Can any Palm Pre be used for development?

Question

We're about to start developing software for the Palm, using WebOS.

Though an emulator is available for testing, I always feel more confident seeing it run on a physical device as well.

I can't find anywhere on Palm's website that tells me whether I can just buy an off-the-shelf Palm Pre and run my app on it, or if I have to buy one with a particular type of contract/ have it unlocked in some way/ whatever.

Does anyone know? Have you done this?

(Sorry this is barely programming-related, but I couldn't think where else to ask. I'm sure someone has done this and can give me a quick yay or nay. Thanks.)

Oh - I'm in the UK, if that makes any difference.

Answer 1

You can use any ol' off-the-shelf Pre. Just use the Konami code to enable Developer Mode^*, and you'll be good to go!

The flip side of this is that you do need some sort of service for your phone. It's possible, with the aid of certain hacks, to use a Pre for development without having any actual phone service... But you probably don't want to go down this route if you care about testing on something that behaves as close as possible to a normal user's phone.

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Update: Palm now offers a purchase program for developers that lets you buy a WebOS phone without a contract (and with a discount... provided you're in the US or Canada). However, this isn't a requirement, just another option if you don't care to actually sign up for service. (OTOH, you can probably find one on Ebay for less if you don't care about ever using the phone bit...)

^{*_{(you can also use the slightly shorter webos20090606 trigger, but what fun is that?)}}