Because of all the news about the closure of HP webOS cloud services on January 15, 2015, you decided to take out your old Palm Pre 2 from your drawer. You wanted to experience webOS again before you finally move on. You’ve kept your webOS phone in its box for more than two years, but when you press the power button, it still turns on.

You’ve read that you can no longer buy apps from the App Catalog. You decide to try installing free apps, but it won’t work either. You know it’s still supposed to work for free apps. Something must be wrong. Read on so you’ll know what to do.

Last July 2013, HP issued an App Catalog update for all webOS users so our devices would still work after the expiration of the HP webOS root certificate on July 23, 2013. If you missed it, you need to to the following:

1. Go to the Date and Time app, and set it to July 1, 2013. Network time should be turned off.

2. Connect to Wi-Fi or turn on your data connection.

3. Go to App Catalog. Search for App Catalog Update. Download, install, and launch it. You will see this message:

You have successfully installed the 2013 App Catalog Update. Thank you for being a valued webOS customer. Application can now be closed.

4. Forget the part saying you are “a valued webOS customer.”

5. Go back to the Date and Time app, then set it to the present date and time. You can also enable Network time, then turn airplane mode on and off.

6. Enjoy downloading free apps until HP allows us to do so.

The instructions above are from the HP discussion forum. If you have more questions, ask the helpful people at webOS Nation.

You will also find that many webOS features are broken, so you will need to download patches like Google sync https fix and the Yahoo Contact sync.

App Catalog Update HP webOS Palm webOS