Palm Pre WebOS 1.3.1 update available now

webOS 1.3.1 was always destined to come alongside the launch of the Pixi, but it's surprised us by showing its face a day early. No app catalog bombshells here, but there are a slew of more minor fixes and updates that should make users experience a great deal smoother. Is this the update that finally unlocks access to the GPU and provides the speed boost Pre owners are waiting for / advances the iTunes chess match another step? We'll let you know once our unit reboots, for now here are a few highlights from Palm's list of changes:

Update: Downloaded, applied and rebooted. iTunes still isn't spotting our Pre as a device to sync with, and at least for the moment there's no great speed increases to speak of, but we have noticed a few more key tweaks that owners are sure to like -- setting a specific ringtone for text messages is exactly what we've been looking for.

• Yahoo! now appears as a Calendar/Contacts/instant messaging synchronization account.
• You can forward a text or multimedia message by tapping the message > Forward.
• A new option is available for restarting the phone: press and hold power > Power > Restart. The prior restart method (Device Info > Reset Options > Restart) is still available.
• Widescreen videos (including YouTube) now display in widescreen mode on the phone by default, instead of being cropped.
• If you tap to play a YouTube video embedded on a web page, the YouTube application launches and the video plays in the app.
• You can select a unique ringtone for new message alerts: Open Messaging > application menu > Preferences & Accounts > Sound > Ringtone.
• While listening to a song with album art displayed, you can tap the screen below the art to display a playback slider. Dragging the slider jumps forward or backward in the song.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 14th 2009 11:00AM]

We at Verizon Pre love the Pre, and still hope to see it soon at Verizon

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 14th 2009 1:47PM]

can you imagine the HTC HD2 running WebOS?

Excuse me while I take a really long cold shower...

[finalfantasyeternal Posted Nov 14th 2009 10:52PM]

They should lease their OS to other manufacturers. It'll boost recognition.

[Riz Posted Nov 14th 2009 8:17PM]

camera and photos apps are night-and-day faster loading. Hard to tell yet but it seems to be a bit better at handling multiple open cards, and it seems (maybe) a bit quicker loading apps in general.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 14th 2009 9:38PM]

After I synched up my Yahoo account with Synergy, I keep getting occasional alerts on the phone to re-enter my Yahoo password for no apparent reason. I entered my password after seeing the alert, but nothing happened. I saw the alert again a couple hours later and ignored it, and my phone still seemed to work fine...

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 15th 2009 9:21AM]

damn, just ad a video camera already!

[AwayBBL Posted Nov 15th 2009 1:32PM]

It'd be nice if they release the 1.3.1 SDK to the developers so that we could write some apps... Seems that only a few have 1.3.1 while the unwashed developers still only have 1.2. Palm's goota do something about their poor developer program.

[AwayBBL Posted Nov 15th 2009 1:34PM]

ooops sorry, I spelled gotta wrong

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 15th 2009 2:34PM]

^^^^^ Really Its Out..The SDK That Is . It Was Out Right after The Update.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 15th 2009 4:49PM]

Based on my initial experience I'd say everything is definitely running a little faster/smoother and somethings (like photos and the camera) are running much faster. Does this mean that the phone is actually using the GPU now?

[JBundyLive Posted Nov 16th 2009 9:01AM]

the facebook app sucks ... you're better off using touch.facebook.com in the browser.