Best Buy Offering Verizon Palm Pre 2 For 44.99

If you're looking to cut costs on your cell phone contract and maybe upgrade from a beaten old Pre or Pre Plus, you might want to turn some attention to Best Buy and Verizon, as they have a Verizon Palm Pre 2 available contract-free for Verizon's prepaid system for the low low price of just $51.99. That sort of rock-bottom pricing doesn't come around often, even for two-year-old long-canceled smartphones like the Pre 2.

There's no immediate indication that this Pre 2 is locked into only Verizon's prepaid service. Verizon actually allows you to bring any Verizon device onto prepaid, and there's nothing about this phone that says it wouldn't work the other way around too, there likely hasn't been any reprogramming to lock them onto prepaid either.

Prepaid service for a smartphone like the Pre 2 through Verizon will run you $60 a month for unlimited talk and text with 500MB of data, while another $10 will net you a 2GB data allotment. Not only is the $51.99 Pre 2 through Best Buy the cheapest smartphone offered for Verizon prepaid, it's a damn good price if you were looking to pick up a spare device or two should things go south with your current webOS smartphone.

We'd actually say, if not for the fact that it comes with minimal support from HP and app developers, it would qualify by far as the best smartphone offered on Verizon prepaid, either directly from the carrier or Best Buy.

It looks as if this offer didn't last long, a quick check of the Best Buy website shows the device being sold out. Hit the link below.

Source: Best Buy

webOS 2.2.5 And 3.0.6 Caught In Testing Logs

After HP announced that webOS would be going open source way back in December we honestly thought we would never see another webOS update until the planned September release of Open webOS 1.0. Then, to our surprise, webOS 2.2.4 and 3.0.5 said hello to the world. It wasn't much of an update for Pre3 owners, but Pre 2 users finally received Bluetooth messaging support and Skype voice calling to add to their device's capabilities. Meanwhile the TouchPad gained faster view switching in calendar, IM presence indicators in Email, support for HTTP video streaming, an easy on/off toggle for auto-correct, the ability to insert a period when double-tapping the space bar, and a fistful of bug fixes. Sadly the Veer was still left in the cold and disappointed many owners longing for some Touch-to-Share action.

So we revised our expectations, 2.2.4 and 3.0.5 to be the last updates before Open webOS hits and we maybe see something new pushed over-the-air from HP. Leave it to some Metrix logs to prove us wrong. Our very own Arthur Thornton, of Sparrow and Voice Memos fame, decided to check his logs since he had neglected to do so for a while. And what did he find while checking those logs? Why, four devices using webOS 2.2.5 accessed Voice Memos, two of which turned out to be Pre3s (the other two are unknown at this point). Curiosity piqued, Arthur checked his Metrix logs for Sparrow, discovering that at least one device running webOS 3.0.6 has used the app. Interesting, no?

We've heard nothing from HP to indicate that webOS 2.2.5 or 3.0.6 would ever be coming, but that they're showing up in app logs - even relatively new apps like Sparrow, has us hopeful that they might see a release soon. webOS smartphones and TouchPad are decent with their current OS versions, but we wouldn't say no to the usual bug fixes and speed and battery improvements that are par for the course for a x.x.1 update. And we're sure Veer owners wouldn't mind having Touch-to-Share enabled nearly a year after the phone was released. So keep your fingers crossed webOS faithful, there might be at least one more update to be had from our beloved devices before Open webOS is upon us!

webOS 1.4.5 Update Finally Comes To The Telcel Palm Pre

There are some things that we never expect to see happen. We're talking tortoise riding a unicorn type stuff here. That's the level of make-believe upon which we had stashed the thought of webOS 1.4.5 ever getting released for the Palm Pre on Telcel. Like the Sprint Pre, the Telcel webOS phone was all but abandoned as far as updates were concerned, but it was abandoned at webOS 1.4.1.

Former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein Leaves HP

Jon Rubinstein, the former CEO of Palm, has left HP. AllThingsD broke the news Friday afternoon, noting that Rubinstein had served his promised 12-24 month tenure with the company before leaving. “Jon has fulfilled his commitment and we wish him well,” HP spokeswoman Mylene Mangalindan told AllThingsD. Rubinstein led the team responsible for the original iPod and left Apple in 2006 to eventually join Palm as CEO in 2009. While at Palm, Rubinstein was responsible for, among other projects, the development of the Palm Pre and Palm’s webOS mobile operating system, both of which were transferred to HP in 2010 When it acquired Palm for $1.2 billion. HP has since open-sourced the mobile operating system after failing to gain traction with its Pre, Pixi, Veer and TouchPad products.