HP Breaks Up With WebOS Devices

Today’s news that HP is discontinuing WebOS devices breaks my heart. I’m the proud owner of a launch day Palm Pre running on Sprint. I moved to the Pre from a Treo which had faithfully met my needs until the screen started losing it’s mind. It took a day for me to get used to the feel of the smaller phone, but beyond that I felt that I had found a phone/OS combo that worked for me. Sure, I could’ve changed carriers and gone with an iPhone, but it just didn’t reel me in the way the Pre had. The big appeal for me was the physical keyboard – virtual keyboards are nice, but I’ve always preferred the tactile response of a physical keyboard. With updates, the OS really began to take shape and provide me with the experience I was looking for as a user.

It's A Trap!When Palm looked to be on the verge of collapse, HP swept in and bought them. My fears of not being able to migrate to new hardware were relieved. HP promised a path to the future for WebOS and seemed to be delivering with announcements of two new phones, the Veer and Pre3, and a tablet, the Touchpad back in February of this year. I was hopeful that the Pre3 would come to Sprint and when indicators pointed to that not happening I actually started looking at other carrier’s plans – my allegiance is to WebOS, not my carrier – preparing to make a move if it came to it. I purchased myself a Touchpad and despite the negative reviews it’s received, have found it to be more than capable of handling the tasks I put it to.

Today’s news has, to put it bluntly, pissed me off. Barely a month and a half after launch, the Touchpad isn’t meeting sales expectations and apparently the Veer hasn’t done well either, so HP is getting out of the WebOS hardware game. It remains to be seen what exactly will happen to WebOS, although the best decision HP could make at this point is to license the OS to manufacturers that are willing to invest in building a hardware platform that could take advantage of everything WebOS has to offer – something, it seems, HP was never willing to do.

For now, I will push forward with my poor launch day Palm Pre. My phone is a trooper – it’s been dropped more times than I can count, survived 3 foot + drops, and endured unintended torture that would’ve destroyed other phones. I’ve considered going the Franken-Pre route and dropping my radio into a Pre2 for a hardware refresh as well as trolling eBay until I find an original Pre in good condition. But eventually, unless WebOS is licensed out and a manufacturer can produce a phone that works as well as my Pre has worked for me, I may have to become an iPhone user.

Nothing wrong with the iPhone. But I will miss my physical keyboard.

Update

The PreCentral Round Up covers all of my thoughts on today’s news quite nicely as well as this comment.

Update 2

Best response to HP I’ve seen from the PreCentral Forums:

“Regarding today’s upper “managers” of HP, I’ve only got one comment:

You morons aren’t worthy to hold the used jock straps of Hewlett and Packard in your hands.”


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