Jun 24, 2011 15:18 GMT  ·  By

HP Palm Pre 2 users rejoice, as the webOS 2.1 is about to be deployed by Verizon in the next few days to all customers who own the smartphone.

Reports are in that the update is now being rolled out gradually, so users should be patient if they do no find the update at first glance.

Those who are anxious and cannot wait for Verizon's update notification to pop up should manually refresh the System Updates app to see if they can download it or not.

webOS 2.1 brings a wide array of improvements and new features, as well as several email-related fixes that have been reported in the past.

Some of the highlights of the webOS 2.1 are detailed below:

Exhibition - Exhibition gives you access to special applications that optimize use of the smartphone while it is placed on an HP Touchstone charging dock. The apps include Time (clock app), Photos (photo slide show), and Agenda (agenda view).

Voice Dial

- You can now dial contacts using your voice by launching the Voice Dial application. Voice dialing can also be initiated by pressing and holding the volume button at any time, or by tapping and holding on the Phone dial pad.

Support for Bluetooth keyboards

Backup changes

- Information backed up to your Palm profile now includes call history entries, text messages, and instant messages. Note that multimedia messages are not backed up.

Email fixes

-If you download a music file that you received as an email attachment, the file name appears correctly after downloading. - Email messages containing multiple replies appear with the replies correctly separated and formatted. - This release fixes an issue where email message body text in POP email accounts was not being downloaded to the smartphone.

Messaging

- If you restore a Palm profile that includes one or more messaging accounts, the status icon showing your availability in Messaging appears correctly.

Photos

- Thumbnail images appear correctly for images in the Wallpapers album.

Tasks

- If you search for a task or a task list by typing the name, the search term can begin with a symbol

Security

- This release addresses a number of security issues with HP webOS software.

If everything goes smooth and feedback is positive it shouldn't take more than 3-4 days to deploy the webOS 2.1 update to all HP Pre 2 devices.