Homebrew Pre firmware just a button, cable away?

If you were to put the Pre on a scale of hacker friendliness from 1 to 10, where 1 is the iPhone (remember how long it took for the first jailbreaks back in the day?) and 10 is, say, OpenMoko, we're starting to get the impression that Palm's latest effort falls somewhere way past the 5 mark. We got out first hint that they're being good sports about letting developers play with the Konami code access to developer mode, and now we've got news that it's easy -- nay, trivial -- to run whatever firmware you'd like on the phone. It seems all you've got to do is hold down the volume up key when connecting the Pre to your computer via USB, then you can flash the phone 'til you're blue in the face; even better, the enterprising dev who found the trick says that it's mega simple to modify the stock build and he'd wiped out the activation check with minimal effort. This can only be good news for tweakers and anyone wanting to walk off the App Catalog's beaten path, and if this ultimately means we're a few solid steps closer to a Pre running WinMo 6.1, sign us up. Way up.

[Via Daring Fireball]

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 12th 2009 8:29PM]

Pre running WinMo 6.1? Ew why? I get enough of the on my Touch Pro. How about Android or something. Or how about getting WebOS on my Touch Pro that'd be great, sign me up for 2.

[carcomptoy Posted Jun 12th 2009 8:33PM]

Yeah who in the world wants to have WM 6.1 on a Pre?? Isn't the whole point WebOS?

Granted, I'm sure you meant it as a joke, but you could have used an OS that's actually worth lusting over.

[glenskey Posted Jun 12th 2009 8:35PM]

hey chris, whatever happened to your engadget mobile podcast?

P.S nice one with the winmo joke. :')

[Peter F Posted Jun 12th 2009 8:37PM]

Engadget said something good about Windows Mobile? WHAT?

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 12th 2009 10:27PM]

I'm with Rico...Dual-Boot WebOS/Android Pre!! Reading this article make the shitty battery life and questionable slider/keyboard non issues. WebOS on the TP2 while he's at it...might run into problems going from a capacitive screen to a resistive though...

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 15th 2009 12:27PM]

If true, I am buying a Pre immediately.