[k4ever]

Go ahead and buy one of those knockoffs and use it for a month to check its short-term build quality and performance. You'll know why they aren't popular here in the States despite their low cost and wide availability; even if you could port Open webOS to them, most are made of second-rate parts as opposed to the major brands which hand-pick their parts from top-tier providers and/or design their own. And their performance is almost unilaterally horrendous.

Going to cheap Chinese knockoffs in a desperate attempt to find a home for webOS is just asking for disappointment. You think the build quality of the original Palm Pre and its huge issue with The Oreo Syndrome was bad? You've seen nothing yet.

If you want seriously competitive quality from China when it comes to getting something comparable to the top smartphones and tablets here in the U.S., you have to make all the important hardware and software decisions yourself or what you're going to get is an unpredictable mish-mash of lowest-bidder parts thrown in a hastily-assembled case and, in the case of phones, largely unreliable call and data reception quality. There are rare exceptions (that cost considerably more), but in general that's how it works.

I'd love to hear some solid evidence (and device specs) from someone that's purchased one of these knockoffs or off-brand devices that it's been anything more than an exercise in money wasted.

Cheap quality? You mean like everything else stamped "made in China" which is just about every electronic device sold in the USA? I'm pretty sure I won't get something high quality, but I haven't gotten a high quality electronic product in years. Especially since most American tech companies decided to lay off US workers and have their devices built in China by Foxconn. My iPod, POS from China with a metal backing. My HP laptop, same. I just plan on cutting out the middle man and not being delusional enough to think that what I buy today from a named brand company is any different. Will there be risks? Yes. I'm expecting that.


---Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities (a great webOS app!)

[SnotBoogie]

Cheap quality? You mean like everything else stamped "made in China" which is just about every electronic device sold in the USA? I'm pretty sure I won't get something high quality, but I haven't gotten a high quality electronic product in years. Especially since most American tech companies decided to lay off US workers and have their devices built in China by Foxconn. My iPod, POS from China with a metal backing. My HP laptop, same. I just plan on cutting out the middle man and not being delusional enough to think that what I buy today from a named brand company is any different. Will there be risks? Yes. I'm expecting that.


---Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities (a great webOS app!)

All due respect i don't think he's trying to argue that merely being made in China is bad but that companies, take for example, Apple or Motorola, benefit from having large businesses so they can buy high quality products from vetted component makers in bulk and much more managable prices and thats why they sell at a price point they do. But other companies can't get nearly the same deal so in order to keep costs down they have to settle for, often, second rate chips, memory, screens, boards, cases etc. In fact i think even big companies like HP were forced to release the thick touchpad in that case because they couldn't get enough of the internal components to make a thinner tablet before the device was supposed to launch due to the fact that Samsung and Apple had bought up everything already. But you can crack open say an ipad and see they are getting chips from the best makers like Skyworks solutions, triquint semi, Taiwn Semi, Avago (formely an HP company lol), etc. I'd bet you'd be getting lower quality components in knockoff or many of the no name devices. Not only that most big name companies have probably spent much time working out kinks that other companies skip. Remember Apple struggling to get a white iphone into the market simply do to issues with the color of the paint. I can't imagine most small companies worrying about such details. they'd just rush it to market. And consider that companies like Apple Nokia etc have whole buildings and rooms just for testing reception where as the guy making the cheapo versions is probably slamming things together in a warehouse and just making sure the software boots. Where as even amercian companies manufacturing in China go through great efforts to make sure devices are manufactured to a standard. If you read the Walter Isaacson biography about Steve Jobs he even makes a big point about how he needs to have 10000 engineers staffed in the manufacturing plant to deal with problems that arise in the products when they start putting these things together. Interestingly he mentioned that the lack of engineers was the big reason why they couldn't make iphones in the U.S. and if they could actually get 10000 American engineers here he could move a plant to the U.S. with out issue. Always thought that was interesting when people discuss outsourcing and don't want to invest in education. I mean i don't have kids so i get it but still seems stupid big picture wise. But i digress.

Now me i don't care what you do. If it works for you i say go for it. But i think he was trying to make a point that you simply aren't assured of the quality you're gonna get. And here in the states you have scant chance of getting your money back too with such a long distance transaction. but to me hey it's your money i say go for it if you want. take pictures and post them though when you do.

[k4ever]

All due respect i don't think he's trying to argue that merely being made in China is bad but that companies, take for example, Apple or Motorola, benefit from having large businesses so they can buy high quality products from vetted component makers in bulk and much more managable prices and thats why they sell at a price point they do. But other companies can't get nearly the same deal so in order to keep costs down they have to settle for, often, second rate chips, memory, screens, boards, cases etc. In fact i think even big companies like HP were forced to release the thick touchpad in that case because they couldn't get enough of the internal components to make a thinner tablet before the device was supposed to launch due to the fact that Samsung and Apple had bought up everything already. But you can crack open say an ipad and see they are getting chips from the best makers like Skyworks solutions, triquint semi, Taiwn Semi, Avago (formely an HP company lol), etc. I'd bet you'd be getting lower quality components in knockoff or many of the no name devices. Not only that most big name companies have probably spent much time working out kinks that other companies skip. Remember Apple struggling to get a white iphone into the market simply do to issues with the color of the paint. I can't imagine most small companies worrying about such details. they'd just rush it to market. And consider that companies like Apple Nokia etc have whole buildings and rooms just for testing reception where as the guy making the cheapo versions is probably slamming things together in a warehouse and just making sure the software boots. Where as even amercian companies manufacturing in China go through great efforts to make sure devices are manufactured to a standard. If you read the Walter Isaacson biography about Steve Jobs he even makes a big point about how he needs to have 10000 engineers staffed in the manufacturing plant to deal with problems that arise in the products when they start putting these things together. Interestingly he mentioned that the lack of engineers was the big reason why they couldn't make iphones in the U.S. and if they could actually get 10000 American engineers here he could move a plant to the U.S. with out issue. Always thought that was interesting when people discuss outsourcing and don't want to invest in education. I mean i don't have kids so i get it but still seems stupid big picture wise. But i digress.

Now me i don't care what you do. If it works for you i say go for it. But i think he was trying to make a point that you simply aren't assured of the quality you're gonna get. And here in the states you have scant chance of getting your money back too with such a long distance transaction. but to me hey it's your money i say go for it if you want. take pictures and post them though when you do.

Thanks! For the most part, I understood where he was coming from. My plan was to experiment with several devices and share the knowledge, if it came to that point. However, I'm hoping that Open WebOS will install on my existing devices first.




---Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities (a great webOS app!)

[SnotBoogie]

Thanks! For the most part, I understood where he was coming from. My plan was to experiment with several devices and share the knowledge, if it came to that point. However, I'm hoping that Open WebOS will install on my existing devices first.




---Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities (a great webOS app!)

i think if they are smart they will try to make it as easy as possible to install it on as wide a range of devices as possible and a way to keep up with whatever hardware comes out in devices in the future. Like making sure it works with LTE or whatever the latest hot thing is with phones. That way they are gonna have a wide range of exposure.

[dignitary]

Thanks! For the most part, I understood where he was coming from. My plan was to experiment with several devices and share the knowledge, if it came to that point. However, I'm hoping that Open WebOS will install on my existing devices first.

---Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities (a great webOS app!)

Believe me, I'd love for someone to take up a fund to pony up the cash for a variety of different Chinese off-brand devices and really put them through their paces with Open webOS. Shanzhai devices, as they're typically called, tend to be of highly variable quality and a vast majority just tend to either fail in performance or build quality...most of the time, both. Those that are made well cost much higher overall comparative to their low-quality counterparts--oftentimes much more than one would be willing to pay since almost none have any enforceable warranty outside of China. You just have to hope you're dealing with an outlet or manufacturer that wants to do its customers right at that point.

Shanzhai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[dignitary]

Thanks! For the most part, I understood where he was coming from. My plan was to experiment with several devices and share the knowledge, if it came to that point. However, I'm hoping that Open WebOS will install on my existing devices first.

---Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities (a great webOS app!)

Believe me, I'd love for someone to take up a fund to pony up the cash for a variety of different Chinese off-brand devices and really put them through their paces with webOS.

Shanzhai devices though, as they're typically called, tend to be of highly variable quality and a vast majority just tend to either fail in performance or build quality...most of the time, both. Those that are made well cost much higher overall comparative to their low-quality counterparts--oftentimes much more than one would be willing to pay since almost none have any enforceable warranty outside of China. You just have to hope you're dealing with an outlet or manufacturer that wants to do its customers right at that point.

Shanzhai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The reason I'm frankly so annoyed whenever someone brings those products up as solutions for Open webOS is because not one of the people that talks them up or mentions them as a serious solution has ever bought one for themselves. Even months after I've challenged the various people that talk them up to put their money where their wishes are, still nobody's done a test case to share with the webOS community. Instead, it's just more unqualified claims proclaiming "Hey, these cheap Chinese devices could run webOS!" and that wears on the community over time with absolutely zero follow-through by the same folks making these bold claims, leaving false hopes in their wake.

If someone actually put their money where their hopes are and tested even a couple of those devices for themselves, it might just put the question to rest once and for all whether the results come out good or bad. The next time I hear someone claiming these devices are a potential solution, I want to see a review of one they've bought and used for a couple of weeks themselves instead so they can speak as an informed voice as to whether it's going to disintegrate in my messenger bag or not on Day 3 or work like a dream because the no-name manufacturer actually managed to give a damn.

[rnld]

I had a cheap Chinese tablet for a week with ICS on it. It was so cheaply made, wifi range was terrible and the Android system wouldn't connect to the Google Play store because the Android OS was not compatible.

it was totally crap. I liked Ice Cream Sandwich OK but not on that tablet.

A cheap tablet is the last thing that WebOS needs. That's why at $99 they sold every touchpad they had. Anything close to that price is horrible.

[Rockbeast]

I had a chinese-made abacus once...it worked pretty well. I sometimes had trouble with binary conversions of hexadecimals, but other than that it held up pretty well...YMMV.

[geekpeter]

Webos T-Shirts, Webos Gifts, Artwork, Posters, and other products

^ also need more stuff liek that site, scroll down, has some webos themed stuff others must have added at some point which was a weird find when i ordered some c64/amiga themed tshirts and mousemats

[k4ever]

Believe me, I'd love for someone to take up a fund to pony up the cash for a variety of different Chinese off-brand devices and really put them through their paces with webOS.

Shanzhai devices though, as they're typically called, tend to be of highly variable quality and a vast majority just tend to either fail in performance or build quality...most of the time, both. Those that are made well cost much higher overall comparative to their low-quality counterparts--oftentimes much more than one would be willing to pay since almost none have any enforceable warranty outside of China. You just have to hope you're dealing with an outlet or manufacturer that wants to do its customers right at that point.

Shanzhai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The reason I'm frankly so annoyed whenever someone brings those products up as solutions for Open webOS is because not one of the people that talks them up or mentions them as a serious solution has ever bought one for themselves. Even months after I've challenged the various people that talk them up to put their money where their wishes are, still nobody's done a test case to share with the webOS community. Instead, it's just more unqualified claims proclaiming "Hey, these cheap Chinese devices could run webOS!" and that wears on the community over time with absolutely zero follow-through by the same folks making these bold claims, leaving false hopes in their wake.

If someone actually put their money where their hopes are and tested even a couple of those devices for themselves, it might just put the question to rest once and for all whether the results come out good or bad. The next time I hear someone claiming these devices are a potential solution, I want to see a review of one they've bought and used for a couple of weeks themselves instead so they can speak as an informed voice as to whether it's going to disintegrate in my messenger bag or not on Day 3 or work like a dream because the no-name manufacturer actually managed to give a damn.

I've got to poke holes in you post for a moment:

First of all I found these products while looking for parts to build my own tablet. I was searching for a 7 inch and 10 inch touchscreen that would be compatible with a PandaBoard, BeagleBoard, or Raspberry Pi. Each search I did for "10 inch capacitive touchscreen" took me to a site that sold 10 inch Android 4.x tablets from China. Guess which site that was......Amazon.com. Yes Amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/ZENITHINK-10-i...10+inch+tablet

Amazon.com: 10.1" Allwinner A10 Contex A8 Android 4.0 OS 5 Points Capacitive Multi-touchscreen 512MB Tablet MID WiFi 3G: Computers & Accessories

I don't know if you ever bought anything from Amazon, but they have one of the best return policies I know.

The prices on these 10 inch tablets were less than the prices I've seen for just the touch screen monitors alone. I decided to go to one of these sites to see if they sold the components seperately. I still wanted to put one together myself (I like little challeges like this) and I figured just like you that the parts in the pre-made ones were cheap. I couldn't find the parts sold seperately on their sites.

I also started to notice that most of these tablets have Android 4.x on them. When I look at some of these before, they mostly had Android 2.x. I remember this because I was looking for one with 3.x at the time and couldn't find one (I even made a comment here not to long ago that I felt 3.x was a failure and got a talking to from some Xoom owners). I believe the reason Android 2.x and 4.x are so popular with these products and 3.x wasn't was because they were open source.

You can't walk down the street anywhere in the modern world and not trip over an Android device. Not because the OS is worth a darn, but because it is open source and made to run on even the cheapest of devices. Hence my statement that "I want Open webOS to be able to run on just about every Chinese knock-off device" because if it is made to do so, to hit even the lowest common denominator, then the webOS community never has to worry about going long periods of time without a new webOS device.

Also, most of the electronic products we buy today even from reputable companies and/or stores are made completely in China or have a ton of parts that were made in China. This includes the memory, screens, and processors. So you probably own several of these products or common parts from these products in the devices that you covet as being "high quality".

But back to the subject, I would still expect Open WebOS to be installable on just about everything I throw at it. I think that is the only way it would make a dent in the current mobile OS landscape.

[k4ever]

I had a cheap Chinese tablet for a week with ICS on it. It was so cheaply made, wifi range was terrible and the Android system wouldn't connect to the Google Play store because the Android OS was not compatible.

it was totally crap. I liked Ice Cream Sandwich OK but not on that tablet.

A cheap tablet is the last thing that WebOS needs. That's why at $99 they sold every touchpad they had. Anything close to that price is horrible.

Late last year I actually agreed with you on this point, but now not so much. Open webOS just needs to be on every device, even the cheap ones. The Kindle Fire is a cheap POS that I feel Amazon cut too many corners on. That doesn't seem to matter to Fire owners because the price is right and they are able to get their content on it.

I don't want to see us turn our noses up at the low end market or at any market. WebOS can't afford that right now. We need to hit the low end, mid end, high end, right end, left end, rear end or whichever end will accept us. Rebuild the market share of the OS by getting it on a lot of products out there, then build more higher quality webOS products as the demand for them grows. If we keep waiting for perfection, we will be waiting all our lives.

I feel that open webOS doesn't need to be reserved for the high end and I fear that some might restrict it to that in some vain attempt to purify it.

[antoniolalo]

To have an international app catalog where you coud buy any where in the world

Sent from my GT-P3110 using Tapatalk 2

[dignitary]

Rebuild the market share of the OS by getting it on a lot of products out there, then build more higher quality webOS products as the demand for them grows.

You realize in those "market share" news releases by major firms, they only count retail-sold units whose manufacturers and retailers give up the numbers, right? webOS would still show a big fraction of a single 1% (and falling) unless actual retail devices make it out, and that wouldn't convince major players back into the fold.

I'm still trying to ascertain where all this magical demand people hope for will come from, but I'd just be happy if it continued to live in whatever shape or form the community directs it to. I'm under zero expectation that it'll ever gain retail presence again after the many bridges it's burned between retailers, carriers, and ex-webOS users alike over the past 3 years--but I'd love to be proven wrong by actual results.

[Buddy1969]

Ah expectations... *sigh* ... it are in fact our expectations that disappoint us, not people or things happening.

What I EXPECT is an OS that does what the current WebOS does but is opensource.
What I EXPECT is that no one cares and the OS is shelved because there is no hardware.

What I WISH for is, that major bugs are gone.
What I WISH for is, that it runs on current WebOS hardware (Pre3 and TP)
What I WISH for is, that it runs on current Android hardware, like the SGIII
What I WISH for is, that the community makes openWebOS as successful as Android and HW-Producers become aware of its potential.

But if wishes were horses ...

[rnld]

The Kindle Fire is like a diamond compared to the cheap Chinese tablets. That's how bad they are.

[kevets]

Cheap stuff aside, I expect it at first to be able to install on a class-leading device. Transformer Prime watchamajiggy, Nexus 7 would all be excellent targets for a halo device from a user perspective. Get it working on the highest-performing hardware to give the best impression of how this OS can perform.

Like who knows if webOS even would know what to do with 4 or 5 cores, but at least we know that 3.x was built for dual core. It should be possible.

[RumoredNow]

Cheap stuff aside, I expect it at first to be able to install on a class-leading device...

Yeah, 'cause Palm and HP only ever pushed leading edge hardware out there for the OS... So that would align with previous expectations...

[falconrap]

I expect to see faster JIT or runtime (whatever the heck they are using) and more hardware acceleration resulting in a much smoother/fluid UI, and one that actually responds quickly 99% of the time.

And, for God's sake, can some one please work on the boot time? I mean, really...my Pre 2 is currently taking 4+ minutes to boot cold. My Touchpad isn't a whole heck of a lot faster (2-3 minutes). It really just takes entirely too long.

I also expect to see a lot more customization options built in, such as for the launcher (how about some glass effects and renaming of ALL launcher pages...please!).

Of course, there's also Derek's wish list. Someone better incorporate all of those or you never know what might happen to that poor guy!

[Rockbeast]

...And, for God's sake, can some one please work on the boot time? I mean, really...my Pre 2 is currently taking 4+ minutes to boot cold. My Touchpad isn't a whole heck of a lot faster (2-3 minutes). It really just takes entirely too long...

Oh how I love the 'fast' boot time of 4 minutes! It's like a dream come true!

I'm sort of kidding....4 minutes is too long...but my Pre+ was 6:25 on average....so I really do like the 'faster' boot time on my new Pre2!

[xandros9]

I expect awesomeness to ensue.

I HOPE for improvements, but i have low expectations of HP itself.