New Developments on the Palm Pre

Great news for Palm Pre owners!

On Tuesday, HP (the new owner of Palm) announced webOS 2.0, "the most significant update" to Palm's mobile operating software since its launch in June 2009, the company says.

Among the promised enhancements: improved multitasking with a feature called Stacks that keeps related items together; a new Exhibitions feature that lets you set your phone on an optional Palm Touchstone Charging Dock and see a slideshow of Facebook photos or your agenda for the day.

Developers (who will be critical in any success the phones might have) can better take advantage of certain phone features, including the Synergy feature that automatically populates the phone with your personal data when you sign into Facebook, Google, Microsoft Exchange, LinkedIn and Yahoo. Also, webOS 2.0 will support a beta version of Adobe Flash 10.1. It is not clear at this point if Sentrilock or GE Supra support the new webOS 2.0.

The first device to run webOS 2.0 will be HP's new Palm Pre 2 Smartphone, available Tuesday from SFR in France. It'll hit the USA via Verizon Wireless in the coming months.

As with the original Pre, the streamlined Pre 2 device has a touchscreen and slide-out keyboard. The latest version also boasts a glass screen, 5-megapixel camera and is the first Palm phone with a gigahertz processor.

Challenges abound, however. The big question is how much traction will the phones get with consumers? The original Pre garnered mostly favorable notices upon its debut 16 months ago. Still, most Smartphone buyers turned elsewhere, notably to Google's Android handsets and the iPhone.

If anything the market is even more congested these days, with the latest iPhone, Android devices, BlackBerrys, and now Microsoft Windows Phone 7 handsets competing for buyer's affections.

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