[fmarcanojr]

The demo units were the best way to kill the TouchPad. I went into Best Buy to play with it and was struck how slow and clumsy it was. Five feet away was the iPad display, which caught people's attention quickly and the units worked quick and flawlessly.

I still became an early adopter because I had two WebOS phones so knew it's potential first hand. I figured that it would take a couple of updates to fix the issues. HP never came through, but the homebrew community has been the beacon of light through all of this turmoil. The performance is up, I have a workaround for the Wifi issues, I can VNC to my servers to do real work, and can print to a non-HP printer. They have managed to do most of what HP promised... Make a TouchPad that I could use for my work. It's close enough that I'm planning on leaving my laptop behind on my upcoming trip for the very first time.

I still long for a VZ pre 3 (and that cool wireless-audio charging dock) now that my contract just ended. But no pre 3's to be had except at prices I'm not comfortable with (as my Pre 2 is doing just fine).

Personally, I can't think of a way for Meg to fix this. Not only has mortal damage to WebOS phones and tablets been done, but the window of opportunity is slipping by quickly to get back in the game. Competitors are copying the best features of WebOS, the WebOS brain trust are giving up and leaving, and HP's track record says that they develop new hardware slowly. They will always be way behind playing catch up to the leader.

I agree with your rationale. During this period of uncertainy all we can do is hope for HP and Ms. Whitman to make the right decision and keep webOS alive. Even if HP decides to fully support webOS, they could only vie for third place behind Android and Apple.

As life-long Sprint customers, my family and I had no choice but to move on to Android 2.3.5. I personally still update and use my WiFi-enabled TouchPad and Pre minus. However, I will return to webOS if Sprint decides to carry a new product line of webOS smartphones and tablets. I'm sure many of our friends here in the webOS communities feel the same way too.

So hopefully HP can make the right decision and resurrects webOS someday.

Season's Greetings

[NoICon]

Is it possible that the reason HP keeps pushing out the decision on webOS has something to do with the pending patent ligation with the likes of HTC? So, if the US Trade Agency rules in the favor of Apple, then maybe HTC tries an end around with either licensing or outright buying webOS? I thought I had read that this decision is imminent...and if HTC cannot sell phones in the US even for a limited time that would be devastating to them. Thoughts?

[joen05]

I agree with your rationale. During this period of uncertainy all we can do is hope for HP and Ms. Whitman to make the right decision and keep webOS alive. Even if HP decides to fully support webOS, they could only vie for third place behind Android and Apple.

As life-long Sprint customers, my family and I had no choice but to move on to Android 2.3.5. I personally still update and use my WiFi-enabled TouchPad and Pre minus. However, I will return to webOS if Sprint decides to carry a new product line of webOS smartphones and tablets. I'm sure many of our friends here in the webOS communities feel the same way too.

So hopefully HP can make the right decision and resurrects webOS someday.

Season's Greetings

I like the way you think,and I am hoping for the same thing.

[ohiomoto]

I will say this again, webOS is good enough "as is". If you were to put it on a great phone, it would put webOS solidly at no. 3 in the phone market. Furthermore, because Android has so many handsets, a great webOS phone could become the 2nd best selling handset behind the iPhone. It would do this because the OS is easy to use, powerful and elegant. It does the basics (navigation/multitasking/notifications etc) better than any other OS on the market. The rest of the bits (apps/OS improvements) would fall into place if the hardware is in demand.

Android is fragmented and it's UI still sucks IMO. I have been using ICS on an Fascinate for several days now and it is feature rich but the improvements to the UI are mostly cosmetic. IOS is considered easier to use but not as powerful or open as Android. WebOS is a bit "unfinished" but the UI is second to none and it's a multitaskers dream. In spite of what it doesn't have, webOS is still a very useful OS and hardware sells handsets. If you put webOS on great hardware it will gain traction within 18-24 months. From there the sky is the limit.

You can't keep releasing the Pre whatever when the world wants iPhones and Android slabs. I'm using a very nice 14 month old Samsung and I don't miss my Pre one bit. At the same time, I'm using the "cutting edge" mobile OS on that phone and while it's very powerful, I HATE it to the point where I'm about to reactivate my Pre Plus. There is room for webOS in this market, right now.

[BBooDad]

I reactivated my Pre after 4 months of Android. Selling my Sammy Epic paid for part of my Pre3!

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities