A Brief History of webOS

Mobile devices have been steadily improving in their form, utility, and usage models over the last two decades. The one area which has seen almost explosive development, especially in the latter half of the last decade, has been interface/interaction design. While the devices themselves have grown steadily more powerful and capable, all that power and capability is of little practical use if it cannot be reined in and presented to the end user in a useful and straightforward manner.

Companies have increasingly realized the role that the platform interface plays in conveying a consistent and smooth user experience and have invested massive resources towards achieving the same. In fact, if done correctly, the interface can actually cover up some not-so-obvious shortcomings in a platform.

Apple, always having a keen eye for the design aspects of its products, brought user interface design to the center stage with the introduction of the iPhone back in 2007. While it did fall short on multiple features, it demonstrated how a user-friendly and cohesive interface can go a long way in getting users to adopt a platform. Since then, various companies tried to beat Apple at its game and honestly, not a lot have even been able to match it. That was until CES 2009.

Seeing Palm, one of the pioneers in the PDA space, stagnate towards the end was sad. However, in the Linux-based webOS, Palm would find their much needed shot in the arm--or at least some of it. Purely as a mobile operating system, webOS bought a lot to the table on the usability front. While previous iterations of PalmOS, Symbian, and later Android/iOS supported multitasking, it was webOS that placed it at the very center of the mobile user experience. In fact, I honestly feel webOS has one of the most useful and user-friendly multitasking implementations currently available.

Other manufacturers have taken note of this and have slowly but steadily included webOS-inspired features in their respective platforms. It's not just the multitasking ability; the notifications, message, and contact management along with the browser are all top-notch in webOS. It is because of these reasons I have found it very difficult to let go of using the Pre Plus as my primary phone. In spite of the variety of smartphones available these days with vastly superior specifications, platform eco-systems, and perhaps most importantly build quality, reliance on webOS has made it very difficult for me to upgrade from my Pre. But that doesn’t mean webOS doesn’t have any flaws or room for further improvement.

webOS suffers from some performance issues. Also, with developer support becoming a major factor in deciding whether a platform lives or dies, Palm--in spite of openly embracing the homebrew community--hasn’t had a particularly strong showing there. It has taken its sweet time in setting up and opening some important APIs in the platform. Most importantly, battery life has been a major issue with devices running webOS. The solution to a lot of these problems is a combination of the right hardware matched up with software fixes and updates. We’ll have to wait until February 9 to see what HP/Palm plans on doing on the hardware front, but with webOS 2.0 we can get a glimpse of what they have in store on the software side of things.

Where Does webOS Stand Now?

Before I continue any further with the article, I would like to remind our readers that this is an overview of the webOS 2.0 operating system. We’ve tried to get HP/Palm to send us a Pre 2 review unit, but for various reasons it hasn’t worked out. Looking at how HP/Palm has gone about releasing the Pre 2, it seems to me as if they wanted to let developers use it as a platform for webOS 2.O development, rather than to really sell it to the consumers directly.

I have used the beta SDK and firmware (on my Pre Plus) to describe what new features and fixes webOS 2.0 brings to the table. This is definitely not the best way to go about looking at a major update to the platform, but we thought it would be a good idea to look at where webOS stands right now, especially in light of HP’s event next week and since it’s been almost a year since we last published anything webOS related on AnandTech. With that out of the way, here is HP webOS 2.0.

Where did the Palm logo go?

HP realized the growing importance of mobile devices in the current landscape and instead of joining the Android bandwagon like most major vendors, they hedged their bets on webOS and bought out Palm in the middle of last year. While we haven’t seen much from the HP-Palm union in terms of hardware or software (apart from the phantom-like Pre 2), HP has definitely made it a point to let us know that the Palm brand-name is taking a backseat (if it's not on its way out entirely).

The latest webOS release is officially known as HP webOS 2.0 and instead of the familiar glowing Palm logo, you now see the HP logo during webOS startup. While it’ll be sad to see the Palm branding go, HP has much more pressing issues to tackle than deciding what logo to put on their devices. Also, in the interest of simplicity, I will be referring to the union as HP from this point on in the article.

What 2.0 Brings to the Table

Unlike what the ‘2.0’ suffix may suggest, webOS 2.0 is more of a thorough evolutionary update to the platform than anything else, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As I had mentioned earlier, webOS already had a pretty solid user experience to begin with and with this update, HP is tidying things up and tying loose ends. There still are some issues with the platform in its current iteration (with the mediocre email client being a major one), but considering the fact that it hasn’t been released to the public in its final form, there still may be tweaks and improvements coming. Anyway, we have enough here to get going. If you’re new to webOS or want a primer on what you get to begin with, you can have a look at our Pre review.

Stacks

What can you do when you already have one of the best renditions of multitasking on a mobile platform? Try and make it even better. Using “cards”, webOS made it easy to get in and out of applications in a rather straightforward and seamless manner. If you realized that you had to send your boss an important update while you have a 0.25 second lead over your competitor in Need For Speed, tap the gesture area. The game minimizes, you tap the email app, type and send out the email, tap the game card again, and you’re back to fighting for first place, exactly where you left off.

This made it very easy and quick to switch applications while maintaining their state, but this also encouraged you to have multiple app “cards” running, making it a bit unwieldy and cumbersome to swipe across multiple cards to get to the one you wanted. If only there was a way to somehow stack these cards.... That’s exactly what we get with webOS 2.0: Stacks.

(Left) Multitasking in webOS using cards, (Right) Stacking cards in webOS 2.0

You can now drag cards and drop them over existing cards to create a stack of cards. In addition, any cards resulting from actions in an app will now automatically stack on top of the main app card. And finally, when it makes logical sense, webOS will stack related cards automatically. I found this very useful as now all my calendar events are bunched together with the calendar application, instead of being spread across multiple cards. You can also reorder the cards within a stack, if you choose to do so. While it takes a little practice to get used to dragging and dropping the cards or reordering them, the process in itself is quite logical and easy to grasp.

Synergy Revisited

The next update that webOS brings is to the contact system, what HP calls “Synergy”. The contact management system in webOS is beautiful in its concept; you have a central repository of all your contacts and each contact entry in itself acts as a collection of all information, aggregated from different sources, for that one person. So selecting Anand in my contact book would display his mobile, work, and home numbers; his AIM, Google, Yahoo, and Exchange addresses; and links to his Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin profiles (with profile pictures automatically applied as the caller ID). All of this happens without you having to do much more than enter your username/password for each of the social network accounts.

Account management is now more straightforward, but not perfect

As mentioned earlier, while a great idea, the nightmare starts when you now have hundreds of so-called contacts added to your phone, with no way or form of selecting whom to add and whom to ignore. And to add to the pain, webOS by default is not totally accurate in linking, e.g. “Anand” to his Facebook account. So you will have to go in and manually link accounts if you want a "clean" contact book.

With webOS 2.0, HP has partially addressed this issue. While webOS will still try to go ahead and add every Tom, Dick, and Harry to your contact list, you have a modicum of control over what gets synced from each account. With “Accounts”, you now have a single location from where you can add new accounts and choose if you want calendars synced from Google, contacts from Facebook added to your contact list, and/or AIM contacts added to your messaging list. I still feel it needs to provide control, one granularity-level lower, where I can choose which particular Facebook contact I want added to my list. But this all or nothing approach is certainly a marked improvement over not being given an option at all!

Universal Search Made More Useful: Just Type

The next major, and what I feel is the biggest, update to webOS is the universal search system. Branded “Just Type”, universal search already existed in previous iterations of webOS and worked quite well in itself. But with webOS 2.0, HP has extended its utility from a simple search mechanism to a very powerful tool. The idea itself is very simple, and yet no one seems to have thought of or implemented it this way.

With Just Type (now prominently displayed on the home screen), you just need to start typing out whatever it is that you want. Contacts, texts, emails, addresses…just start typing them out. As you type out the text, webOS tries to figure out what it is that you’re planning on doing and suggest applications and actions accordingly. Now the applications part of it is quite straightforward; you type out "movie" and it suggests the Youtube application (or other related apps you may have installed) and also displays emails and calendar events related to the search term; type out an address, and select Google Maps from the suggested list to get going.

Universal search re-done, well done

However, the actions part of it is quite nifty. Just type out a message in the search bar, select “New Message” in the Quick Actions list, and your text is now copied into the text app, ready to be sent out as a new message! The same can be done for Calendar events, emails, tasks, and memos. You can also add or select the default application you want associated with an action.

Although it sounds very simple, it was brutally effective in how I started interacting with the phone. No longer did I have to open an app, select compose, and type out an email before sending it out. Instead, I could just start typing out the email itself, right from the home screen and select the “New Email” quick action at the end of it.

The Just Type and Quick Actions functionality can be exploited by developers and websites

And it doesn’t just end there; developers can integrate Just Type functionality in their apps and expose their apps to Just Type’s list of applications to search as well. In addition, webOS 2.0 now makes search engine suggestions when you visit a website that it feels could be added to the suggested search list. I found the last bit to be hit or miss, at least in its current form, as it would suggest I add a particular site to my list just because the site/forum had a search bar.

Exhibition

Now, the one true new feature that webOS 2.0 adds is Exhibition. Its purpose is quite simple really; make the standby screen more useful when the device is not being used directly. With the exception of some implementations (previous iterations of webOS not included), manufacturers simply threw in a clock of some sort and called it a day. You needed to actually “use” the phone to get it back to a useful state.

With Exhibition, as the device charges it can be made to display useful, consumable information. By default, you can choose between an agenda view, a photo slideshow, and you guessed it, a clock. The agenda view itself is a snapshot of your to-do list for the day, with the calendar, date, time, and weather forecast displayed along with it. Contents displayed depend on the phone orientation.

Exhibition will let developers make use of the otherwise passive standby screen

While useful, it doesn’t sound terribly innovative in itself until you factor in the fact that Exhibition functionality is exposed to third party developers. So now, the user can choose to have some other useful application show you relevant information as the phone sits on your desk charging. The only pre-requisite here is that you need to use the induction-based Touchstone charger for Exhibition to work. I can’t logically see why the functionality is not there when charging directly via a wall adapter apart from HP wanting to sell you the additional charger.

Other Updates

Overall, the UI has been polished up in webOS 2.0. While I cannot comment on the performance because of the non-final software I was running, the transition animations themselves appeared very smooth. HP has also updated certain HTML 5 features supported by webOS and rolled in the popular node.js Javascript framework runtime into webOS 2.0, thereby letting developers come up with their own background services in Javascript, in addition to the applications themselves. There are also a couple of other consumer-facing updates that are worth mentioning.

Although all webOS devices to date (all of two!) have had physical keyboards, spelling correction has been absent in webOS until now. Whether this is because we’ll be seeing keyboard-less webOS devices in the future or because HP thought it would be a good idea to include it anyway, we finally have a spell-check in webOS. Dubbed “Text Assist”, it performs the usual gamut of auto-corrections and lets you enter a list of user defined words.

Text Assist makes its (useful) debut on webOS 2.0

The one nice touch I most definitely appreciate here is the ability for the user to define word shortcuts. The user can now define mappings between shorthand words and how they’re supposed to be auto-corrected. “im” will become “I’m”, “were” will be set to “we’re” etc. where appropriate.

A sorely missing feature in webOS that HP has finally added is voice dial and command. By virtue of this, they have opened up developer access to the device mic. This will certainly bring in a flurry of VOIP apps, with Skype confirming that it will release a version of its app for the webOS platform (although it looks as though it will be restricted to Verizon-only devices, at least initially). This definitely fills a void in the webOS platform that has been open for far too long.

(Left)Voice dial, (Center) Favorites, (Right) dialer app now in blue

The final big update webOS 2.0 brings along with it is the inclusion of Flash 10.1 support. Yes, after multiple “It’s coming soon” promises, this iteration of webOS finally adds Flash support. Now you might be shocked to see this listed way down here, almost towards the end of the article, but there is a reason for this.

As I had mentioned earlier, we didn’t get a Pre 2 device for this article. I made use of the beta webOS 2.0 SDK and a “doctored” version of webOS 2.0 on my Pre Plus. Because of this, I could not get a true representation of the performance of the Flash implementation in webOS 2.0. This was because the SDK would be running on a full-fledged computer and the version of webOS 2.0 I had running on my Pre Plus was definitely not final.

That being said, I could see the all-important banners and short clips without much trouble. However, full-blown Flash videos were definitely choppy, with gesture controls (zoom, scroll etc.) not working. I will put this down to the beta-ness of the build and more importantly the fact that the Pre Plus only has an OMAP 3430 down-clocked to 500Mhz. Because a webOS 2.0 compatible build of Uberkernel is not around yet, I could not see if overclocking the CPU made it better in any way or form.

Final Thoughts

HP is betting big on webOS. In today’s ultra-competitive and crowded smartphone market, it is becoming increasingly difficult for manufacturers and vendors to differentiate themselves from each other, all while providing the end-user a friendly and visceral user experience. In webOS 2.0, HP has the potential to really duke it out with iOS, Android, Window Phone 7, Symbian^3, and Blackberry OS. It matches most of them feature for feature, and trumps them on many fronts. Plus, with HP moving on from Mojo to a new, much more scalable framework in Enyo, webOS will not be constrained to just smartphones. HP has made it quite clear that they plan on taking webOS places, with a tablet being the earliest to get webOS on it.

webOS has never lacked form or functionality. In fact, based on experience, I wouldn’t even fault the hardware entirely. Build quality aside, the Pre/Pre Plus had the innards to, at the very least, keep up with the competition of its time and the OMAP 3630 in the Pre 2 is the very same found in the capable and well received Droid X.

What Palm sorely failed to gather was mindshare in the market. While launching new devices would have certainly helped a fair bit, what matters more is having developers take the leap of faith and much more importantly, inform and convince potential users of a platforms abilities. With the HP acquisition bringing in much needed capital and marketing resources, hopefully webOS will continue to bring in innovations and live on as a viable platform (and not go the way of Voodoo PC!). Check back for updates on the February 9 HP webOS event.