Things people miss from WebOS

[StarDestroyer]

Not trying to argue, but things I've found that may be of use:

5. If you like, you can always put the widgets for those items on your home screen. Tap home once, you can adjust your settings...not as elegant as WebOS, but not much more difficult.

7. Universal search on Android really isn't that much different, and is, in some ways, better than the WebOS version. Rather than having to open the keyboard, you tap the hard search button and type in what you're looking for. If you're in a program, like e-mail, the search button will search that program specifically. I say universal search is better in some ways because it also searches emails and calendar.

8. I use Task OS to close open programs that I don't want open. About WebOS: you may have control over which programs are running in a more elegant manner....but there are some pretty huge memory leaks that no amount of app swiping away can get rid of. One of my frustrations with the Pre was swiping away all of my cards, and still being unable to open any new cards because of the too many cards error. Now, if everything was really closed, why couldn't I open another card? On Android, I can pretty easily find what services are running...on the Pre, not so much.

9. I LOVE Preware and it's developers (as well as the other homebrew guys), but homebrew was really necessary on the Pre because it doesn't have many options out of the box. With Android, you can customize very easily without needing to homebrew. For example, initially, you had to homebrew to get flashing notifications, timestamps on messages, a decent call log, an avatar in messaging, etc. etc. Those things are already built in to Android. There's not too much that I was able to do with Preware and Homebrew that isn't available either out of the box or with an App in Android.

Discussion and suggestions are alway good

5. I have the home screen icons. They work, but you still have to get out of your app, flip to the right home screen and click the icon. Also, with the menu on the Pre, I could join a WiFi network or get to Bluetooth prefs (to, fe, add a new headset).

7. Haven't really used the search much, I guess. I was so used to the "just start typing" model in webOS rather than having a dedicated button that I find myself not using it. Mostly a matter of personal preference, I guess.

8. Memory leaks are bad no matter what the platform, and webOS (or the apps, not 100% sure) definitely had some. The "no more cards" error did get annoying, especially with one one or two cards open. A quick (10 minute) reboot always cleared it up, tough .

9. Yes, it was born out of necessity, but it was also so easy to use that I'm having a hard time not having it anymore (yes, I know you can root Android but it's not as easy as homebrew on the Pre... and while Palm didn't directly support homebrew, they also didn't go out of their way to make it more difficult).

 

[StarDestroyer]

5) The biggest issue and I mean huge issue for me is the Android Web Browser. I miss double tapping and getting column formatting. The "double to tap and zoom in on the text which changes the layout of the page" in Android is absolute trash. I've stopped browsing the web on my Evo. I'm embarrassed to show anyone what "smartphone web viewing" is like... How could such an easy feature be left out... Its kind of pathetic honestly. Am I the only Android user in the world bothered by this??? Have you tried using the column formatting on the iPhone or the Pre??? Its makes viewing and fast navigation of a page so easy.

Sorry I kind of went on a rant there... If you couldn't tell I absolutely loathe the Android Browser... It honestly ruins even having a 4.3 inch screen for web browsing.

I forget to put this on my list, but I agree whole-heartedly.

 

[StarDestroyer]

I miss my touchstone and swipe to delete. I still have my Pre on my desk on the touchstone and every once in awhile I check for updates and new apps. I also miss easily notification access.

So I'm not the only one who does that

 

[dullgeek]

Current Pre user, contemplating the switch. About 90% certain I'm going to make it.

the one app I'm REALLY missing is Mileage Monitor to track my car's MPG and cost per 100 miles stats... Any suggestions? Thanks.

I use Fuelly | Share and Compare Your MPG. It allows me to submit my mileage information via SMS. I can also export and import via CSV. IMHO, much better than an on device app, which can suffer lost data if you have to hard reset your phone.

Here's my car FWIW: My Red ET (Hyundai Elantra Touring) | Fuelly

As far as what I'm worried I'll miss from my Pre:

• Touchstone: I have 3 of them: home, car, desk. Absolutely awesome tech. They will go, along with my phone, to my wife, who's still on a feature phone.
• Simple task switching via cards. A common thing for me to do is browse twitter, click a link, then go back to browsing twitter while the link is loading. In my playing w/Android, this is less smooth but still doable. This is especially useful when the full swiipe in the gesture area fast switches to the next card to the right or left.
• LED Flashlight app: to turn on the LED flash and use it as a flashlight - perhaps something like this exists already for android?
• IMAP IDLE support - my primary email account is IMAP and the idea of going back to non-push mail strikes me as akin to going back to Windows 3.11.
• 16 million colors - EVO only has 65k colors? Really surprising to me.

The things I'm *really* looking forward to w/EVO:

• Browser that wraps text to fit within the screen no matter how zoomed in you are. No more swiping left & right to read a web page.
• Big gigantic screen with better resolution - I still rely a lot on mobile websites on the Pre. In playing w/Evo, it looks like I can use full sites a lot more reasonably than on Pre.
• Better 3rd party app support. E.g. sling player is coming to android, not to WebOS. There are many apps from services that I use that have no plans for a WebOS app, but already have an android app (or are actively developing one).
• Google voice support
• Native Visual Voicemail
• An actual button for "back". The back gesture is pretty intuitive, but it's too easy to do it incorrectly resulting in the phone not doing what I intended. I prefer the dedicated back & home button to gestures. OTOH swipe to delete is pretty brilliant.
• WIDGETS! Information at a glance, FTW! The closest thing WebOS has to this is Quick System Tasks Homebrew app.
• No more fscking Too Many Cards errors!! It's especially infuriating when there are exactly ZERO cards open!

 

[dullgeek]

5) The biggest issue and I mean huge issue for me is the Android Web Browser. I miss double tapping and getting column formatting. The "double to tap and zoom in on the text which changes the layout of the page" in Android is absolute trash. I've stopped browsing the web on my Evo. I'm embarrassed to show anyone what "smartphone web viewing" is like... How could such an easy feature be left out... Its kind of pathetic honestly. Am I the only Android user in the world bothered by this??? Have you tried using the column formatting on the iPhone or the Pre??? Its makes viewing and fast navigation of a page so easy.

Interesting. That's one thing that I'm really looking forward to w/Evo. Reading a web page on the Pre is often an exercise in futility. I find myself frequently stuck with this choice. Either:

• The text is too small to be read, or
• When reading, I have to scroll right to get to the end of the line, then scroll all the way back to the left to get to the beginning of the next line.

Obviously, I end up doing the 2nd one. But it makes reading anything on the web a major PITA unless you go to the mobile version of that site. On Evo where it reformats the text it makes it easier to read.

 

[Blubble#AC]

@dullgeek, I do miss the Touchstone. There is a new dock coming out for the EVO. It's not the same, but it gets the job done, plus you can sync with it.

Task switching isn't as bad as I thought. For web surfing, Dolphin HD browser has tabs which helps make up for not having web pages on multiple cards. It works quite nicely. It has good multitouch and double tap to fit column support. It's much better than stock.

There is a free app called LED Light in the market. For some reason, it works on EVO without rooting, whereas other Android phones require root. The point is, it works and turns on both LEDs. Makes for a nice flashlight.

Try free K-9 email client. I think it supports IMAP Idle.

I have yet to notice a problem with 65K colors. The screen looks awesome. That little tiny ass screen on the Pre is a joke. I am so glad I have some real estate for web pages and videos.

Plus, it's REALLY fast. No RAM problems. I thought I might not like it. I was wrong.

 

[Blubble#AC]

@DirkBelig,

Have you tried the Dolphin HD browser? It's much better than the Android stock browser.

 

[dullgeek]

@Blubble are you NaNplayer?

 

[Blubble#AC]

Yep.

 

[dullgeek]

@Blubble: You & I have chatted before on twitter.

Some time ago, I evaluated the HTC Hero, and blogged about what I thought: Dull Geek: HTC Hero vs Palm Pre

Some other things that I don't know if they're true on the EVO (or on more recent software updates on Hero for that matter):

• HTML email is readable, but images aren't loaded. Is there an option to turn on full HTML email?
• Calendar has no week view.
• Changing phone orientation is slow. Also it appears to only be able to do it in two directions
• None of the twitter apps that I've tried comes close to being as full featured as Tweed or Twee. (Or TweetMe - which is my current fav)
• Browser feels slower than on Pre. But may be related to the fact that it will load more data than Pre because it understands flash and Pre doesn't.
• Browser requires a home page. Why? When I start the browser, I really don't want to wait for it to load some page that I didn't want, so that I can start typing in the page I did want. No option for blank home page.
• NFL / Nascar radio turns off when screensaver comes on.

Are any of these still issues?

 

[Blubble#AC]

@dullgeek. Of course, I remember you.

* HTML email is readable, but images aren't loaded. Is there an option to turn on full HTML email?

Yes, the images in HTML emails appear correctly. I'm looking at a Best Buy email receipt and it looks fine.

* Calendar has no week view.
Month, Week and Day view are available.

* Changing phone orientation is slow. Also it appears to only be able to do it in two directions

It takes about a second to switch. It only supports two directions. Furthermore, Sense UI does not support landscape for the home screen. I replaced it with LauncherPro which does support landscape and host of other enhancements. ADW.Launcher is another good option.

* None of the twitter apps that I've tried comes close to being as full featured as Tweed or Twee. (Or TweetMe - which is my current fav)
I am not wild about the twitter options, but the Peep app from HTC and the official Twitter app are OK. The Sense Twitter widget is pretty cool, but you lose it if you turn off sense.

* Browser feels slower than on Pre. But may be related to the fact that it will load more data than Pre because it understands flash and Pre doesn't.
I find the browser on the EVO to be a lot faster. The Hero has a dog awful processor, so it's slow for everything. The EVO has a great, fast processor with a lot of RAM. It renders pages quickly. Dolphin HD browser is even faster.


* Browser requires a home page. Why? When I start the browser, I really don't want to wait for it to load some page that I didn't want, so that I can start typing in the page I did want. No option for blank home page.

There are various browsers you can try with different options. Dolphin HD defaults to a search box and a list of your bookmarks.



* NFL / Nascar radio turns off when screensaver comes on.
Don't know. Have not tried either.

 

[Blubble#AC]

If you are that up in the air, you might want to wait to see what Palm announces.

I needed an Android dev phone, so I jumped. I've got another upgrade ready so I can buy whatever Palm releases later this year so I can get both options.

I'll get your NaNplayer beta invite out this weekend, so that will make your Pre that much better.

 

[wado1]

twidroid is a good twitter client.

 

[Ahchoo]

Interesting. That's one thing that I'm really looking forward to w/Evo. Reading a web page on the Pre is often an exercise in futility. I find myself frequently stuck with this choice. Either:

• The text is too small to be read, or
• When reading, I have to scroll right to get to the end of the line, then scroll all the way back to the left to get to the beginning of the next line.

Obviously, I end up doing the 2nd one. But it makes reading anything on the web a major PITA unless you go to the mobile version of that site. On Evo where it reformats the text it makes it easier to read.

Trust me its awful... A web page can be viewed as a piece of art or a very hot girl. Using the "double tap" on Android is like you viewing an amazing piece of art deformed/destroyed right in front of you. Its like watching a beautiful girl put on too much makeup because they think they look better or have too many plastic surgeries because they want enhance some features.

When I got this awesome 4.3 inch screen all I kept thinking was man web viewing is going to be so awesome on this phone. Its going to look so gorgeous on the screen... and well Google destroyed it with this 1 awful feature.

(Some of this was added in a comedic effect... but seriously though. Viewing the web on an Android Browser is trash. Google should be ashamed of what they did. I can't believe that this has gone on this long and I am the only one complaining when an elegant solution exists and has existed for a while. It should at least be an option to do column formatting instead of this crap they have now... For a company that is all about bringing the full web experience to people they dropped the ball on this one...)

 

[vnmous1]

Nothing. The Pre was utter junk. I don't care how awesome the Software or OS on a phone is if the Hardware is faulty and crap. I went through 5 Pres total (3 in 3 weeks) all with internal Hardware defects.

Palm buried themselves by taking these defective phones and putting them back in the cycle as refurbs without fixing what was wrong with them. Apparently they think that a Factory Reset of the phone will fix Hardware defects.

Wow...what the heck did you do to yours? I had one since Premier Day and other than "oreo" had NO problems. Worked like a champ.

But to answer the OPs question: The cards. webOS has positively the finest multi-tasking UI on the planet.

bj

 

[dullgeek]

(Some of this was added in a comedic effect... but seriously though. Viewing the web on an Android Browser is trash. Google should be ashamed of what they did. I can't believe that this has gone on this long and I am the only one complaining when an elegant solution exists and has existed for a while. It should at least be an option to do column formatting instead of this crap they have now... For a company that is all about bringing the full web experience to people they dropped the ball on this one...)

Do you have any option to produce a video of what you're talking about? Because I just don't get it. Most of what I want on a website is to be able to see the pictures that it's trying to show me and read the text that it's trying to show me.

On the Pre, I typically have to choose between one or the other. If I want to read the text, I go to the mobile site (if one is available). If I want to see the pix, I go to the full site. From playing with the Evo @ the Sprint store, it seems (to me at least) to offer a better way to do both from a single interface.

I guess I'm just not getting what annoys you. Can you think of any way of showing what you're talking about?

 

[mhespenh]

Swipe to delete. God I miss that, I find myself doing it all the time .

I got to be so good at the card switching, I could go from one app to another in under a second, having to hold the home button is a little annoying- is there anyway to shorten the length of time you have to hold it to activate the recent apps popup?

 

[sYnOnYx]

If you are that up in the air, you might want to wait to see what Palm announces.

I needed an Android dev phone, so I jumped. I've got another upgrade ready so I can buy whatever Palm releases later this year so I can get both options.

I'll get your NaNplayer beta invite out this weekend, so that will make your Pre that much better.

I wanted NaNplayer on Pre forever

 

[Blubble#AC]

If you're a PreCentral member, all you have to do is ask to be in the beta.

I'll be making an official announcement later this year in regard to NaNplayer for Android. Then of course, the beta would be open to AndroidCentral members.

 

[ret2961#AC]

Touchstone. I keep hearing the same stuff about the Powermat battery, but no news since January. Anyone hear anything? Or did they slip?