Disclaimer: I work for HP but in the Enterprise Services division and have no involvement in anything relating to webOS or devices associated with it.
So, recently I obtained a Palm Pre 2 as my new company phone replacing a clunky Nokia 3109c running S40. My personal phone, as many may already know, is a Nokia N8 running Symbian, I also have an iPad running iOS 4.3, albeit jailbroken so it works how I want it to work, and somewhere around, a T-Mobile Pulse Android phone, running (I think) 2.1. My last experience with any Palm OS was a
Sony CLIÉ back in 2002 which was a nice little machine but ultimately not what I needed at that time. Thus here are my thoughts on the Pre 2 and webOS.
The good:
- Gestures are awesome. I like not having any hardware buttons on the front of the phone along with having a universal way of going "back" in an app.
- Notifications are superb, iOS 5 is making a move in this direction but I think it may still fall short of the webOS implementation.
- For the most part everything seems very quick and responsive although sometimes apps take "too long" to open.
- Multitasking and app switching is excellently handled and much, much better than iOS.
- The ability to use PreWare to patch the OS (similar to jailbreaking iOS) and not incur the wrath of Apple is nice. HP seem quite happy for you to go and play and make it very easy to do so.
- The Touchstone charging and associated Exhibition mode is very nice.
The bad:
- The camera is "so-so", especially when compared to the 12MP N8.
- There's a a very real shortage of apps. A lot of bases are covered but there just seems to be a general "malaise" around the app catalog. There also seems to be a lot less useful free apps out there.
- The battery life leaves a lot to be desired.
On the whole the pros far outweigh the cons. The big question though, is would I switch from the N8 to the Pre 2 (or Pre 3)? Currently.....no. I need a good camera in my phone and 5MP just doesn't cut it for me anymore and at present the N8 has very little competition in that field. Excepting the camera, webOS does nearly everything I would want of it and on the whole I much prefer it to iOS, Android and Symbian......
