- Palm has only officially released webOS 2.1.0 for the Pre 2 device, and the German O2 Pre+ device. Using the WebOS Internals MetaDoctor tool, the webOS 2.1.0 doctor for German O2 Pre+ devices can be modified by an end-user and installed on any.
- This tip is only for devices running webOS 2.x When you activate a webOS 2.0 device, the first thing the phone does is search for a cellular signal or SIM card (for GSM phones). Even if you have an active Wi-Fi connection, if it is not an active device on your cellular account you will not be able to do much more than just turn the phone on. If your device is a GSM device and you.
I decided to update the 3/4 of my Palm WebOS devices. The Pre (not pictured) and Pre2 (middle) were my primary, daily-driver phones for over two years, from September 2009 through to spring 2012, when I acquired a Galaxy Nexus and made the jump to Android.
See the webos-internals wiki for meta-doctor: Application:MetaDoctor - WebOS Internals As it stands the meta-doctor tool is used only on a Linux can be used on a Mac or Linux desktop to create custom webOS Doctor builds. I imagine that this will not change. The Webos Internals Meta Doctor is a Makefile which can modify a copy of the Palm webOS Doctor before it is flashed onto a webOS device. It accomplishes this by reaching into Palm's distributed Doctor JAR file and making changes to it.
The Pre3 (right) I also picked up on eBay. It came in box, with all accessories, and a spare battery.
The Pixi (left) I picked up cheap on eBay. “For Parts”, because it “Does not move from activation screen”. Now, the Pixi was a low-end device when it launched. It doesn’t even have WiFi. This isn’t a device you’d buy to use. But as a curiosity, I was interested. Due to the Palm servers being taken offline in January 2015, the activation process will never complete. Interestingly, this “Sprint” Pixi has a “Verizon” faceplate, possibly swapped from a Pixi Plus at some point. Model number confirms it is a Sprint device..
The Pre & Pixi are CDMA phones, locked to Bell Mobility and Sprint respectively. So they’re effectively useless.
The Pre2 & Pre3 are HSPA+ phones, and I should be able to use them on my current provider, assuming I can locate a SIM adapter.
Following the MetaDoctor Wiki is fairly straight forward.
Note:
“WebOS Doctor” is Palm’s official firmware update program + firmware images
“MetaDoctor” is a community-driven makefile that alters the above “WebOS Doctor” images with user-chosen modifications.
After fetching metadoctor from github, you’re required to fetch the WebOS firmware images from Palm. Palm, of course, doesn’t exist currently. Thankfully, you can get all WebOS Doctor images via archive.org.
You’ll have to rename the files after download to append the WebOS version to the filename. In my case:
An important resource is the MetaDoctor README file. It outlines all the options available. Myself, I just want to a few options. Instructions say to modify the Makefile, but passing args works just fine. These make commands will output a few assembled firmware images to the build directory.
Note that I’m using CARRIER=att for the Pre3, due to this being an AT&T phone. However, ADD_EXTRA_CARRIERS=1 should provide whatever additional data (APN?) for it to work on my network. The Pre2 uses CARRIER=wr. There is no “rogers” carrier, but it is on the wiki. However, it links to the webosdoctorp224pre2wr.jar file.
Interestingly, WebOS Doctor images are more than just a firmware image, like you’d have with Android (or other devices). They’re actually executable java bundles, which will push the encased firmware to the device. So you execute it on your computer. On the bright-side, they’re Java, so they should work on any platform. On the super-bright-side, they actually work just fine with the OpenJDK installed in Fedora. No need to tarnish your system with Sun/Oracle Java.
Now, the down-side (of course there was one). There seems to be some trouble actually finding the USB device. It seems that it uses platform-specific builds of novacom. Novacom is sort of like both fastboot and adb utilities in the Android world. Apparently there are libusb woes here. There are instructions on chasing down old libraries to resolve this issue…
Luckily, none of that matters on Fedora 24, since novacom is actually packaged.
You’ll need to run it as root to allow direct access to USB devices (You can probably configure some udev permission rules, but I won’t be doing this often enough to bother). You can instruct it to fork, but I preferred opening a second terminal, so I could <CTRL+C> the process when I’m done.
Update: A systemd unit is actually installed. sudo systemctl start novacomd would be the correct method to start the service
You should see a few lines of output indicating a device was found.
Back in our metadoctor terminal, run the WebOS Doctor firmware we assembled earlier:
A few clicks of “Next” should get your firmware flowing. Note that one of the ‘next’ buttons will be disabled if your device isn’t found.
As mentioned above, the Pixi was stuck in perpetual activation. You’ll need to force it into a mode that will accept firmware. This is sort of like bootloader mode on Android. This process should be identical for all Palm WebOS hardware.
- Turn the device off
- Hold
- Either press , or Plug in USB (both turn on the phone)
The updater should see the device and enable you to load the firmware.
After a successful update, the initial boot screen will be a picture of Tux with a Palm Pre.
After booting up the Pixi, I noticed it immediately started in “International Roaming” mode, notified of pending voice mail, and has a phone number assigned to it.
I’ve immediately placed it into airplane mode, then yanked the battery. Since this device lacks Wifi, there is very little reason to look at it again.
There is a process to install WebOS 2 onto WebOS 1 devices, like the Pre and Pixi. I actually used WebOS 2 on my Pre when it was my primary device back in 2011. It added some notable features, such as voice dialing (handy with bluetooth). It was perfectly functional, though a tad sluggish at times (it was targeting better hardware).
Metadoctor
That said, backporting WebOS 2 to these devices is an interesting exercise. There is a WebOS 2 upgrade procedure, which involves running the appropriate script from within the metadoctor directory:
Metadoctor Vs Metadoctor Pro
The script will list the multiple WebOS Doctor images required at the top. You’ll need to preemptively fetch these, as the URLs are bad (pointing to offline Palm servers, again). Note that they use a slightly different naming scheme (they do not get the version appended to the end).
Meta Doctor Coat
The firmware install procedure is the same as above.