ChappyEight

Agreed

peabrain

as long as it comes out SOOON, we're feeling a little left out here in europe

Pre1

All this talk about 1.3.1 allowing webos access to the pre's GPU has got me thinking. When we all purchased our Pre we paid for the hardware, that includes this GPU, as well as all the engineering work that went into connecting this GPU to the processor of the Pre. I understand that eventually WebOS will evolve to the point where it will take advantage of this processor but for now, I and the rest of you have paid for something that we are not using. This being said, I personally do not think flash will really come to our Pres in a non-beta form well into 2010 and flash will most definitely not come until the Pre makes use of the GPU. Being a sprint premiere customers will allow us access to an upgrade sometime in June, which if Palm stays on track with pretty much every other smartphone developer means I can buy the Pre2 at discount. So shouldn't we be afforded some sort of discount on our new Pre2 because the last phone we bought included parts that we paid for but were unable to use for most of the phone's life.

I know I am dreaming but it kind of makes me think that all of us that love this new technology are just a bunch of rubes. We should be paid Beta testers because its starting to feel like we are testing a Beta device.

shaidan6453

Lets hope its speed

adambomb13

I signed up for the Flash beta, but cross our fingers its SPEED and afew other API's

VCI_Cell

By this logic, everyone who's ever purchased a device with carrier-disabled features would be entitled to a discount as well.

VZW users could sue for countless instances of crippled GPS.

Nextel subs could sue for lack of true SMS.

Hell, people could even make a case that they didn't get a fully featured device when they bought the HTC Touch pre-loaded with WinMo (it's been successfully hacked to run Android).

IMO, it's not worth even getting worked up about.

Shadavis08

speed is what we need please be speed speed !!!!

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UntidyGuy

Texas Instruments is providing its OMAP3430 applications and media processor together with a dedicated power management and audio codec device, which iSuppli estimated to cost about $19.37.

So let's say that the GPU is up to 50% of the cost of this chip, that means Palm owes everyone up to $10.

zonyl

My guess is that 1.3.1 will bring a fix to the app install limit and upgrade WebKit Browser. The browser will yield faster Javascript and enhanced Canvas /Audio tags giving the impression of a faster UI / games, however, the 3D acceleration will still not be used. Multi-touch API support may appear as well (Beyond Pinch) and two player games may start to appear (Air Hockey, etc)

The Flash demo we all saw probably doesnt use 3D acceleration anyway and will come out before the end of the year. WebGL support from the API probably wont come around till early next year.

I would be surprised to find that WebOS already doesnt use some of the GPU's 2D accelerated functions (Line, Blit, Offscreen, etc)

shotyme

I would have to agree with you.

Also, there was an article on Prethinking that the huge increase in speed via GPU will not happen on this update

shanerooni

you wouldn't have flash as a 1.3.x addition, and not market it inline with the pixi... wouldn't make sense.

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drizek

The two prethinking articles make it sound like the OP was right.

knobbysideup

Yeah. The lagging menus and such are becoming annoying. This is a fun device to tweak and configure, so having the screens where you do that be responsive is pretty important.

windzilla

I agree

if anything timeline wise, i would expect a push to get flash running with GPU support before the verizon launch. given TI's statements that they are working on gpu for omap with the open screen project, i don't think its unreasonable to think it might happen.

ryanfx

That's one of THE most RIDICULOUS things I've EVER heard in my life.

windzilla

I agree Just replace "in my" with "on pre-central" and "life" with "in the past month". as crazy as the op's comment is, i have, unfortunately, heard crazier, and on a regular basis, even in real life.

but its crazy none the less.

shotyme

The reason they have the GPU on the Pre is for future versions of WebOS. It will use the GPU in the future and having a minimal standard helps all WebOS devices (at least from a developer standpoint) Once Palm optimize WebOS with the GPU, I assume it will also allow developers access to the GPU to develop games. In a year or so, when WebOS goes 2.0, it will be a standard and Palm won't force you to upgrade your device to utilize new features in 2.0 since the hardware will be capable. It was just forward thinking. That is why the GPU is on the Pre, but not used yet. They have a plan, but GPU plan is not here just yet.

jhoff80

I didn't even necessarily mean that. I just meant that people are getting their hopes up for huge speed increases (which are now looking to not be part of this update), so if it comes along with minimal speed increases they'll be disappointed.

zonyl

I wouldnt. There is a known Adobe Flash Beta program and no-one has mentioned anything about it yet (If this were in Beta somewhere, someone would have leaked news of it by now).

If anything Palm/Adobe might pull a MotionApps Classic here by planting a dormant beta Flash plugin on the device with 1.3.1, pending a "Beta" program app to enable it.

zonyl

I believe it has to do with both market timing and agile development on why the GPU is there but unused. Let me explain.

It is known that Palm hired several iPhone engineers from Apple including Mr. Rubinstein and it would make sense that these were both UI/Marketing and Hardware engineer types. Apple doesnt do much with Linux on the software side. These folks put together a hardware platform that closely matched the specs of the 3GS ( CPU / GPU / Touch Panel / Etc) because they really didnt have an good idea of how the software would evolve yet. It is hard to change hardware late in the dev cycle.

Agile:
Then the software folks started at it in the tail end of the product cycle, had lofty goals, and started to implement their WebOS in an Agile methodology (one piece at a time). The software folks focused on getting the 2D performance working first so they could start building the rest of the OS; UI / Input / Networking / Carrier programs / etc. 3D APIs IMO are probably one of the most complex areas of software development (aside from Quaternion Game Physics engines over high latency networks ) which is why this is left near the end.

Market:
Palm was struggling to get their product out before the 2nd half of the year (to maintain investor confidence) and found that the 2D performance initially built was actually more than acceptable for casual use. The business value of spending money on 3D support diminished to the point that other higher value development items surfaced; Synergy, MotionApps Classic, Enterprise / Encrypted / Pin Exchange support, Phone Offline issues, Faster Javascript, Developer Framework enhancements, Application Market place, Email search, Adobe Flash, etc.

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Summary:
If someone were to list out all of the core features of WebOS that have evolved and all of the future ones people are now asking for, I think most will see they are marching along a fairly logical order given business values (what sells/will sell more phones). Resources are generally fixed, priorities over time are not.

We know Palm is working on 3D and as noble as the effort of including the GPU appears to be for the Pre, every day that passes is another day that the Palm Hardware folks are inching towards the Pre's replacement and a new GPU. BTW: Did the Mogul ever get GPU Direct3D drivers?