Wednesday News Roundup – webOS 1.4.1 Version
Palm has upstaged us this week by dropping webOS 1.4.1 and international e-commerce on us.
We’ll cover these two developments in detail and relegate the rest of the news, including the international Plus phones and Ben Combee’s great PDK articles, to the Roundup.
webOS 1.4.1
Users around the world are reporting that webOS 1.4.1 (1.4.1.1 on Sprint, according to my phone) has arrived. You can read our earlier post about it. This version corrects a number of issues that surfaced with 1.4.0, such as problems with the forward gesture, the camera, the video recorder problems and the PDF viewer. In addition, international users are reporting that they now have access to the Wi-Fi Hotspot app that Verizon customers previously enjoyed. The bad news is that not all carriers will be on the same version of webOS (as evidenced by the difference between 1.4.1 and 1.4.1.1).
As usual, a number of fixes are lurking under the hood and you can get a look at some of them in the SDK release notes. We’ll need a chance to test against user-reported errors to see what else is included. What the release notes indicate is that apps that run in the background will have more time (with 1.4.1.1) to perform their operations before being terminated and that garbage collection has been improved (meaning less lag in certain applications, particularly apps that get their input through the accelerometer — though note that some apps may have to be updated by the developer to take advantage of at least one of the changes). If none of that made any sense, then don’t worry about it. Dan has no idea what it means either…
We are keeping an ear to the ground on this so we’ll keep you updated on anything we learn.
Note: If you have installed any themes or have installed one of the overclocking patches be sure to remove them before updating.
International E-Commerce
Palm made good on their plans to release paid applications to foreign countries today. Developers can now make their apps available for download in all the countries targeted by Palm. Do keep in mind that it is up to the developer to choose which countries to support and whether or not to make a translated version for countries that speak languages other than English. Expect the number of paid apps in foreign markets to grow quickly as Palm and developers make the necessary changes to get apps out there.
Roundup
GSM versions of the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus have both appeared at the FCC, paving the way for those devices to show up on AT&T. The Save/Restore app we discussed last week is now available through Preware. The number of supported apps keeps growing and, if yours isn’t supported, you can help. For developers looking to find out more information about Palm’s PDK check out Ben Combee’s articles on it. Part 1 and Part 2 are available so far. Laptop Magazine’s Smartphone March Madness is continuing and the Pre has made it to the Semifinals. If you haven’t voted for your favorite smartphone yet go check out our earlier post and vote! Keep watching because if we all let them know how we feel then we’ll be heading to the finals.
