Apps situation - we're doing it wrong!!

[sledge007]

Some notes on the camera ....these are the features that reeled me in....and they are good.
Burst shot, Face Detection, Smile Shot, Voice Activated Snapshots, Panorama, Automatic Scene Modes, Separate Exposure Value, Focus Mode, Timer, Resolution up to 3264x2448, White Balance, ISO, Metering, Anti Shake, Guidelines, Image Quality.

Here's a big one, automatic upload to (name your cloud storage here.) Customizable from immediate, or when you return to a WiFi zone.

Being able to film a video, and take a still picture while still filming the video.

This is what's being offered on today's smartphones, and it's this level that needs to be met, in order to stay competitive with the average user. I don't expect those would be an easy integration either.

[hux]

For Public Transportation App, there is "Bahnfahren" for Public Transport in Germany. This App is really really smart and one of my absolute favorites. Guess if we talk (and donate) to the developer, there is some chance that it gets ported to other countries as well.

[oholika]

share via Bluetooth is a must have!

[xandros9]

i kinda wish webOS had a built in stopwatch and countdown timer.

[Grabber5.0]

But there are apps for those things already, so it shouldn't matter that they are not built in.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums

[laingman]

Sledge,

I agree te camera situation is lacking. Hardware issue tho

[sledge007]

Originally Posted by xandros9

i kinda wish webOS had a built in stopwatch and countdown timer.

Originally Posted by Grabber5.0

But there are apps for those things already, so it shouldn't matter that they are not built in.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums

If we're talking about improving the way webOS is overall, then xandros has a point. It's nice to be able to open Clock (on Android) and have the following available, in one app: Alarm, World Clock, Stopwatch, Timer, Desk Clock. It's less searching around when anything time related is under one heading.

Originally Posted by laingman

Sledge,

I agree te camera situation is lacking. Hardware issue tho

Laingman, I'm not so sure if all of what I had mentioned is strictly hardware. I used to have one of the first (non-smart) flip-camera phones back in the day. I can't remember the make/model seems to me it might have been either an Ericsson or a Kyocera. This phone had a built in white balance, as well as several automatic scene modes. Now whether or not it could be actually programmed to work with existing hardware, who knows. Obviously there's a reason why it isn't there, whether it's physically not feasible or maybe they just didn't have the time/resources/know how to do it. At any rate, these were/are suggestions for the future. I've heard the argument over and over that it's "just a phone" "if I want to take serious pictures I'll just use my Canon Rebel" but the truth of the matter is people use their phones....for more than just a phone, and not everybody has a DSLR in their back pocket

[Remy X]

Originally Posted by sledge007

Laingman, I'm not so sure if all of what I had mentioned is strictly hardware. I used to have one of the first (non-smart) flip-camera phones back in the day. I can't remember the make/model seems to me it might have been either an Ericsson or a Kyocera. This phone had a built in white balance, as well as several automatic scene modes. Now whether or not it could be actually programmed to work with existing hardware, who knows. Obviously there's a reason why it isn't there, whether it's physically not feasible or maybe they just didn't have the time/resources/know how to do it. At any rate, these were/are suggestions for the future. I've heard the argument over and over that it's "just a phone" "if I want to take serious pictures I'll just use my Canon Rebel" but the truth of the matter is people use their phones....for more than just a phone, and not everybody has a DSLR in their back pocket

Yes. I still keep my high-end LG flip phone as a second phone line and one of the reasons for keeping it is the top-notch camera firmware.

The Pre+ takes great video, crystal clear and almost never skips frames, but i only use it for photos if i don't have time to grab something else. The aforementioned lack of white balance and of other built-in features makes it a camera for documenting something but not for any arty shots. The fact that the Pre has flash became an excuse to use crappy sensors with strings of bad pixels, so the one i have has a whole line of red pixels that show up after taking a photo in low light conditions. Eww...

My other phone is that LG VX8700 and it has a noise-free 2.0 megapixel sensor. The camera firmware constantly adjusts white balance that makes for some interesting effects if you manage to take a picture before it is done calculating, or if you play with it by covering and uncovering the camera between shots. It also has a night vision mode, courtesy of the high quality sensor, and it's very good ..The compression/up-sampling algorithm is also the most natural of the three phones i have. Video recording is low resolution.

The other third phone that's off-network is my Nokia N900. It's got a 5MP camera with a focus lens, where you twiddle the camera button to focus, and press it completely to take photo. It's powered by the same CPU as the Pre+, but having a high resolution IPS screen makes video recording glitchy, since the screen image takes priority over video recording. The upside is being able to use macro mode zoom while recording a video. Photos are often grainy in a way that artifacts can become bright pixels that stand out, but being able to take a photo of a newspaper and then zoom in on the picture and read it hours later makes it a worthy piece.

Perhaps my "analysis" is subjective, but each of these three phones is unique in a way that makes me unable to pick one, there's always a case when the other phone is better. I always gravitate to the flip phone due to both having control and the surprise element of the phone's own calculation and not having to deal with "paint by number" polygons in the finished image.

I may be a snob when it comes to my phones' camera capabilities, but i'm not a professional photographer, so please don't rip me apart for not using the correct terms ...However, i have, and still do work with graphics professionally, Photoshop work is second nature to me, so i reserve the right to pick apart image quality all day long


Anyhow, i agree that a phone's photo capabilities are important, whether it's purely hardware (cast-off, grade C sensors vs. the best of the batch) or the firmware that pulls raw sensor data and manipulates it for white balance and final resampling before compressing the image as JPEG...

[Shura]

And plus normal messenger with MSN, ICQ and XMPP support. Also would be nice to add mojoWhatsup to messenger.

[pepebuho]

you need to add Waze to the list of essential Apps. Right now I am dual booting my Touchpad and after Mojowhatsapp I would stay 100% with Webos were it not because of Waze.
I like Navit, but it lacks the traffic conditions info that Waze provides and i find that very useful.

JP

[Rnp]

Google Plus, please.

Some local sync & backup! (Yes, I still missing; a lot, sync with Palm Desktop. )

And; for love of God, the same Documents To Go as in Palm OS! No more, and no less.


Best Regards....

[Herrie]

Does anyone have a proper app or description to do low level network activity monitoring for an app on Android? Would like to monitor some URL requests from some apps and recreate these apps for webOS with Enyo :-)

[Remy X]

Originally Posted by Herrie

Does anyone have a proper app or description to do low level network activity monitoring for an app on Android? Would like to monitor some URL requests from some apps and recreate these apps for webOS with Enyo :-)

Can't you just use Wireshark on another machine to monitor the Android phone? That should be almost as good IMHO.

[Herrie]

Originally Posted by dignitary

That's a nice, quick way to get yourself slapped with a nice fat lawsuit. Evidently you didn't read my post above.

I'm not US based and our laws are a bit more liberal

[Remy X]

Here's a thread on Stack Overflow that talks about using Wireshark for this purpose, i don't know if it'll help you... Decoding URL in Wireshark - Stack Overflow

[sledge007]

Originally Posted by dignitary

That's a nice, quick way to get yourself slapped with a nice fat lawsuit. Evidently you didn't read my post above.

Hand out all the advice you want....nobody is forced to listen to or follow it.

[Herrie]

Let's put it this way. The apps I'm looking at are 'local' app from my country for things like 'free public transport plannner', 'various newspapers', nothing too shocking. If I find the URL's and parameters they use I can build apps for webOS for these instead of using their website :-)

[anthonybennis]

From what I see, the user base is dwindling fast. My two cents... What the ecosystem needs most is two things:

1. An up to date to the default WebKit browser, so existing webOS devices can make the most of online browser based applications and sites and extend the life of TouchPad.

2. Ensure Open webOS can be easily ported to Nexus (or whatever mainstream cheap tablet device) to increase the end user base and grow a following from the roots up.

I'm not a ******, but webOS is a great mobile operating system. Specifically multi tasking, and it's the best for making the most of the devices battery life. Compared to Android, it still feels much more polished. (I get a "Linux" vibe from using Android sometimes... it just doesn't look like everything belongs together).

I think HP really under estimated how good webOS was/is.

[Grabber5.0]

Originally Posted by anthonybennis

From what I see, the user base is dwindling fast. My two cents... What the ecosystem needs most is two things:

1. An up to date to the default WebKit browser, so existing webOS devices can make the most of online browser based applications and sites and extend the life of TouchPad.

2. Ensure Open webOS can be easily ported to Nexus (or whatever mainstream cheap tablet device) to increase the end user base and grow a following from the roots up.

I'm not a ******, but webOS is a great mobile operating system. Specifically multi tasking, and it's the best for making the most of the devices battery life. Compared to Android, it still feels much more polished. (I get a "Linux" vibe from using Android sometimes... it just doesn't look like everything belongs together).

I think HP really under estimated how good webOS was/is.

I think 1 will never happen, because Palm forked WebKit and made many changes to support Luna, and that's all closed source code. As for 2, they are doing a pretty good job of supporting the developer community. How that translates into viability of the OS, is anybody's guess.