One of the big holes the Palm Pre has as a high-end smartphone is its lack of a video recording feature. The Pre is certainly a powerful enough device to handle video recording, but the dev team has yet to release an update to enable it. While no official camcorder solution exists for the Pre, privately made open-source applications that allow recording now exist.

PreCentral.net reports that developer zonyl has put an app up for download here. He's managed to get the camera to record at around 30 fps in 320x480 px. From the posted videos we can see that the new camcorder has fairly good image quality with solid color definition.

Obviously, any homebrew solution will more of a hassle than just downloading an official update. If you're not willing to wrestle with this app a bit you might be better off just waiting for Palm to get off their butts and fill this major hole in their flagship phone. That could be a long while in coming.