In addition to the new Palm Pixi, Sprint has officially dropped the Pre's introductory price to $149.99. While you can forget about the earlier service credit offer, this one adds fifty bills to the instant savings received at the time of purchase.

The new price is effective for the usual new customers that sign up for a two year service contract.

Here's an interesting tidbit that's come out of all the web chatter about the new Palm Pixi. As some of you may recall, back in June a Palm device codenamed the "Zepfloyd" was uncovered within the webOS code, alongside the Pre (codenamed "Castle") and the Pixi (codenamed, er, "Pixie"). Speculation ran rampant as to whether we might be looking at a "Pre Touch" PMP-style device or perhaps even a Foleo 2.

Well, we can now exclusively solve the mystery: Zepfloyd is not a super-secret new webOS device, but an old one. The Treo 800w, in fact. A Palm employee on the webos-Internals IRC chat channel has revealed that the 800w hardware was used as a testbed for early webOS development, before the Pre prototypes were available. The code is now "dead", so those of you getting your hopes up for hacking webOS onto the somewhat-unloved Windows Mobile-powered 800w will be disappointed.

Rumor: TechCrunch is reporting today that they have received a tip that the device code-nammed Palm Pixie/Castle/Eos could be launched as soon as this week. According to the site, the new device launch is set to coincide with Fashion Week held Sept 10-17th in New York City, where Palm is listed as a sponsor.

The Palm Eos has been in the rumor mill for some time now. Previous leaks have shown its specs and details from AT&T slides citing a launch date of the second half of 2009.

Updated
Sprint has added another rebate on top of the Pre's discount pile for newly migrating customers. Effective immediately, Sprint is giving customers a $100 service credit when you purchase the Sprint Palm Pre, sign a two year agreement and port your number over from another carrier. This deal is valid through October 31st (or Oct. 10th according to this page) and will be applied to your Sprint account within "three invoices."

This new credit combined with the recently leaked $50 reduction for "indirect partner retail dealers" show that Sprint is getting more aggressive in its pricing for the Pre.

Preware updates are rolling off the webOS-Internals production line like... um... something really smooth lately. Since version 0.8, which brought us app screenshots and descriptions, oil and rwhitby have added a number of tasty new features, including a preferences menu (which, amongst other things, allows you to configure the frequency of feed updates) and manual adding of feeds. Most welcome of all, however, is the significant speed boost on loading, which makes earlier editions look like clapped-out Volvos from the 70's.

As usual, Preware (and the accompanying Package Manager Service) is available via the webOS-Internals package feed, accessible from webOS Quick Install. If you haven't given't it a whirl yet - what on Earth are you waiting for? Free apps, people! Go forth!

Rumor: Let's all take a moment to thank the Maker (or other preferred deity) for anonymous tipsters, who yesterday tipped off Precentral.net to the news that the Palm Pre will likely be dropping to $149.99 (after mail-in rebate, boo) at Sprint's "indirect partner retail dealers", starting from today. It would logically follow that the same price will also apply at Sprint's own corporate stores.

The leaked price list also details price drops on other retail Palm products that are purchased with contacts: the Treo 755p @ $99.99, the 800w @ $49.99, the Treo Pro @ $199.99 and the Centro @ $29.99. The full leaked price list is posted after the jump.

If you still haven't got your fill of unauthorized webOS 1.2 information, then perhaps this will sate your desire: jhoff80 has posted a video on YouTube detailing some of the changes in the forthcoming update. Of particular interest is the new copy/paste functionality in the browser, which now lets you select both text and graphics. Huzzah!

Other confirmed browser upgrades include image saving & URL copying (by holding Orange + tapping) and improved zoom on text-entry fields. Also coming is the oft-requested email searching, and a minor change to notification behavior that doesn't seem to be for the better. Hit the jump for the video!

The recently-leaked WebOS 1.2 has sent the webOS-internals group into a minor tizzy today, with IRC super-sleuths Theo Ottesen and Michael Wand (theo on IRC and michaelw9 on Precentral) making two very intriguing discoveries in the code. One is great, and one is... slightly concerning.

Good news first: LED notifications are on the way! The much-requested feature has been discovered within the "securityconfig-scene.html" file, which contains the following info-text: "The gesture area blinks when new notifications arrive." The feature is currently commented out, but Michael was able to activate it by simply uncommenting it. The option for LED notifications is then added to the Screen & Lock settings page, and once turned on will set the LEDs on the gesture area to pulse on and off when a new notification arrives - new SMS messages, missed calls etc.

A few forum users at PreCentral.net have stumbled upon a unreleased version of webOS for the Pre. The newer webOS build was discovered via a Palm support and developer utility called webOS Doctor. Attempting to restore a Pre earlier today briefly resulted in it downloading and installing a copy of webOS v1.2. Palm has since quickly corrected the apparent slip up, however, copies are now making the rounds and new details about v1.2 are beginning to leak out.

Some of the new features spotted so far include a new version of the App Catalog with support for possible paid apps, user accounts and credit card transactions. Other small things such as some system tweaks, numerous browser refinements, data tracking changes and changes to the copy and paste behavior are also said to be in the mix.

Palm has unleashed one of the largest updates to the Palm Pre's App Catalog to date with 13 new webOS app arrivals. Bringing the grand total to 50, the newly sanctioned titles include:

DirectTV NFL (NFL video), Tip 'Em (tip calculator), Translator, The Globe and Mail (Canadian news), TMaps DC (DC public transport), Handmark Express Horoscopes, Zilch Lite (dice game), Photo Dialer, WikiHow, Dumb Waiter (tip calc), UberPass (password keeper), Lemonate (game) and CoinFlip.

In the continuing beta tradition, most of these apps are either free or demo trial versions. All are available now via the on-device Palm App Catalog.

It was a very short alpha test indeed for Preware 0.7.8, which after being verified bug-free has been laid to rest and had its last rites read. Preware 0.8 (beta) has now been released, and can be accessed via the webOS-Internals package feed on the latest version of the oh-so-useful webOS Quick Install tool with no self-compilation required.

Don't forget, you'll also need to download the accompanying Package Manager Service, unless you have a thing for apps that don't work. (Not that we're judging.)