Palm Pre Homebrew

There is now an even easier way to install your homebrew apps on your Palm Pre. Head on over to Pre Central and check out the WebOS Quick Install app. All you have to do is drag and drop the files to your phone, it doesn’t get much easier.

source: Pre Central

Well they’ve done it again, there is now a way to install/run homebrew apps on your Palm Pre without having to hack the phone at all. All you have to do is email yourself a file (has to be packaged a certain way) and click on the file in the email and that’s it. The app at the link below is just a proof of concept and doesn’t really do anything, but expect more apps to trickle out using this method soon (or at least until Palm patches the issue.

source: Pre Central

It was only a matter of time before you’d be able to control your computer through your Palm Pre, but don’t get too excited yet it’s still going to take a little bit of time to get it working correctly. For now the only thing you can do is view your computer through the Pre, no keyboard or mouse support has been built in yet, but I’m sure it’s coming. Check out the video above for all the VNC action.

source: Pre Dev Wiki

We know it’s possible to run Doom on the Pre so obviously the next step was getting an NES emulator to run in webOS. Now apparently you could already run the emulator within the “Palm Classic” emulator thing, but why do that when you can run it straight through webOS fairly simply. You can find all the instructions at the link below then sit back and play some Contra wherever you are.

source: Pre Dev Wiki

Another interesting bit of news from yesterday, a guy over at Daring Fireball has found a way to re-flash the firmware on the Pre to whatever you want. He was able to pull out the activation checks as well as enable a root shell. This is pretty huge and will probably lead to a lot of things happening in the world of Palm Pre firmwares. You can think of it like the Jailbreak for the Pre and it’s as simple as holding the volume up button when you plug the phone into the USB, after that’s done you are free to use Palm’s firmware flashers to flash whatever firmware you want to the phone.

source: Daring Fireball

This is what you’ve all been waiting for, proof that homebrew games can and will be a big part of the Palm Pre’s life. A guy by the name of Sargun has managed to get Doom up and running relatively smooth on the Palm Pre. He used the open source version of PRDoom and states that it was pretty easy to port it over to the webOS platform. This is sure to excite those of you that want to rip into your Pre’s and get homebrew apps and games running. Check out the video above to see it running.

The Palm Pre has only been out for less than a week now and already things are starting to get torn apart. This morning it was discovered that you can get into the Dev mode on the Pre by entering the “Konami code”. For those of you that don’t know what the Konami code is, it’s the code that was used in early Konami Nintendo games that would usually get you 30 free lives in a game. I think it was most notible for working in Contra, but I know it also worked in games like Life Force and others. In order to access this dev mode you need to enter this code at the launcher screen on the Pre, the code is “upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart” this will then launch the Developer Mode Enabler app. I’m not sure exactly what this will allow you to do, but it seems to be one of the first things that was discovered in a leaked ROM that contained a root image of the webOS. So hopefully with these new leaks we will start to see more things happening in the homebrew Pre scene.

source: Engadget

It looks like something called webOS Reset Doctor leaked yesterday and apparently it included a ~200mb root image of webOS itself! The Reset Doctor is used to reset Palm Pre phones that have messed up operating systems in one way or another, but who cares about that, the real gem here is the root image of webOS. This could lead to some very good information regarding hacking and homebrew apps allowing for the Pre to take on a life similar to a Jailbroken iPhone. This could also lead to being able to unlock the Pre amongst other things. So keep an eye out, things seem to be heating up in the world of the Palm Pre and it hasn’t even been released to the public for a week yet!

Obviously the site is pretty new and looks extremely generic, but don’t worry I will be working on it over the next few days. I wanted to get it up and running because it seems like things are starting to happen in the homebrew/hacking scene and I don’t want to fall behind on news. So please bookmark this page and check back often as we will be following everything that is going on with the Palm Pre Hacking/Homebrew scene as it develops.

I am also in the process of getting a forum up and running for discussion, you can find it over at http://www.palmprehomebrew.com/forum . I will get things setup as soon as I can. Thanks.