Tizen, webOS, & the Future of Mobile Open Source 94
jfruhlinger writes "When HP announced it would release webOS as open source, it added a competitor to a narrow niche: there's already Tizen, the descendant of MeeGo, which is, like webOS, an open source Linux-based operating system for smartphones. Can they co-exist, or will one come out on top? One built-in advantage for webOS is that already has hardware, in the form of all those $99 TouchPad's being snapped up on eBay."
Re:Abandonware open source (Score:4, Informative)
webOS was pretty well thought-out before they actually started building the software. It's a lot more consistent in interface than iOS (which isn't too bad) and Android (which is pretty abysmal). It also went the Apple school-of-thought of 'pick certain things, do those really well' (even 1-up'd iOS a bit) rather than the Android/Windows route of 'doing everything, specialize in nothing'.
Re:Abandonware open source (Score:3, Informative)
piss-poor home-written state restore
The thing I miss the most about my Palm pre was being able to open an email, tap to dial into a conference call, flip back to the email to get the conference pin, and flip back to the phone app to dial it. On Android, swapping between apps is a crap shoot on whether the app will actually be in the state that I left it. The same thing goes for typing an email or text message and needing to flip over to a web page, or god forbid another email, to reference information and trying to flip back and seamlessly pick up where I left off.
My only issue was with the original pre hardware. Had Sprint picked up the pre+ or pre2 with the added RAM and storage I would likely still be using webOS. I'm using an Evo4g now and the entire experience has been a compromise. Sure the updated innards are nice, and there are certainly benefits to the Android Marketplace. But I've tried iOS and Android and in my opinion, for day to day use of the device, nothing comes close to webOS.