Palm Pre Woes — When the Cloud Goes Down

Palm PreThe big news in the Palm world yesterday was the release of webOS 1.2. This new version had been delayed once or twice and contained a lot of fixes and new features. Like most Pre owners I jumped on the update as soon as the word spread, and after a brief inability to get it due to the slammed servers I was able to download and install the 79 MB update.

The update process was typical Palm, smooth and without event. That wasn’t the case when I grabbed the Pre this morning after letting it sit overnight. It turns out the Palm Profile server, where all Pres get backed up and synced continually, had gone down. My Pre could not talk to the mother ship, so it forced a hard reset. Investigation showed I was not the only one, and owners were not happy. The Pre Synergy syncing is a thing of beauty, unless the cloud goes down. Then the phone is a brick.

I have my Pre set to backup at 2 AM every morning. It does so while it is sitting on the Touchstone charger, and I don’t have to worry about it. It keeps my data protected, photos, music and the like, and also backs up any programs I have installed. It is a great example of how vital the Palm Profile server is to the Pre owner. Synergy on the Pre merges my email accounts, Facebook account, Google account, and with the new version 1.2, my LinkedIn account. It’s what sets the Pre apart from the rest of the smartphone crowd. It also requires the Palm Profile server to be up and running all the time.

When you buy a Pre the first thing you must do is create a Palm Profile account. This ties your online information with the phone, and the Pre must remain logged in to the Palm Profile server all the time. When the Profile server went down, even temporarily, many Pres were instantly logged out of the server. The phone then forces a “restart”, which in reality is a factory reset, and the phone is wiped. Until the reset process completes, and the Pre is able to log into the Profile server, the phone is a brick. It won’t do anything other than make manual phone calls. Many owners set out to start the day as I did, and found the phone was not usable.

When the server came back up, the Pre was able to log in properly, but it was like the very first time. All accounts mentioned above had to go through an initial sync process before the phone was fully usable. My personal data was restored from my Palm Profile account, so all my photos and music files were back on the phone. My theme customizations did not make the trip, however, and while any apps I had installed through the App Catalog were back on the phone, none of the many homebrew apps I had installed survived. Palm is not backing up all apps, only the ones installed on the phone and any installed through the Catalog.

This dependence on the Profile server is unsettling. All servers go down occasionally, that’s a given. When it bricks your phone in the field, that is a huge problem.

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