Palm today announced that they are adding Verizon as we all suspected to their list of US carriers.  The newest carrier to carry WebOS phones will also get upgraded versions of the what SPrint currently hs in the way of the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus.  The Plus versions of the Pre and Pixi mean the phones get 16GB of memory along with the Pixi getting the added benefit of Wifi.  The devices will be available on Verizon on January 25th, 2010.  

Also of note is the addition of video recording capability to WebOS slated for release in February.  Finally the iPhone appears it will have significant competition if all goes as planned with Palm.

[Palm]

  According to a recent post from BoyGeniusReport, the addition of the Palm Pixi and Pre to Verizon’s anti-iPhone arsenal are indeed coming soon.  The actual details of the whole deal are unknown at this time but we do know now that Verizon will be calling them the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus.  What the actual Plus means is currently unknown, but it could me more memory for the Pre and Wifi for the Pixi.  The Verizon WebOS devices are believed t be shipping with WebOS 1.3.5 that was released just the other day.

  Need some serious protection for your HTC Ozone?  Otterbox has just released the Impact series for the Ozone from HTC.  The impact series is an impact resistant silicone shell for your device.  See the full press release after the jump:

The New “Ozone Layer”: OtterBox Impact Series for HTC

  There were some rumblings from various sites today that WebOS1.3.5 may be coming today.  The update is here and is being pushed to your device as we type this.  The update comes in at just 13MB, but has some significat fixes for those of you using WebOS.

• App limit fixed.
• App Catalog downloads continue even after leaving the app’s page.
• App purchases have been expanded to US territories (sorry Europe, Canada, etc).
• Switching between days in Calendar is now faster.
• Sprint Navigation can be launched from a Contact.
• Palm Profile app restores happen in the background, letting the user get to the phone faster.
• Future webOS updates can be downloaded over 2G wireless (1xRTT).
• Notifications now work in landscape mode (which has strangely lost the rounded corners).
• Improvement in battery life optimization when in marginal coverage areas.
• QCELP capability fix to allow play and audio of video sent via MMS.
• Launch Google Maps or Sprint Nav when tapping an address from contacts.
• Minimized package of MR size through binary difference. Customers can now download over 2G connections if necessary.

This will probably be the last update before any new announcements by Palm at the upcoming CES Expo in Las Vegas shortly.  An interesting tidbit to note is that some who have scoured over the code have found pengles.ipk and opengles-omap3.ipk, which are what you need to get GPU acceleration running.  Happy updating!

  Palm’s WebOS is having a bit of a rough time gaining momentum with their app store.  Well the new Ares SDK is now here in beta form and for us non-programmers.  You can use the online application to create a WebOS based app without any external tools.  The interface is simple with drag and drop controls.  Try it out for yourself and get building.  You can still use the software based Mojo SDK, but why not give it a shot here first.

[Ares SDK]