WebOS 2 Upgrade Pre Minus

Here are instructions for speeding up your Pre Minus once you have installed WebOS 2.1. As Jon Rubenstein commented at the February 9th event, the Pre Minus simply does not have enough horsepower at stock to run WebOS 2.1 efficiently. Follow this guideline to overclock, patch, hack and modify WebOS so that it will run as fast and as smoothly as possible with WebOS 2.1.

I must note that while all of these steps do help significantly, you still will find the performance not perfect. The Pre Minus hardware is over 2 years old now. You simply can't get something from nothing. These steps help greatly, but do not expect a miracle.

Warnings and other preambles

While it is nearly impossible to brick your Pre, you are still modifying the device heavily with these steps. BACK YOUR DEVICE UP FIRST!!!! Back up apps with Save/Restore from Preware, and then copy the entire USB partition to your harddrive on a computer. You will be sorry if you don't.

Also: While patching does not void your warranty, overclocking does. One of these steps involves using a testing kernel feed, and the warnings for that are available on the page we will be referencing for it. Please read that warning. Ill summerise: It voids your warranty and there is a possibility that your phone will turn into a pile of liquid goo. Ok not really but it could break it. So far though I only know of one instance where overclocking destroyed a Pre.

Also these steps have been tried with WebOS 2.1 ONLY. If you attempt any of them with WebOS 1.4.5, do so at your own risk.

pre.... Pre Setup

Before starting, please ensure of something:

1. Put your Pre into developer mode. In Just Type write: "upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart". Open the Developer Mode app. Switch to 'ON'. Even if you do not use a computer once to perform these operations, you might brick WebOS and its essential you have developer mode on in order to change any files you messed up from a computer terminal.

2. Install Preware. If you have not, install the app Preware to your device. Instructions found here: | Install Preware

The Steps to Speed Up the Pre Minus.

Step 1: Overclocking

One of the most important steps is to overclock the processor and RAM using Unixpsycho's F105 Kernel. This kernel allows you to overclock the CPU to 1ghz as well as overclock the RAM, which is essential as RAM is the biggest issue with WebOS 2.1. At rest on a Pre2, I have seen that WebOS 2.1 uses about 300mb of ram. The Palm Pre Minus only has 256mb, so we are already using up more than 100% of the RAM of the phone before we even open an app. We must speed up and manage RAM as best we can in order to have any hope of running WebOS 2.1 smoothly.

The best way to install this kernel is through Preware.

1. First follow the steps to add the testing kernel feeds in Preware here: | Kernel Testing feeds

2. Once you have installed the feeds, go to Preware and go to Available Packages > Kernel > All and install the "F105 Thunderchief" Kernel.

3. Install Govnah from Preware as well. This is used to modify and monitor the CPU speeds.

4. Restart

Your phone should now be overclocked to 1Ghz and your RAM overclocked as well.

Step 2: Installing Patches to speed up the phone

Patches are a great and easy way to speed up the Pre Minus. They easily modify the code in WebOS so that your phone runs faster or is more responsive due to several different reasons.

Here are the list of patches to install from Preware in order to speed up the Pre Minus: (They are found under Available Packages > Patches )

Faster Card Animations HYPER Version

Smooth Scrolling

Increase Touch Sensitivity and Smoothness

Remove Dropped Packet Logging

Unset CFQ IO Scheduler

Unthrottle Download Manager

DO NOT install "Muffle System Logging" patch as this WILL break WebOS from indexing your photos, and any photos you take or download will disappear from the Photos app.

There you have it. Restart your Pre again and it should run faster as well.

Minimal System Logging

WebOS by default logs EVERYTHING you do, which can actually bog down the OS quite a bit. To disable this, follow these steps:

1. Open the phone dialer.

2. For Sprint/Verizon/CDMA: Dial ##5647 (##LOGS) and press SEND. For AT&T/O2/GSM: Dial #*5647# and press SEND.

3. Tap "Change logging levels."

4. Tap "Set logging to minimal."

5. Tap OK to confirm.

6. Tap OK again after it finishes.

7. Reboot your Pre.

8. Enjoy the performance boost!

The overclocked kernels do this by default but its better to be safe than sorry and make sure they are disabled.

DO NOT USE THE MUFFLE SYSTEM LOGGING PATCH, IT WILL BREAK YOUR PHOTOS.

Install Preset Reset

Go to Preware and install the Homebrew app Preset Reset. Open it and set it to reset your phone every day at a specific time (most likely when you are sleeping) . This way your phone will be nice and fresh in the morning, and the cache and memory leaks from the day before will be wiped clean from the device.

Install JSTop

Install "JSTop" from Preware. Open the app and tap the top left where the name "JSTop appears" to access the preferences for the app. Click "Enable Auto GC" and "Disable Notifications".

This will have JSTop automatically clear out any garbage memory or memory leaks at set intervals, which are pure murder for the RAM starved Pre Minus.

Cleanup

Periodically go into apps and clear out any history. This history severally slows the phone down after it builds up.

Phone App - Clear call history

Messaging App - Delete all messages

Email App - Delete any old emails you dont need

Google Maps - Clear search history

Browser - Delete History and Cookies and Cache.

Also, turn off any notification service that you don't need, such as Facebook Updates, etc. All of these services require the app to run in the background to "listen" for notifications and take up RAM.

Remove any Just Type services that you don't use, these also take up indexing cache.

More advanced hacks

These next hacks are more advanced and should only be done by those who have some computer experience. They involve using the Terminal as well as installing special patch files to speed up the Pre. These are the most dramatic hacks however that have shown the best performance so far.

Modify System Control Configuration

Linux allows you to add a file that will modify how the kernel handles using the RAM as well as virtual memory in the Pre Minus. With such little RAM to spare, we are going to modify how Linux stores applications and cache on the Pre to remedy the hanging, stalls and other issues experienced with using WebOS 2.1 on the Pre Minus.