Palm webOS 1.4 Released

With February drawing to a close expectations that webOS 1.4 would arrive on Friday were running high. If you happen to live on the west coast of the US then Palm did not disappoint. Those further to the east needed to equip some caffeine and practice patience. However, webOS 1.4 is released (for Sprint in the US and on the O2 UK, O2 DE, O2 Ireland and Movistar networks in Europe. Update: Verizon now released.) and is now available for download. Those of you who’ve applied custom themes are recommended to remove them prior to installing the update. Patches, services and homebrew apps should be safe to leave behind if you have updated to the latest versions with AUPT. Everyone knows that video recording is coming with 1.4, what else can you expect? Keep reading…

Key Features

As mentioned, the big feature that had been missing from webOS was video recording. Palm has delivered with not only video recording but on-device editing and sharing of videos. Check out the video below for a hands-on demo of video recording. The other big feature we were told to expect is Flash 10.1. While Flash 10.1 is not included with the software update you can visit the App Catalog to download a Beta version of Flash soon.

Here’s the official Palm blog announcement as well as the Palm webOS update feature page.

Enhancements

The most visible enhancement to webOS 1.4 is the new launcher animation: When apps launch now a window with the App’s icon is shown until the app is loaded. The next enhancement has been expected every update since it first appeared in the code: LED blink notifications. Indeed, the patch to enable the notifications has been one of the most popular patches. This feature causes the center button on the Pre (and the LED behind the gesture area in the Pre Plus) to flash periodically when the phone is off and there are pending notifications.

One area of improvement touted in the release notes is performance and battery life. Specifically, the performance of the phone, mail and calendar apps has been enhanced. Further, several of the apps have been enhanced to make it easier to e-mail or dial embedded contacts and phone numbers. Additionally, you can now choose whether Wi-Fi turns off or not when the screen turns off.

Another enhancement is that the old POP e-mail behavior is back as an optional setting: You can choose to have e-mail that is deleted off the POP server deleted from the phone. A welcome change for those who only use their phone to check e-mail when away from a desktop.

Fixes

Several bugs were reported fixed with this version. These fixes included mail attachment issues, contact synchronization issues See below for the link to the version notes.

Under the Hood

As always, a number of enhancements did not make it into the official change log. In particular, developers will likely have access to new features, though the official SDK has not yet been released. What is visible is that the browser has been updated to a more recent WebKit release. It now scores a 92 out of 100 on the Acid3 test. Over the course of the next few days we’ll gather some of the other changes that didn’t make it into the release notes and update you with them here. Please use the comments below to add new features you’ve found.