How many of you are WebOS transplants?

[anon(406518)]

One feature I used quite often on my Pre was the "just type" which has been replaced by the google search on android. It works pretty well as a replacement but the thing it is missing is the ability to directly search the map.
What I would do on my Pre is type in the name of a place or type an address and hit google map and it would open the map app and do the search right in there. I can't figure out how to do this on the new phone. When I search for an address or a place it just opens a google web search. I could just open the map first and search right in there, but I want to be able to do it from my home screen.

Is it at all possible?

 

[maskedferret]

On a similar note, I was hoping that installing the Wikipedia app would allow me to add it to the search options, but that is not the case. It'd be nice to be able to freely add to the search options.

 

[folarino]

One feature I used quite often on my Pre was the "just type" which has been replaced by the google search on android. It works pretty well as a replacement but the thing it is missing is the ability to directly search the map.
What I would do on my Pre is type in the name of a place or type an address and hit google map and it would open the map app and do the search right in there. I can't figure out how to do this on the new phone. When I search for an address or a place it just opens a google web search. I could just open the map first and search right in there, but I want to be able to do it from my home screen.

Is it at all possible?

You can hold down the search button and do a voice search for it.
"Map of" and then whatever place/address you want.

 

[anon(406518)]

You can hold down the search button and do a voice search for it.
"Map of" and then whatever place/address you want.

But there is no way to search for what I typed? Kind of strange that you can talk to it and it will work but you can't type in there.

 

[DuStU]

One feature I used quite often on my Pre was the "just type" which has been replaced by the google search on android. It works pretty well as a replacement but the thing it is missing is the ability to directly search the map.
What I would do on my Pre is type in the name of a place or type an address and hit google map and it would open the map app and do the search right in there. I can't figure out how to do this on the new phone. When I search for an address or a place it just opens a google web search. I could just open the map first and search right in there, but I want to be able to do it from my home screen.

Is it at all possible?

I use the voice search and say "navigate blah blah" and it comes up in like three seconds. To be honest google maps loads up instantly especially if you have caching so I find that to be good enough for me. If you want to hear turn by turn... turn on driving mode. Just learned that today

 

[DuStU]

Close, but not quite. It seems all Social Hub does is gather email, sms, and sns accounts together into a single list to select from. Also, it doesnt seem to give consideration to IM protocols or acknowledge merged contacts.

AHHH I get you now. You want everything in one window. I did love that feature. Did you search the market to see if anyone emulated that? I find that keeping them seperate is better for me since I have skype gmail and text and the convos get long so I can search easier. On the pre gmail convos would get lost due to long text convos. Let me know if you find anything in the app store.

 

[resturg]

I replaced my Pre- last Friday at Best Buy store. I am having some reception problems with the phone, but the most annoying thing when I flip the phone to landscape I am hitting either volume or the power buttons on the side for the phone. I guess I will soon learn how to flip phone without hitting these buttons. I wish the Pre had the screen and the speed of this phone. I hope I will learn how to use this phone as effectively as the Pre.

 

[laxsu19]

I too am a new android user, coming from webos land (original pre-). Still trying to convince the wife to make the leap to the epic touch, but she may be holding out for iphone 5.

Hey, so, the pre charger has the same volts/amps as the epic touch's charger, and the microUSB plug from the pre fits in the touch. Does anyone know if the pins are all the same so that the cable actually is compatible?

 

[Dan_S]

Early Pre- adopter here too. It was everything I wanted in a Palm phone (aside from the subpar keyboard) and even two years (and some overclocking) later, I wasn't ready to part with it.

But the touchscreen started to go about the time I saw the Epic Touch and - frankly - I was tired of hearing commercials for apps that were available "for the iPhone or Android" all the time.

Without belaboring the crushingly poor job Palm, Sprint and HP did with this phone, I'll just leave it with this: I'm looking forward to Android, but I'll truly miss the simple elegance of WebOS. I'm glad to see so many Palm expatriates on this board showing their love for the Pre.

 

[roninlb]

I had an original Pre on Sprint and was holding out for the Pre 3. Sooooooo f'in pissed off at HP for screwing us over. I have a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet that a vendor gave me, so figured I might as well the the Samsung phone.
Still not sure if I like android yet, but it can't be worse than IOS which I just despise.

 

[DuStU]

I too am a new android user, coming from webos land (original pre-). Still trying to convince the wife to make the leap to the epic touch, but she may be holding out for iphone 5.

Hey, so, the pre charger has the same volts/amps as the epic touch's charger, and the microUSB plug from the pre fits in the touch. Does anyone know if the pins are all the same so that the cable actually is compatible?

There arent pins anymore there is the Iphone connector and the rest which are (micro usb or mini usb) It seems everyone is switching to mini. Its about time we have universal charging! I am using my pre charger for the phone and so is my gf for her brand new nexus S

 

[DuStU]

I had an original Pre on Sprint and was holding out for the Pre 3. Sooooooo f'in pissed off at HP for screwing us over. I have a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet that a vendor gave me, so figured I might as well the the Samsung phone.
Still not sure if I like android yet, but it can't be worse than IOS which I just despise.

For me its the App Market that won me over. Android is going to have thousands of phones literally in like 3 more years and apple will still have one that you cant customize (lookwize) without "jailbreaking" I am all for the open source world. So it was fitting for me to move from palm to Android. I am slowing cleaning up all the clutter that came with this phone as I am learning and enjoy this phone more and more!

 

[thegordo]

From a day-one Pre- to my day-one SGS2E4GT (ugh, what a name).

Mostly, I'm thrilled with the new phone. I dearly love webOS (and still have a TouchPad), but my poor Pre was giving out and I had a really bitter taste over the Pre3 situation. I was going to get an EVO shift, but after talking to the guy at Best Buy, he gave me every reason to wait for the SGS2. I showed up on Friday at Best Buy and he informed me that his store wasn't getting them until Monday. Sooo, I went to the local Sprint company store and got myself hooked up. I'm glad I waited for the SGS2.

Minus the obvious elegance of webOS in comparison (blah, blah, blah), I'm finding the transition to be fine. APPS! I was one of those 'apps don't matter much' until now that I have tons of real ones to choose from. The phone is fast, the screen is AWESOME, and everything is very responsive.

Oddly enough, the on-board speaker is fairly decent. I held up the phone with one hand (cupped around the speaker end to create an acoustic chamber) and showed Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma to an entire classroom of folks and it was an excellent experience. the speed and convenience with which I could show that was just awesome.

The list of positives is very long, and I made the right decision for me.

Now, the irritations:

1. Believe it or not, this phone doesn't quite have the reception that the Pre had. Total surprise there, but just a few places in the building I work bring evidence that the Pre had the edge. A very small edge, but an edge nonetheless.

2. This phone doesn't automatically port (and automatically update) my Facebook friends' pictures into the photo area of their contact information. I totally LOVED this feature. Is this something that can happen that I don't yet know about?

3. Nothing beats the 'just type' feature. The rest is commentary that's already been said. On the other hand, nothing beats the Voice Command feature, either.

4. I'm holding out for ICS before I have too many opinions about the multitasking/navigation. I assume there will be improvement here. On this front, webOS it ain't.

5. I cannot choose my WiFi connection from multiple sources once it already recognizes one it's logged into before. This is a real issue for me. In my situation I work with both filtered and unfiltered connections, and I need to be able to choose between multiple WiFi connections at any time. I can't seem to figure out how to make this happen. Am I missing something?

6. The stock browser is even way lousier than webOS's (and gives me nightmare flashbacks about my horrid year with an Instinct). I just got both Dolphin and Opera, and they both look promising, so we'll see if there is some improvement there. I haven't had time enough on them yet.

7. Wireless tethering has been blocked. This is a feature I used quite a bit with my Pre. I understand some rooting solves this problem, as it is a Sprint issue. I'm hesitant to root until after the ICS update. I never rooted my Pre, but I'm really game to dig into this phone as soon as I feel the time is right.

8. No touchstone without major surgery (which ain't gonna happen here). On the flip-side, I HAVE A REAL BATTERY THAT LASTS A REALLY LONG TIME IN COMPARISON TO WHAT I HAD!!! WOO HOO!!!

9. My meaty paws will never learn to manage a virtual keyboard with any proficiency. I'm not into the horizontal keyboard thing (my wife has an Intercept -- no offense to anyone, but I just feel girly on a horizontal kybd. It's my problem, I know), so I'll just pine for the good old days of the Palm keyboard.

Make no mistake -- for every complaint above I have 10 to 20 points of love and joy for this phone. I was an active part of the webOS community and am looking forward to digging in to all the love and Androidy goodness over on this side of life.

So, if anyone has suggestions as to how I can help any of the above, that would be totally cool. It's good to be here.

 

[kh4fun]

I am still researching this phone as a replacement of my Pre-. Still have many questions yet to answer.

1. Call quality. For both through earpiece and speakerphone: How does it sound on both ends? Is the volume loud enough when needed?

2. Email: I check 1 Google accounts and 5 IMAP Push emails for my web-site. Do I need to install a different email program to handle all this?

3. Signal Strength: Due to where I work I have very few bars of Sprint service and sometimes go roaming? Has does this compare to the Pre-?

4. Battery Life: Pre- goes from fully charged to 50% in 5 hours and dead in about 7 hours. With moderate to sometimes kinda heavy data usage, little voice, how's the battery life compared to the Pre?

5. Size of phone: This phone seems large compared to the Pre-. Using it does it seem big to hold and use on a regular basis?

6: Keyboard: Only used physical keyboards. Is it taking very long to be sorta comfortable using the virtual keyboard?

Sorry for all the questions, however with Sprint cancelling the Premeir program I hope to find a phone that I enjoy for the 2 year contract.

Thanks!!

 

[MaddogMike of the Tundra]

Pre- user since its launch; bought wife one last year (she loves it for its mirror on the back), WebOS is soooooooooo user friendly and intuitive.... and now its gone. Was holding out for the Pre3... The ET will be my first Android phone. I expect it will be quite a learning curve after using palm devices since my first Tungsten e, Treo 650, Treo 755, and the Pre-; but what choice do I have? no, I will not shackle myself to an iphone (its a control thing)...

Ordered my new ET from wirefly.... delivery is tomorrow. oh yeah, my Pre- died last week.... had to roll back to using my Treo 755... WOW... did I get used to multitasking on the Pre-!!!!! Treo is MONO-tasking something fierce! forgot how that was... wonder where the Android fits between Multitasking and Monotasking...

wonder if I'll adjust to Android.....

FU HP!!!

 

[mpnalvin]

@kh Some of these answers will necessarily vary depending on personal circumstances. Here are my answers.
1. Call quality is excellent. The speakerphone is much louder than the Pre-. On Saturday I did a road trip with my wife and forgot my 3.5mm cable to hook the phone to the car stereo. We were able to listen to internet radio using the speakerphone and it was pretty clear above the road noise. Not the best for bass, though.
2. From what I've read, K9Mail will handle the multiple accounts.
3. Mileage varies here. My signal is better than with my Pre-. On the other hand, another poster finds it worse.
4. Battery life is generally much better on the ET. The big thing is how much you use the screen and 4G. If I'm using Pandora over wifi, for example, I can pull down a lot of data using little battery. If you are surfing on the phone with 4G, you'll get (probably much) less. Still, even on Wifi most of the time I had to charge my Pre- every day or it would be dead. This is not the case with the ET.
5. No "seems" about it - this is a big phone. I mostly notice it in the width rather than the height, since the height is about the same as my Pre- with the keyboard extended. The size makes it great for surfing and reading emails. I think you will just need to try it and see how it feels in your hand. For me, the size is not uncomfortable.
6. The virtual keyboards are good as virtual keyboards go, and there are a lot of choices. The screen width helps, since it makes the keys larger. I am finding the virtual keyboard a definite downgrade from the physical one. But on the other hand, there's really not a lot of choice in terms of smartphones with physical keyboards that might last me 2 years, and the physical keyboards I've tried have not been good at all. My conclusion is that I will just have to deal with it, and focus on getting as good at the virtual keyboards as I can. There's certainly plenty else to enjoy about the phone.

 

[mpnalvin]

@maddog Android is perfectly capable of multitasking. The issue that I faced as Pre user was not multitasking, but task switching. On the Pre, everything is a card. New browser windows , for example, are new cards, and you can switch back and forth easily from any other app to any browser window.

On Android, the picture is less consistent. It is app-oriented rather than window-oriented, similar to OSX. New browser windows are managed by the browser app, so you need to be in the browser to switch to a particular browser window. Some things that aren't really apps (like "Settings") function as apps. Android has an easy way of getting to the last 6 launched apps (which might or might not be running), and a more complicated way of seeing what is actually running. Samsung has provided a nice "Active Applications" widget on the ET that makes switching between running applications much easier, especially if you tend to run a lot of applications and don't kill them (which some people argue is the preferred practice).

I doubt you will have significant trouble adjusting. It's a much easier switch than, say, Windows to OSX.

 

[folarino]

2. This phone doesn't automatically port (and automatically update) my Facebook friends' pictures into the photo area of their contact information. I totally LOVED this feature. Is this something that can happen that I don't yet know about?

Login to Facebook via the Social Hub app and this should resolve it.

 

[MaddogMike of the Tundra]

thanks, @mpnalvin!
I am going to miss the cards... I've always had at least 6 apps running for easy/instant access. I've been reading the tips and stuff since joining this board and although there's a ton of tips out there, it seems complicated.... but then so did going from a Palm OS to WebOS...

cant wait for tomorrow and I can start to explore this "android" OS that so many folks rave about...

wonder if this is how all those Betamax folks felt like when VHS took over....

 

[Pun]

I came from a Pre-, I'm a little lost but I'm getting it down...miss webos, but this phone is real nice and once I get the hang of android I'll be fine.