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05/30/2012, 06:31 AM
#1
Yesterday I was recording minutes of a meeting in my new $10 SmartOffice app on my Touchpad which I bought because QuickOffice has a habit of freezing when I try to save a document and I lose everything since the last save. I was using the BT keyboard and characters were taking half a second to appear. After the meeting I saved it back to Dropbox, a feature I only have for spending the $10 on SmartOffice because there's no native webOS Dropbox client. Later in the day I read probably the twelfth story in recent months about a significant personnel departure from the webOS team, this time the Enyo team defecting to Google. On the way home I launched FreeTether (a hotspot app I downloaded because the native one (incredibly) won't allow the TP to access the Pre 3's internet) so I could so some browsing on the TP on the road. I remembered to leave FreeTether running after I'd finished with it just in case I needed it again, because if I turn off the wifi connection the only way to get it back is to restart the phone. Then I downloaded an update for a virtual keyboard app I bought for the Pre 3 that still sounds a system alarm every time I launch it, just so I have the option of a virtual keyboard. A little while later my Pre 3 crashed and restarted for the zillionth time on the way home due to a modem baseband bug HP isn't interested in fixing despite having spent hours debugging it and providing info about it to HP.
It dawned on me at that point... why on earth am I bothering with webOS when no-one else, least of all the manufacturer, seems to care about it? Why should I be spending hours of my life debugging HP's OS for them? Why should I be paying a premium for apps in order to get a poor imitation of functionality other platforms have out of the box, and having to come up with or put up with clunky workarounds for undisputably core functionality?
I would hate to have to sell out my whole webOS ecosystem, currently consisting of:
* 2x Pre 3's
* 2x Veers and another three new in boxes
* 2x Touchpads with cases, one which I imported from the US 'cos no-one here carried them
* 2x genuine BT keyboards
* 2x Touchpad charging docks
* 3x touchstone docks for Pre / Veer
But I'm kinda getting fed up with waving a flag and championing a cause that no-one, least of all HP, really seems to care about. The situation is compounded by living in Australia, where we get small fragments of the few resources provided for webOS (if there's a promo code, a special offer, some cheap accessories, you name it... you can bet it won't be available for us). Maybe if webOS gets back on its feet I'll gladly come back; but I'm losing patience fast.
So I started taking a fresh look at webOS, what I really use and what I might miss. So here's my list of things I really like about webOS:
* Swipe functions: - a message comes in, swipe the notification away. Toss away cards. It's all really slick and feels such an organic and natural way of interacting with the device, no fumbling around with specific buttons to bring about a function e.g. close.
* Inductive charging - I love just dropping the phone or TP on the touchstone and letting it charge away
* Open OS - i.e. something I can get into a bit at command-line level or equivalent. I play with Linux a bit at work so it's nice to be able to run familiar commands. I liked being able to edit the registry on my Treo 750 too. Though I've only ever needed to do this on the Pre when I've been trying to fix system bugs...
* Portrait slider keyboard - that's actually the reason I came to webOS in the first place, not for the OS itself. But I've never used a virtual keyboard so maybe I'd get used to it.
* Ringer / mute switch - loved it on the Treo, was a deal-maker when I saw it retained on the Pre 3 / Veer.
I'm sure at least some of these features must have been picked up by the competition but I've never really used an iPhone or Android (or anything else) device to know what they have. I like to tinker with a device but I'm not a hacker / fiddler for the sake of it; it's really only to customise the phone to work how I want (I'm talking about 'luxuries' like being able to change your message notification tone, or NOT having the whole phone vibrate the bedside table to death when the alarm goes off).
So if I jumped ship and went to a dark side, what do you guys reckon would be the best fit for what I like? Cost isn't a big factor.
Man I hate having come to this point. Maybe I'll still stay. But I'm just so fed up I want to know my options.
Greg
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