calendar events now appear correctly after an Exchange sync.

Date & Time

When the user has network time zone enabled, a city and country are no longer displayed.

Device Info

A user can perform a full erase by pressing and holding Sym + the orange/Option key + powerfor 10 seconds.

Email

A user can now edit forwarded text for all email account types.

When the user sets up more than one Yahoo! email account, the account names displayed in Account List view include the associated email address so that the user can distinguish them.

If an account mailbox is too full to send messages, after the user frees up space in the mailbox on the server, the user can send the messages successfully.

Messaging

If a user deletes a conversation with a contact, new conversations with that contact are now correctly displayed in Conversations view.

Screen & Lock

When the screen is locked, the time displays in a new font.

System

Users can now take advantage of the full storage capacity of the phone for downloading applications. This gives the user more control over how to allocate the phone’s storage space across applications, music, photos, and other media. Downloaded applications are now stored on the phone’s USB drive.

This update improves battery life in areas of poor wireless network coverage.

If the user is working in an application that supports landscape mode (such as Web or Videos), notifications now appear at the bottom of the landscape screen.

After a user signs in to an existing Palm profile, applications the user installed from App Catalog are restored in the background. The user can use other features of the phone while the apps are being restored.

Swiping to delete a list item that contains a link no longer causes the link to open in the web browser.

Updates

After taking the 1.3.5 update, users can download future updates over a 2G (1xRTT , GPRS , EDGE ) data connection by opening Updates and tapping Download Now.

Web

The web browser now supports the display of animated GIFs.

Audio files with a .3g2 extension play correctly as audio files, not video files.

Product-specific information

Pre phone

Email

The default email signature no longer includes the macron over the “e” in “Pre,” so that the product name shows correctly on a recipient’s phone.

Security

This release includes a security fix to the dev portal. Credit to Kris Siegal for reporting the issue.

Individuals interested in contacting Palm to report suspected security issues can find more information at palm.com/security .

Comments [6]

Review – Plantronics Voyager 855

zyxwv88

Published: January 5, 2010

My review of the Plantronics Voyager 855 has been long due. This little guy was my first excursion into Bluetooth stereo headsets, and so far has been my best. You can get it reasonably cheaply, it's dependable, and it works. It's not perfect, but for the price, it's not bad.

Specs/Info

Cost: Variable. $40-$120 depending on where purchased ($40 is usually refurb)
Talk/Music time: 7 hours
Charge time: 2 hours
Standby Time: 7 days

First Impressions/Pairing

My first impressions of this headset were good. It came with an AC charger, the headset, and instructions. The fit wasn't perfect, but it does stay on securely. I find that I need to adjust it a bit during the day as it slips out of my ear or moves on me because of the cable for the other earpiece dragging at my collar, but it isn't excessive. The earpiece loop is the connector for the earbud and the headset can either be used stereo, or the ear loop can be removed for mono use. Although you may initially mock the use of mono, don't forget that most people aren't aware that you can listen to music through bluetooth, so you may be able to get away with listening to music in mono mode in some environments that may frown on music headsets. Pairing works very well. Although sometimes the Pre can be tempermental about pairing with devices every time, the headset beeps when it is paired and working, which removes some of the guesswork.

Controls

This is probably the big weak spot for this headset. When answering the phone, the button on the side has to be pressed firmly, which can be a little uncomfortable as it drives the earpiece deeper into your ear (I have sensitive ears). The volume/FF/RW buttons are small and difficult to remember which button does which, and can be difficult to press for people with fat fingers. I didn't have much trouble pressing the buttons, but I did have trouble remembering which one was volume up/FF and which was volume down/RW. The volume buttons become the FF/RW when double clicked and they aren't marked. Those didn't bother me nearly as much as not being able to start my music from the headset. The button to stop music works great, but there isn't any way to resume your music from the headset. I always need to press the play on the phone to resume my music - a feat which is much easier now that the music player can be started while the phone is locked, but still annoying when I have my phone buried in a pocket when I'm out in the winter snow.

Call/Music quality

The call quality is average for the most part. Although most of the time people can't tell I'm on a headset, sometimes it is blatently obvious and the person on the other end has trouble hearing me. The headset has a sliding boom type mic that answers the phone when extended, and the quality is a little better when extended, but sometimes even this isn't enough. Most of the time it works fine however. Music quality is much better however. With the headset being basically earbuds, it blocks outside noises nicely allowing lower volumes of music in noisier environments. The music quality is about as good as you'll find in a bluetooth headset, although it's nothing super spectacular.

Misc.

Although the battery life is supposed to be 7 hours, I found I don't quite get that. With medium usage, I can usually make it to the end of the business day, but in the evening I need to swap out to another headset and let it charge. Light to medium users may make it through the day. It does well with standby and it will last for days when not being used a lot. The headset is fairly comfortable despite not being as perfect a fit as I would like. I often remove the left earpiece and let it dangle from my neck when I need to talk to people. It isn't very noticable and most people don't realize it's a stereo headset. The balance isn't perfect, but overall for a headset I paid about $50 for, I think it is well worth the money. It is one of the less expensive stereo bluetooth headsets.

The Good

Good sound quality
Comfortable
Decent battery life
Reliable
MicroUSB charger (same as the Pre)
Can remove earpiece for mono use

The Bad

Some buttons are small and hard to press
Battery may not last through the day for medium to heavier users
Unable to start music from headset
Doesn't always stay seated in ear for all people.

My rating:

7/10

Comments [11]

1.3.5.1 Now Available for Download

Yasasvi Tadavarthi

Published: January 4, 2010

That's right. A mere 7 days after 1.3.5 was released, Palm has done it again. 1.3.5.1 is now available for download OTA. This small fix includes the following:

A fix for the issue where when someone synced their EAS calendar and the new year came by and changed the date to 2010, they were not able to see events from any calendar source on their webOS phone.

Another quick update by Palm, listening to the complaints of their customers. This is why I love them. Who knows, maybe we'll even see native support at CES ;)

Comments [0]

App Review: Paratrooper

Braden Faulkner

Published: January 4, 2010

Paratrooper is a recently released game for WebOS and it when we saw it, it looked promising. So; we went hands on with it to give a proper review. Our expectations were pretty well set on awesome, read after the break to see how it turned out.

Graphics

The graphics in Paratrooper is rather well done, the scenery is not at all flaky and looks exactly like it's suppose to be, except animated. It's nice because the background and the foreground sort of blend together making the game look really elegant. The backgrounds of the menus are actually really well done and the certainly contribute to the theme of the game.

Sounds

There isn't anything particularly special about the sounds in this game, when deploying "troopers" it makes the sound WebOS makes when throwing a "card" away. The game also makes some unique sounds, for instance when a parachute is opened and when a trooper falls or lands in the wrong area there are unique sounds representing the action. Other than that, there isn't much more to this games sound effects. Which, also means no game play music.

Controls

Basically, to deploy a trooper you need to tap one of the passing airplanes, each time you tap one comes out. In the higher levels, you also need to individually tap each trooper for the parachute to deploy. In order to avoid hitting objects and to successfully land on the right area, you must hold your phone vertically and tilt it left or right depending on the direction you wish to go. For the most part, these controls work flawlessly and it doesn't make it hard to see the screen. Although, be sure to keep your phone in a vertical position because it seems that the tilting to change direction doesn't work as well if it isn't.

Customizations

Paratroopers is generally not customizable, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I can't say there is a lot of possible customizations that could be added. Mostly because this game simply doesn't need them. Although, an option to calibrate the accelerometer would be welcome, its really not needed.

Nice Additions

Paratrooper includes some nice additions like the ability to view the high scores from both today and all-time and yes the scores are online, not just local. Also, the developer has included an option to replay any levels that you've beaten without having to play through the game from the start again. Also, if you're looking for support Paratrooper has both a help page, which gives detailed instructions on how to play and a support link which redirects you to a website. The developer also includes a link to a game play demo on Youtube, if you're in need of some help.

Wrap-Up

Overall, Paratrooper is one of the best games currently available in the App Catalog and for $1.99 its more than worth it. To be honest, it lived up to our expectations completely and it's safe to say that this one's a keeper.

On a scale of 1 to 10 we'd definitely give Paratrooper a 9/10.

Note:Paratrooper Mini is also available in the app catalog for free.

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