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Comment by MatthewPhillips | Hacker News Reader

The worst thing I'm seeing in the mobile race is the two winners (iPhone and Android) are not adopting any of the good innovative things from the "losers". For example, WebOS is all but dead, had a ton of innovative things like Cards, Just Type, inductive charging, notifications on the bottom, and as far as I can tell, none of those things are being used (or are being used in a much more muted way) but iPhone and Android.

Instead the two big players are only adopting features from the other. To make matters worse, you can't easily (at all?) choose to install your own OS on a phone, so over time as the "losers" drop off we're going to be left with 2 phone plaforms that are more or less the same and haven't made any major UI changes since they became successful. And there will be no out for us who want something different.

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What are you talking about? The UI guy behind webOS, Matias Duarte, is now the Android UX Director at Google. There's a good interview with him in the first episode of On The Verge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K4HImSqR1k

Which specific WebOS features have been fully implemented into Android?

- Swipe to dismiss notifications (Windows Phone also employed this from the get go).

- WebOS Cards in terms of multitasking is pretty similar to the current ICS/JB task switcher and swiping to close an app.

Edit: I read your intial comment again and I realize my response doesn't address your initial issue.

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I think Apple / Google will continue to innovate (i.e. Siri vs Google Now) but to expect them to bring forth major fundamental changes to a stable, developed platform with a large user based is asking a bit much.

> I think Apple / Google will continue to innovate (i.e. Siri vs Google Now) but to expect them to bring forth major fundamental changes to a stable, developed platform with a large user based is asking a bit much.

I don't expect them to. What they are doing is taking only proven successful features from each other, and making very minor tweaks otherwise. This is what incumbents do.

I'm lamenting on the fact that we -- programmers, power users, enthusiasts -- will likely have no where to turn in the near future as the "losers" of this cycle start falling off. We won't have the option to install an open source OS on our phones like we have with PCs.

> We won't have the option to install an open source OS on our phones like we have with PCs.

Except you're conveniently forgetting the fact that Android is open source. Google continues to release a phone each year with an unlocked bootloader, on which you can install versions of Android modified to your heart's content.

>>> Google continues to release a phone each year with an unlocked bootloader

Can I buy any phone, and then wipe it out and add any OS on it?

I think that is what the OP was driving at. And that would be quite something, compared to current state of affairs! :)

You can add any OS that wants to be added. IIRC you can put early builds of Firefox OS on a Nexus phone.

Of course, you can't put iOS on there, but that's Apple's choice.

My point was not that we don't have choice today (we do), it's that we're not going to have choice in the not-so-distant future as these other OSes die off (incluing Firefox OS).

Sure, you can root some Android devices and install Android ROMS like Cyanogen... but those are just Android. We're going to lose the creativity we're currently seeing in Jolla, Windows Phone, Firefox OS, Blackberry, etc.

Of course. I have a Nexus S with Firefox OS on it, for example.

1. It takes time to implement

2. Google probably has to deal with HP patents

Their intent is pretty clear though by hiring a lot of the key Enyo people.

As someone who has switched from WebOS to Android to iOS, I definitely agree that I would be happier if some the best innovations on each system made it to other devices. But I think the current patent situation makes this basically impossible.

Anyway, power users will always have rooting/jailbreaking as an option for getting advanced features on their mobile devices.

Minor quibble - the Nexus 4 has inductive charging.

There's ton of WebOS influence in the recent Android versions, Google Now cards, swipe to delete or close etc. Also, the Nexus 4 has wireless charging. Nokia and HTC's recent flagships also have wireless charging.

sigh I just knew when I wrote that that people would come back with examples that kinda-sorta have influence from other platforms. But I'm not talking about creating an app which uses cards; I'm talking about rethinking the fundamental way a UI component works. When Apple decided to rethink the way their notifications work they didn't look at the total landscape of ideas from around the industry or come up with their own; they just did it the same way their major competitor did it. When Android decided to rethink the way they handled multitasking they didn't look at the competitors and do something new; they threw lipstick on what they already had.

I'm talking about big concepts here.

I'd argue that a big concept has to have a really, clearly, huge benefit in order to be added to an already established OS. Notifications at the bottom? Android notifications work just fine.

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