webOS 2.0 Overview
by Mithun Chandrasekhar on February 3, 2011 6:05 PM ESTFinal Thoughts
HP is betting big on webOS. In today’s ultra-competitive and crowded smartphone market, it is becoming increasingly difficult for manufacturers and vendors to differentiate themselves from each other, all while providing the end-user a friendly and visceral user experience. In webOS 2.0, HP has the potential to really duke it out with iOS, Android, Window Phone 7, Symbian^3, and Blackberry OS. It matches most of them feature for feature, and trumps them on many fronts. Plus, with HP moving on from Mojo to a new, much more scalable framework in Enyo, webOS will not be constrained to just smartphones. HP has made it quite clear that they plan on taking webOS places, with a tablet being the earliest to get webOS on it.
webOS has never lacked form or functionality. In fact, based on experience, I wouldn’t even fault the hardware entirely. Build quality aside, the Pre/Pre Plus had the innards to, at the very least, keep up with the competition of its time and the OMAP 3630 in the Pre 2 is the very same found in the capable and well received Droid X.
What Palm sorely failed to gather was mindshare in the market. While launching new devices would have certainly helped a fair bit, what matters more is having developers take the leap of faith and much more importantly, inform and convince potential users of a platforms abilities. With the HP acquisition bringing in much needed capital and marketing resources, hopefully webOS will continue to bring in innovations and live on as a viable platform (and not go the way of Voodoo PC!). Check back for updates on the February 9 HP webOS event.
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Noriaki - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
It's nice to have the flexibility of Flash I suppose, but I have little use for it in practice and I usually don't have it installed on my Nexus One. I mostly find it to be a waste of battery.On the nexus one it's a market place app I can install/remove as I like. Is there some way to control/disable Flash support in webOS2 ?
mythun.chandra - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
You can enable/disable Flash support in the browser. Also, even if Flash support is enabled, you can toggle whether or not to load Flash content automatically on a page.Noriaki - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
Oh toggle to load automatically, I like that!Thanks for the info. I'm pretty interested to see what comes of webOS2.
tekeffect - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
I got the pre the day it came out. I liked the OS then but the build quality of that phone was shit. I will never understand how they put that much effort into making a OS and put it on the shittiest plastic/hardware they could find. I'm with Android now with no intention of leaving. I wonder how many people would be willing to go to Web OS after so much time.JHBoricua - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
I would, in an instant. But, only as long as the applications are there. That's the only reason I have an Optimus LG now, I got tired of HP dragging their behind and the lack of usable applications on the Pre. The application ecosystem on Webos is pathetic at this time. I couldn't care if coming February 9 HP shows some awesome hardware, if they won't have the apps behind the platform it will be the Pre all over again.I like WebOS. IMHO it beats Android and IOS hands down in terms of usability and the user interface experience is absolutely great, but what is the point if the apps are not there?
DigitalFreak - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
Exactly. It's a catch 22 really. Without the apps, people won't buy the phone. Without people buying the phone, developers won't create apps.While WebOS 2.0 may be technically better than Android, iOS, etc., having only one or two phones just isn't going to cut it.
retrospooty - Sunday, February 6, 2011 - link
"I will never understand how they put that much effort into making a OS and put it on the shittiest plastic/hardware they could find"I worked for Palm for 5 years from 02 to 07. They are never able to fire on all pistons at the same time to get anything meaningful done... Alot of good people there, but the management on the hardware/engineering side is useless.
My favorite quote from a Palm employee? "I have never seen so many smart people that truly care and are trying hard, go into a meeting together and come up with such stupid solutions"
firechiefsta - Monday, February 7, 2011 - link
That's the most perfect comment I have ever read about Palm. You nailed it right on, 100%. Great work.I've loved palm since the Vx days, but these last few years have been painful, to say the least.
Sad.
DigitalFreak - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
"Build quality aside, the Pre/Pre Plus had the innards to, at the very least, keep up with the competition of its time and the OMAP 3630 in the Pre 2 is the very same found in the capable and well received Droid X."The Droid X will be a year old soon (if it's not already). HP should be releasing a Pre 2 with next gen hardware if they really want to capture any meaningful amount of market share. Being an also ran isn't going to work.
mythun.chandra - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
I get that the 3630 isn't exactly the "in" thing...quite far from it. But I honestly feel that the the pace at which mobile CPU's are jumping forward every couple of months in terms of performance, soon we will be reaching a plateau in terms of how much CPU power we really need in a 3.5-4" device. Look at the desktop/notebook sector...apart from the Atom's, when was the last time you really felt the CPU was slowing you down?IMHO, the hardware needs to complement and be able to support the software it's driving. Now whether this means using a slow, low-power CPU with a software stack that almost entirely depends on the GPU (a la Nokia N8), or have it balanced like in case of the Pre 2 and webOS 2.0. At the end of it, it is the experience of using the device that really counts, not whether the CPU underneath is running at 1 or 1.5Ghz.
That being said, the upcoming HP/Palm tablets should also whet your appetite fo raw CPU power :)