While owners of the Palm Pre in Europe are still languishing with a few hundred apps (if that many) of the free variety, they can at least take heart that their carrier hasn’t abandoned them. As noted by teltarif.de, O2 is actually behind the creation of at least four German-language webOS apps: Mobile eBay, Xing, N24, and FriendScout24. Xing is a business social networking site similar to LinkedIn and popular in Germany, FriendScout24 is Germany’s top dating website, and N24 is a German news channel (News 24, eh). Mobile eBay, as you’ve likely deduced from its clever title, is eBay Germany formatted for your webOS phone. While Europe won’t be getting paid applications until March, webOS users in Germany can at least take heart that their carrier is still looking out for them.

Thanks to Hans for the tip!

The night is well underway in Europe, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get a webOS update. As it would turn out, mere weeks after hitting Palm Pre and Pixi phones in the United States and Canada, Pre owners on O2 in Europe can now pull down their latest webOS updated in the form of webOS 1.3.5.2. What’s different about this version from webOS 1.3.5.1 in the United States is currently an unknown, we’re waiting for the changelog to land right now. In the meantime, welcome to the land of space for apps, Europe!

UPDATE: We have a changelog after the break for you, but what’s important may not be in there. According to German-language tech site Heise Mobil, Palm has baked and enabled bluetooth tethering into webOS 1.3.5.2. Users in our forum have tested this out and wonder of wonders, it works.

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The fine folks over in Europe are finally getting in on the review fun that we had over here during the summer. Over at Golem.de they got some extended quality time with the phone, long enough to write up a 20-page review that covers just about every aspect of the phone. The conclusions are pretty much the same as ours, though there seems to be little difference between webOS 1.1.3 on O2’s Pre phones and the 1.1.0 version that we had on Sprint and Bell before webOS 1.2 hit. It is worth noting that webOS 1.1.3 does not come with the iTunes sync fix that 1.2.1 brought, so the Pre will be hitting Europe sans out-of-the-box music synchronization. An update to correct that and “bring parity” with the North American Pre is expected some time next month.

Heise.de aren’t the only ones that got their hands on the GSM Pre, as Trusted Reviews also put the phone through its paces. Their extensive review covered a lot of nitpicky items, but it’s the sign of a good product (or at least a product with good potential) when nitpicks are what take up space on the page and not huge glaring problems. Strangly, O2 sent United Kingdom-based Trusted Reviews a QWERTZ (i.e. German) Pre for their review. Slashgear did take a look at the UK edition and found no surprises.

Generally the reviews have come to the same conclusion as most stateside observers: the star of the Palm Pre is webOS. The build quality still leaves something to be desired, though we can easily point to the moving parts slider design as the culprit in the feels-flimsy category.

Thanks to Gizmo21 and Terry for the tips!