TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

In the good old days of the Palm OS, over- and underclocking programs were extremely popular. If you needed extra battery life, the CPU frequency went down – if you needed speed and had a Proporta external battery handy, it went up.

A group of PreCentral users now got an overclocking kernel of their own done. It is compatible with webOS 1.3.5.1 ONLY, and overclocks the CPU to a whooping 800MhZ. The video below shows further info:

Should you feel adventurous, hit the link below:
http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre-tips- …

Years ago (when Palm was the only game in town), developers were offered significant discounts on Palm devices intended for testing. OK, not the kind of discounts Nokia gives – but nevertheless quite a bit. However, word spread – and the service was discontinued.

Developer phone purchase has now been resumed:

The devices are discounted by 20 percent and are sold in US dollars, which leads to a rebate of about 33% for Europeans. However, no data plan or anything is included – and as European carriers usually don’t give you lower monthly rates for bringing a cell phone of your own, well, you get the idea…

Further information on this – admittedly rather useless – offer can be found below:
http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/developer-phones.html

P.S. To the Palm folks reading this: what about carrier-unlocked webOS phones? They would make you a nice bit of cash…

Palm’s PDK is a key ingredient for the long-term success of the webOS platform – it allows developers to break out of the Java runtime.

It has been announced for some time, and has been available to insiders for some time. However, it might be unleashed on the public in the near future.

The full press release is below:

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Game Developers Conference (GDC) – Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ:PALM) today announced that a public beta version of the Palm® webOS™ Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) is now available at the Palm Developer Center (developer.palm.com). Palm is demonstrating new games from early PDK developers in its booth at GDC (No. 2016).

The PDK complements the Palm webOS Software Development Kit (SDK), letting developers use C and C++ alongside the web technologies that power the SDK and mix them seamlessly within a single app. The PDK enables new functionality, including immersive 3D graphics, and gives developers who have built games for other platforms an easy way to bring their titles to the webOS platform. Developers can download the beta PDK and start developing today, but distribution of games built with the beta PDK will require functionality provided in an upcoming Palm webOS update.

“Palm webOS is the go-to platform for great games on two of the three leading carrier networks,” said Katie Mitic, senior vice president, Product Marketing, Palm, Inc. “We have both the developer tools and the hardware necessary for a world-class gaming experience, and an impressive portfolio of webOS game titles from top-notch developers to show for it.”

At CES in January, Palm introduced 12 games built by four leading developers with early access to the PDK:

* “Asphalt 5″ (Gameloft)
* “Brain Challenge®” (Gameloft)
* “Glyder 2″ (Glu Mobile)
* “Let’s Golf!” (Gameloft)
* “MONOPOLY” (EA Mobile™)
* “Need for Speed™ Undercover” (EA Mobile)
* “SCRABBLE” (EA Mobile)
* “Sudoku” (EA Mobile)
* “Tetris®” (EA Mobile)
* “The Oregon Trail” (Gameloft)
* “The Sims™ 3″ (EA Mobile)
* “X-Plane” (Laminar Research)

Since then, more than 20 exciting webOS titles have been launched by these early-access developers:

* “Apollo” (Laminar Research)
* “Assassin’s Creed™ – Altair’s Chronicles” (Gameloft)
* “Brothers In Arms®: Hour of Heroes” (Gameloft)
* “Castle of Magic” (Gameloft)
* “Deer Hunter 3D” (Glu Mobile)
* “Dungeon Hunter” (Gameloft)
* “Earthworm Jim” (Gameloft)
* “Gangstar: West Coast Hustle” (Gameloft)
* “Giant Fighting Robots” (Laminar Research)
* “Guitar Hero 5 Mobile” (Glu Mobile)
* “Hero of Sparta” (Gameloft)
* “Real Soccer 2010″ (Gameloft)
* “Real Tennis” (Gameloft)
* “World Series of Poker: Hold’em Legend” (Glu Mobile)
* “X-Plane Airliner” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Carrier” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Extreme” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Glider” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Helicopter” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Racing” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Space Shuttle” (Laminar Research)

“The Palm webOS PDK is extremely powerful and far-reaching, as evidenced by the number of titles we’ve been able to bring to the webOS platform in a very short time,” said Baudouin Corman, vice president of publishing, Americas, Gameloft. “It’s quite difficult to make a great phone that’s also an outstanding gaming platform; Palm has been successful delivering both.”

More information about the beta PDK is available at the Palm Developer Center (developer.palm.com). More information about games for Palm webOS is available at www.palm.com/applications.

Further information can be had via the official PDK page:
http://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1936

PreCentral have just undug the shot below – they claim that it was posted by a forum user who stated that he is an AT&T employee:

According to him, it would be a high-end slate running webOS.

However, some Chinese mobile phone suppliers have since showed the Elan as a Pixi derivative – while this could just be a case of a badly chosen filler image, it nevertheless should be mentioned here…