Palm Pre Follow up

With different blogs reporting that the European version of the new webOS (1.3.1) won't be available until the end of November, I decided to just use the English Sprint webOS 1.2.1 version. Due to the detailed guides at WebOS Internals the update was very easy and done in a few minutes. Afterwards the whole world of custom WebOS patches and execellent homebrew applications through the fantastic Preware was available. I installed patches for landscape email, on-screen keyboard, and better notifications as well as the new music player, the homebrew Facebook client, and some free games. Together with the now working (probably due to fixes in WebOS 1.2.1) Exchange synchronization (yeah baby, two-way! :)) I'm very satisfied with the device. The battery only lasts a day with 3G, push-mail enabled, and moderate use but I think that is a problem that all current smartphones face.

A bit disappointing is the number of available apps right now. While there are many qualitative applications the store right just cant compete with the iPhone and its two year head start.

Fortunately developing for the Palm is pretty easy (just HTML, CSS and JavaScript), so I started to develop my own “Fahrplan” application, which displays the available train connections from point A to point B on any given time. So far I have only a very simple interface but I'm making fast progress. Will let you know I it will be finished. 🙂

Apart from that there will be another sechsta sinn team meeting from Nov, 20 to Nov, 23 so stay tuned for updates from the game development front as well.

Update:

Someone already released an application called “Bahnfahren“.. works great and as I have little time, I will just use that.