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definitely the usability. the 'cards' interface is very intuitive. it feels natural and practically anyone can pick it up almost instantly. i had much more difficulty getting used to ios or android. also, it feels fast. opening apps, multitasking, etc... it almost never feels clunky or cludgy, unless there are just way too many apps on one page. i honestly think webos' interface is mattias duarte's finest work.
'just type' is also quite handy and very fast but personally i prefer navigating through the icons and the pages (i'm still in the process of weeding through apps and can't bother to remember their names )
there are a few drawbacks... selecting text and copy/paste is a little more difficult than it needs to be (it shouldn't require any keyboard presses at all. i can think of a few ways to initiate these actions by simply using the gesture area, but that discussion probably deserves its own thread) ... and certain features aren't universal, such as autocomplete ... also, the default notes app becomes nearly nonfunctional when used in combination with the touchscreen keyboard, but this is much less of a drawback when there are so many fully featured alternatives which function perfectly, such as scratch word processor and p2 snippets.
i really wish this os had been given time to fully mature. the voice recorder app needs an interface overhaul, although it does function well (the buttons are a bit too small and a little difficult to use for seniors). i can't seem to find out how to speed up playback through recordings, which ought to be a default capability since it doesn't require that much processing power and dramatically increases its usability. i wish webos had swiftkey. actually, that's the one thing i'm really missing and unfortunately it's a big one. i don't even really care for siri. having on device voice transcription would be nice but that's kind of a dream considering the amount of cpu power that is required to even get a decent transcription. i also wish the virtual keyboard were less buggy (the usability problems with pretext are particularly bad, unfortunately). finally, i wish the browser had wordwrap, or whatever it's called where the webpage adjusts to fit the size of the screen.
swiftkey, variable speed playback, better text select + copy/paste, a more professional virtual keyboard implementation, wordwrap on the browser and the ability to save my thoughts as txt files (whilst using the virtual keyboard) are really the only features that i wish webos devices had that are missing at the moment (pretext is basically unusable with the virtual keyboard, and scrolling through text with the vkb open in landscape mode is a complete chore). also, although i haven'[t used it much, i imagine that having on device ocr capability with auto translate would be nice. everything else is cruft.
also, although this is a bit off topic, the hardware for webos devices always been quite decent imho ... good screens, the touchstone battery system is pure brilliance and the battery functions quite well; a single charge using the default battery lasts 6 hours or more and it recharges in like 20 minutes. fantastic.
the camera software is also quite decent, with each of the phones being one of only a few of their generation that could record decent 30fps video (albeit only with good lighting and something well lit at the center reticule) with the unfortunate drawback that the video settings cannot be adjusted by the user; one of my gripes is that you can't set the software to favor fps over image correction, which would be more preferable since having smooth video looks far more impressive than having a high resolution slideshow (imho). of course, the webos phones don't have the more advanced camera functions that an iphone has but i can't imagine using those functions very often -and a professional digital camera would function far better as well.
it would be a damn shame if webos couldn't survive somehow. i would love to have the card interface ported to ios or android, just so i can have swiftkey and some of the newer smartphone functions.
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