HP: WebOS phones only, no Win Phone 7 | Hacker News Reader

HP: WebOS phones only, no Win Phone 7

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26 pointsborisk17 comments

Of all the things that have come out of HP's Palm acquisition so far, this gives me the most confidence. It signals a clean break with the old Palm practice of firing blindly with multiple strategies on multiple platforms; it shows they have focus, and that they're confident in the value of WebOS.

I think Windows Phone 7 has a lot of promise itself, but HP has everything they need here for full vertical integration of their mobile experience. Good to see they don't plan on wasting it.

With Windows Phone 7, they would be essentially selling commodity phones, in a similar vein to Android manufacturers. Going with WebOS potentially puts them into the Apple league, where - if they play their cards right - can allow them to charge a premium and have a strong, dedicated following.

I had the chance to use a reference WP7 device last week, and walked away almost entirely unimpressed. I had my doubts about its chances of success already; this news doesn't bode well at all for Microsoft.

>walked away almost entirely unimpressed

I'd be curious to hear why - most of the feedback has been good so far. I haven't had a chance to play with one myself.

The simplest answer is style over substance. The UI looked nice enough, but I wasn't that impressed with the way it actually worked. One of the central UI paradigms seems to be a carousel interface, that loops upon itself. Personally, I feel like a more linear interface that has bounds at each end is easier to navigate.

There's also no clear way to navigate between applications. If I started a song playing in the music player then played with maps, there wasn't any easy way to jump back to the media player app to skip songs, etc. There's basically no paradigm for moving between apps other than dropping all the way back to the home screen and digging for the app you want.

I'm an Android early adopter, so that may color my opinion some. The guy who had the device for me to look at is a hardcore iPhone guy. I think his description is probably best -- "it feels like iPhone 1.5." That may have been passable in 2007, but not now.

I guess the bottom line is I came away feeling like Android, iOS, and even Blackberry's OS were far better, and I'm not a fan of the latter two. There's just absolutely nothing compelling about WP7 that makes me feel like I'd want a handset running it. It's a far better system than WM6, but that's a rather low bar, IMO.

>"it feels like iPhone 1.5."

This part actually does match what I've seen. I know it's behind iOS 4. But if I could use iPhone 1.5 but ditch AT&T and use the Zune client instead of iTunes, well, that's actually interesting to me.

That said, my iPhone contract lasts another year, and I am kind of hoping there will be a big 1.1 patch in sight by next summer, with some of the core features that didn't make release.

So who, apart from HTC, will be an MS partner? Samsung made the reference hardware but are heavy on Bada these days. Sharp have history but got burned by Kin? I guess that leaves Asus and maybe LG.

The list has: HTC, Dell, Asus, LG and Samsung.

I don't think many were expecting an HP phone (who has an HP phone?). Probably the biggest name not on the list, IMO, is Motorola.

And lets be clear about Samsung -- they have Bada, but they're still big on Android. Ever heard of the Galaxy S phones? And I fully expect they'll be big on WP7 too. If Apple let them do an iOS phone, they'd ship that also.

Unless WP7 allows for user interface customization, its licensees will be competing in a fully commoditized market, making phones that cannot differentiate themselves from one another in anything but physical form and price and doomed to low margins.

Actually more than physical form, but device characteristics also. For example, if HW companies can do great customized chipsets, ala A4, for WP7 they may be able to get improved battery life.

Also, remember MS specifies minimum HW requirements, but vendors can go above and beyond (except in the case of screen resolution). For example, there's nothing stopping one from adding front-facing cameras, with software supporting it. Or a gyroscope, etc...

One thing we have seen though is that HW manufacturer skins are not a desired feature. The only one that people even moderately like on Android is Sense. And even there people say that straight Froyo is better. And believe that with Gingerbread, this situation is exacerbated.

Plus the custom skins is largely what blocks these phones from being quickly rev'ved to new versions of the OS. Apparently one of the things that MS has worked out with the carriers is that they'll own the update of the OS.

At the end of the day the HW companies really should be competing on the HW. The SW is probably better left to MS and Google.

> At the end of the day the HW companies really should be competing on the HW. The SW is probably better left to MS and Google

We agree on these. I am not sure if our telcos agree with us :-/

Telcos want lock-in and experience control. They want to remove features that they don't like and features that would reduce their revenue. Many phones have crippled Bluetooth or even cable connections so that when you want to move a picture over to your computer you need to send an MMS.

I wonder how they will brand this? Use HP or Palm?

Subjectively both brands are a little stale comparing to Android and Apple. Maybe they could work with Nintendo and use WebOS to create a Nintendo branded IP/Phone device.

Id buy that and download many of their games onto such a device. Games are the biggest draw on Apple, a Nintendo phone would probably be huge!

Maybe they will revive Compaq or Packard Bell.

Or Digital Equipment ;-)

I can imagine the e-mail signature reading "sent from my picoVAX"

The "Palm" brand name still has huge mindshare. I wouldn't say the Palm brand has been so much stagnated in recent years as it has been under-marketed. A large marketing push by HP for new Palm phones, with the well-received WebOS behind it, could be very successful.

Yeah Palm to me is not as stale HP. Of course this subjective, but when I think sexy and elegant I do not think HP (Apple and somewhat Andriod).

Overall I still hoping for a Nintendo IP/phone type device.

Same as Compaq, it's gonna end up as a sub-brand of HP

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/22/hp-ceo-palm-could-end-up-...

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