All you webOS fans already know this but I want to share with the people not reading all the webOS blogs. HP released the Pre 2 in December 2010 on a limited set of operators. It includes webOS 2. But all old webOS phones have been left out of the update to webOS 2.x, until a month ago when O2 Germany got a webOS 2.1 release to deliver to customers using Pre+. But this release is not delivered over the air(OTA) as everything so far has been done. You have to download it and doctor it to your phone. What then happened is that the homebrew community have created scripts to apply this release on a number of different version of the Pre phone. It seems to work great, even for the older versions of Pre. I have not tried this my self yet. Do not have the time, especially if something does go wrong. Biggest problem when it goes wrong is your account/profile on the phone. You might loose your apps or other things. I do not have any apps since I am not on an approved operator.
What has also happened is that HP has announced 2 new phones and a pad. They will be released this summer, actually one of the phones will probably release already in April or May. If it release that early it will most likely run webOS 2.1 or maybe 2.2. webOS 3 is probably ready and a must for when they release the pad. If that is the same for Pre 3 I do not know. Pre 3 is like the earlier Pres but with better hardware and a bigger screen. So that one looks like a must have for me. So I hope it is an early summer release.
So now HP finally is coming with some new hardware. But is that enough?? NO, HP have to make the developers happy. Because without developers there will be no webOS. And I am not talking about the developers at HP making webOS. I am talking about the application developers. webOS need more apps. So what does the developers need? Most, or at least many, need to see that there is money in making apps for webOS. And with no users there is no money. What can be done to make more users? I guess one thing is to make the phones/pad available world wide with an application catalogue that is available to ALL users. At the moment you can use your Pre in many places of the world. But it is almost impossible to buy an application if you do not activate your phone in the 'correct' way and live in the countries that is supported. This really limits the sales of the applications.
Anyway, I hope developers will start making new apps, and updating old ones, NOW. Not wait for the release of webOS 3 or the new hardware. We need to get the application ecosystem growing and healthy. And we as developers need to tell HP we want global access of the application catalogue, NOW.
10 years ago