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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ssj4Gogeta - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
Well, that sounds pretty bad. Google needs to advertise Android as a Google product. That will definitely help.Belard - Friday, February 4, 2011 - link
"4 OS Smartphones"? Uh, theres more than 4 on the market. But if WebOS(HP) can make a dent in the market place, it would be 6th major contender. Linux would be 7th and its dying out - killed by Android (Which is based off Unix).Around 2010, the smart phones :
1 - 36% = Symbian (Nokia - blah)
2 - 25% = Android (Samsung, Motorola, LG, HTC, SONY)
3 - 17% = iPhone
4 - 15% = RIM (Blackberries)
5 - -3% = Windows Mobile
6 - 2% = Linux (and getting smaller)
7 - -1% = WebOS 1.x and everything else including Sony's old system.
WebOS 2.0 is competing with 4~5 solid major competing systems.
A bit of fun. First SMART Phone is by IBM. The Simon from 1994. It has a huge mono-LCD touch screen, no actual buttons. Use your finger or a stylus to operate.
Looking at the screensshots, it looks great. Clean and simple. In ways, there are still issues with Android. I'm still on 2.1 with my Galaxy which isn't perfect, other than its screen.... and there are some interface issues that are harder than it should be.
Setting up an alarm, in which the screen button display is alpha numeric?!
rhangman - Friday, February 4, 2011 - link
Don't forget Samsung Bada. Surprisingly decent OS and the hardware is essentially the same as their Android/WM7 phones.Conficio - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
I like webOS too. sounds quite a bag of good ideas.But the hardware spec seems to be last years boat. by the time that hits the networks we are talking about dual core A9, etc.
The interesting part would be if HP could use this to build UIs for all its devices: phone, tablet, printer, scanner, monitor/TV remote, monitor OSD, cameras, notebook instant on, netbook instant on, etc.
Ahh, and make it open source and engage many hardware manufacturers. Google has done it, webOS does need too.
One more question, what is the app install story/marketplace? That is key for developers, isn't it?
Cyborg7th - Friday, February 4, 2011 - link
The pre's specs are last years boat... or more to the point, mid 2009. But at the time of release it was just as powerful, and in some areas better, than the other phones on the market.HP does plan on using webOS on tablets and printers so far that I know of, and possibly more in the future.
As for open source, webOS has Android blown away in that department. I have full access to everything on my pre, including a terminal interface which I can run shell commands on. Thanks to the homebrew guys/gals you can change almost everything on the phone, including overclocking it. My pre is curretly clocked at 1 ghz with custom voltages.
The last question is where I feel HP needs to step up their game on the software side of things. The current app store sucks to be blunt. I never use it anymore after loading preware onto my phone. But while webOS doesn't have a ton of apps available, a lot of them are free.
ChronoReverse - Friday, February 4, 2011 - link
That seems like a curious thing say about "blowing away Android" when the examples you provided are all possible on Android as well. Perhaps you meant to say iOS?Cyborg7th - Saturday, February 5, 2011 - link
Possible on Android... sure... now get back to me when you can do it without rooting your phone first.tenkom - Saturday, February 5, 2011 - link
It is not exactly officially supported on webos either and over clocking does require you to flash a new kernel. Many android phones are very easy to root so I don't think that is a very good argument.Cyborg7th - Saturday, February 5, 2011 - link
That was the arguement to begin with. My statement was about webos being more open than android. Out of the box, webos on any of the phones does not have to be rooted.Conficio - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link
I'd think that many of these app features would be great as kind of a dashboard on Windows/Linux as well.So make a virtual phone as a dashboard (many laptops have multi finger mousepads and desktops start using it too - Apple?). Then sync the the phone and the dashboard app, allow any sort of sizing, make it a screensaver, etc.
Same for media access on your media settop box?
HP has the ability to do it, especialy if they OSS it.