Rumor: GSM Palm Pre won't get 1.2 until November
We're afraid we may have to throw some cold water on everybody waiting in line for the October 13/16th launch of the GSM Palm Pre on O2's networks in Germany, Ireland, and the UK. That cold water is a big old bucket of webOS 1.1.3 - which is likely to be the newest version of the OS that Europeans will be able to use. 1.2 may not hit until November.
The info comes courtesy of Gizmo21, who points us to
heise online, who suggest that the UMTS Pre will start out with 1.1.3 and won't get the update until November. This
forum post at ppc-welt (we know it's just a forum post, but seems accurate) backs that up, adding that the Pre may even come out of the box rocking webOS 1.1.2 and require a software update for 1.1.3 action.
If this is true and Palm can't get 1.2 GSM-ready in time for the pending European launch, it stacks all kinds of bummerage on the webOS platform - paid apps won't hit Europe for who knows how long (no surprise, since even Canada can't get 'em) and Europeans won't get all the benefits in 1.2 right away.
What is really troubling, though, is the fear that Palm might be hitting a point where they're overextended and unable to release the webOS on multiple versions of the same device at the same time -- much less on multiple devices at the same time. That's nothing new in the smartphone world (cf. BlackBerry and Windows Mobile), but we were holding out hope that Palm had a bag of fairy dust that made the subtle differences between carriers, GSM, and CDMA magically disappear.
originally found here:
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http://www.precentral.net/rumor-gsm-palm-pre-wont-get-12-until-november