wraggster
March 26th, 2010, 22:02
Looking to harness the real power inside of your Pre (or Pre Plus) -- and you've upgraded to webOS 1.4? If that's the case, you're going to love what a couple of Palm-loving hackers have come up with. Namely, a major overclock kernel patch for the device which boosts the CPU speed from a measly 500MHz all the way up to a finger-searing 800MHz (there's also a more tame 720MHz variation available). The two phone magicians, unixpsycho and caj2008, had previously tapped into the power of the Pre's CPU on webOS 1.3.5 with a small file that can be semi-easily installed using WebOSQuickInstall and a tiny bit of Linux command-line activity, and now it's on for 1.4. So far, it looks like phones being tested with the somewhat risky tweak haven't experienced too much of the normally expected issues (crashes, freezing, phones exploding). Also a surprise is the fact that the creators of the hack say battery life drain is only an additional 2-4 percent hit... though if you're already struggling to make it through a day, this could be the nail in the coffin. We installed the patch on a Verizon Pre Plus, and we definitely observed a noticeable bump in app load times and improved fluidity when working with the phone -- though we've already had one major crash. If you don't mind possibly destroying your phone and must have a faster device right now, you can check out the patch in action and learn how to get it yourself in the video after the break.
Update: This is the same patch we covered for 1.3.5, but now available for 1.4. Sorry for any confusion!
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/26/pre-gets-a-nasty-800mhz-overclock-patch-for-all-to-enjoy-at-one/
Update: This is the same patch we covered for 1.3.5, but now available for 1.4. Sorry for any confusion!
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/26/pre-gets-a-nasty-800mhz-overclock-patch-for-all-to-enjoy-at-one/