HP Open Sources webOS, Declines To Talk Future Hardware.

After months of waiting, webOS fans finally have a clear answer from HP as to what is happening to their beloved platform. Well, sort of. At today’s “all hands on deck” meeting HP CEO, Meg Whitman, announced that HP will be open sourcing the core webOS source code to everyone from “homebrew developers to a manufacturers”. Essentially, HP is turning webOS into Android, or, a much prettier Android.

More specifically, Meg announced a few key points to keep in mind regarding webOS moving foward, basically saying the company was still committed to webOS, and that by open sourcing the platform will help push webOS into the hearts and minds of developers much more quickly.

Sadly, Meg neglected to mention anything regarding webOS hardware (or if the company would even attempt it in any form again) as well as the hundreds of webOS jobs still in limbo. But hey, at least knowing the platform isn’t dead is something, right?

The open source move will begin with “Enyo” in a few weeks with more chunks of webOS getting the open source treatment as time progresses. HP mentioned that a roadmap was incoming.

As for intelectual property and patents, HP has stated that they will keep all webOS related patents in-house and use them to protect webOS developers moving forward.

Gadgetsteria’s take: We’re happy to see webOS keeping webOS alive, however, we’re worried that the Android approach will allow various parties to fragment webOS into another Android, and somewhat ruin a part of webOS’ uniqueness.

[Fragmentation] Global LTE Roaming Is Next To Impossible.

Believe it or not, Android isn’t the only thing that suffers from fragmentation. Good ‘ol LTE is pretty much a god damned mess across the world with as many as 38 different frequencies shuttling 1′s and 0′s to and fro. Take a look at the chart above, published by Wireless Intelligence, which highlights just how much of a task true global LTE roaming will be, if it’s ever attempted. Maybe everyone can get on board with a more universal frequency and spec for 5G, eh?

YouMail And T-Mobile Formally Enter He Said, She Said Battle. Claim Ongoing Talks Will Rectify Issue.

Yesterday’s story involving popular visual voicemail app/service, YouMail and U.S. cellular carrier, T-Mobile, takes a new twist today. After YouMail claimed T-Mobile blindsided them with the app removal, T-Mobile has come back (somewhat) swinging saying that they actually informed YouMail over a month ago that their app was causing “adverse network disruption” for T-Mobile customers, hence the apps removal. T-Mobile also claims that the two parties are currently in talks to fix the problem(s) causing the network issues, and that they’ll be “glad to once again support their application”.

“We reached out to YouMail in early November and asked them to address issues with their application that were negatively impacting our customers’ experience. We’re in contact with YouMail and they are working to resolve these issues. Once they do, we’ll be glad to once again support their application.”

What we still don’t understand is what exactly YouMail’s app was doing to get under T-Mobile’s skin. We’d can’t imagine T-Mobile being the only one affected if it truly is an app problem. Such a problem would likely affect all carriers. But until we get more clarification as to what the problem is, we can’t really form any real conclusion either way. Though, we’ll note that having a single carrier cause a platform-wide ban is pretty alarming. One would think there would be some sort of process for such things. Instead, it appears that as long as someone complains, Google will simple go full-throttle with the ban hammer.

Today’s Galaxy Nexus Release Date Is: Thursday, December 15th.

Want a Galaxy Nexus but bummed to find the December 8th/9th release date didn’t pan out. No worries. Today’s Galaxy Nexus release date is *spins wheel*…December 15th.

At this point we wouldn’t put too much weight/hope behind Galaxy Nexus release date claims. WIth that said, several GottaBeMobile sources/VZW reps have confirmed that Google’s latest and greatest software and phone will in fact officially hit stores next Thursday, December 15th. We too have called a couple stores in the area and received a similar December 15th nod.

The reasoning behind the delay (most recent launch date was today, December 9th) hasn’t been made public nor leaked. We’d chalk it up to Android 4.0 and it’s bevy of new features and fancy new UI as the main culprit. Whatever the case may be, we’re just glad to finally (and again, hopefully) be in the home stretch.

German Court Rules Against Apple, Injunction For iPhone And iPad In Europe Incoming.

Apple has just lost a major court battle with Motorola in Mannheim Regional Court in Germany that could see the iPhone and iPad banned from public sales across Europe. The patent in question, European Patent 1010336 (B1), involves a “Method for Performing a Countdown Function During a Mobile-originated Transfer for a Packet Radio System”

The “preliminary enforceable injunction” (as noted by FOSS Patents Florian Muller) currently affects products sold by Ireland-based Apple Sales International. With that said, the ruling could have a devastating ripple effect for Apple in other lawsuits and markets should tides start turning against them.

Apple will almost certainly appeal the ruling to the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court, though how they will act if the injunction ruling is upheld is uncertain. Having the injunction upheld will more or less allow an entire Europe-wide ban on the iPhone and iPad product lines. For their defense, Apple can either remove the offending technology from the products in question (unlikely) or license the technology from Motorola.

The latest ruling comes roughly one month after Motorola won a formal injunction over the same patent(s) in question, though at that time it was seen as largely “for show”.

[Video] Untethered iOS 5 Jailbreak Shown Off By Chronic Dev Team.

The moment iOS 5 users have been waiting for: An untethered jailbreak. While it’s not yet publicly available, the video (after the break) showing a near complete hack is reassuring for everyone that’s upgraded to Apple’s latest and greatest firmware. No mention has been made as to when we can expect Chronic Dev Team’s untethered jailbreak tool to go live. But as always, we’ll let you know as soon as it does. Hop past the break for the riveting video…

Gadgetsteria Investigates: Currents Vs. Flipboard For iPhone.

Consumers of large amounts of online news hasn’t changed too much over the years — you the user manually seek out news and read it in a mainly single-threaded way. But apps such as the recently launched Flipboard for iPhone and Google Currents take “static” news and organize it into a digital magazine-like format for you, automatically. No more organizing feed lists and searching around the web from site to site, article to article. Digital magazines that aggregate and organize content are the way to go.

Join us after the break as we take a look at two of iOS’ newest news consumption apps, Flipboard and Currents…