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HP Unveils WebOS 2.0 with Palm Pre 2.0

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No real surprise here, but HP has officially announced both WebOS 2.0 and the Palm Pre 2.0. Since HP’s acquisition of Palm, there’s really been no doubt that HP was going to get back into the handheld business and of course HP has made no secret that it is banking quite a bit on WebOS.

The 2nd version of the handset will debut in France this Friday and will be coming to the US in the now familiar time line of “in a few months.” I’m seeing some rumblings around the web that the changes in the physical handset might not be enough to hang a version 2 moniker on it, but we’ll have to see how that plays out.

WebOS 2.0 is eagerly awaited and promises some new features that include a new UI (Stacks)  that will make multi-tasking easier, and Exhibition, which will allow developers to create Apps that run while the the device is docked on the Touchstone charging device. JustType has been improved to supposedly allow you to just begin typing, regardless of your task, and then take you to whatever functionality you need. Yeah, there’s also support for Adobe 10.1 (beta) built in. Some other features include the use of Skype Mobile for Verizon customers, QuickOffice built in out of the box, although it is just a viewer and doesn’t allow editing, and 2.0 version of the Facebook App.

I’m sure we’ll start to hear more soon about WebOS 2.0 and the new Pre, but my interest is more about how WebOS 2.0 might be working with Tablets. How about yours?

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Steven

    10/19/2010 at 3:52 pm

    I’m interested to know if it will feature the mobile wifi hotspot that the Palm Pre Plus offered.

  2. Anonymous

    10/19/2010 at 6:56 pm

    Yaaaaawn (continues working on iPhone 4)

  3. Yogh

    10/19/2010 at 9:15 pm

    I’m definitely interested to see updates to webOS because it shows they’re working on it which bodes well for the Hurricane (my favourite of the names). However, I think it’s important to look at it in regards to the phones as well. My wife recently moved to a smartphone simply to combine her Zune (large capacity mp3 player with better UI than the iPod Classic), iPod Touch (free 8GB version used for apps), and phone. In the end she chose an iPhone because the ease of the shared ecosystem with her iPad outweighed a number of cons. Apple and RIM understand this synergy between smartphone and slate* and I think it will be important for webOS too as we enter the age of tablets. I don’t see Android devices capitalising on this synergy in the same way, though I’m eager to be convinced otherwise (and I haven’t really looked at the Samsung offerings). Possibly it’s a side effect of an integrated ecosystem as opposed to just having the same OS and therefore would give some more value to Jobs’ comments about integrated versus fragmented.

    * This only applies to slate gadgets, not slates/tablets with full OSes.

  4. Yogh

    10/19/2010 at 9:15 pm

    I’m definitely interested to see updates to webOS because it shows they’re working on it which bodes well for the Hurricane (my favourite of the names). However, I think it’s important to look at it in regards to the phones as well. My wife recently moved to a smartphone simply to combine her Zune (large capacity mp3 player with better UI than the iPod Classic), iPod Touch (free 8GB version used for apps), and phone. In the end she chose an iPhone because the ease of the shared ecosystem with her iPad outweighed a number of cons. Apple and RIM understand this synergy between smartphone and slate* and I think it will be important for webOS too as we enter the age of tablets. I don’t see Android devices capitalising on this synergy in the same way, though I’m eager to be convinced otherwise (and I haven’t really looked at the Samsung offerings). Possibly it’s a side effect of an integrated ecosystem as opposed to just having the same OS and therefore would give some more value to Jobs’ comments about integrated versus fragmented.

    * This only applies to slate gadgets, not slates/tablets with full OSes.

  5. Yogh

    10/19/2010 at 9:15 pm

    I’m definitely interested to see updates to webOS because it shows they’re working on it which bodes well for the Hurricane (my favourite of the names). However, I think it’s important to look at it in regards to the phones as well. My wife recently moved to a smartphone simply to combine her Zune (large capacity mp3 player with better UI than the iPod Classic), iPod Touch (free 8GB version used for apps), and phone. In the end she chose an iPhone because the ease of the shared ecosystem with her iPad outweighed a number of cons. Apple and RIM understand this synergy between smartphone and slate* and I think it will be important for webOS too as we enter the age of tablets. I don’t see Android devices capitalising on this synergy in the same way, though I’m eager to be convinced otherwise (and I haven’t really looked at the Samsung offerings). Possibly it’s a side effect of an integrated ecosystem as opposed to just having the same OS and therefore would give some more value to Jobs’ comments about integrated versus fragmented.

    * This only applies to slate gadgets, not slates/tablets with full OSes.

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