Ok, so it’s clear that two things are not going to happen in the next two months:
- HP and Sprint release the Pre 2 or Pre 3 running webOS 2.1 or later
- Apple and Verizon or AT&T will release the iPhone 5 running iOS 4.3 or later
So what am I suppose to do with my 22 month old Sprint edition Palm Pre running a pre-release beta build of webOS 2.0.1?
I think for the next six months I’m going to continue on Sprint (with at least four months going contract free), buying a replacement stock Palm Pre/Pixi battery, and going back to webOS 1.4.5.
My Pre has suffered the test of time and has at least three cracks in it’s exterior casing, and one of the cracks has caused the microUSB door to fall out. (For the record, I didn’t break it off.) The battery is holding about 60% charge these days, so a new battery is going to be a must to make it until Q4, which is when the iPhone 5 could be arriving. (Some bloggers seem to think that the iPhone 5 will go live this summer with iOS 4, and get a major software upgrade in September or October. Others think Apple will continue to run with the iPhone 4, in black and white, until the ‘September-ish’ timeframe.)
So that brings me back to webOS. Don’t get me wrong: webOS is a great operating system. I really do like it. It’s just that it isn’t grabbing the attention of consumers like iOS and Android are doing. The webOS pre-release beta build that I have on my phone is working, however, the code isn’t optimized to run on 2-year old hardware, and it is a bit ‘sluggish’. (HP, to their credit, hasn’t released webOS 2.0.1 to the Pre/Pixi toting public. The experience would be sub-optimal to anyone except the hardcore Palm fan – something I still consider myself.)
So, fellow Palm Pre users still rockin’ it on Sprint, what are we going to do on June 6, 2011? Time is almost up.