

HP: WebOS phones only, no Win Phone 7 - borisk
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20011559-260.html

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mortenjorck
Of all the things that have come out of HP's Palm acquisition so far, this
gives me the most confidence. It signals a clean break with the old Palm
practice of firing blindly with multiple strategies on multiple platforms; it
shows they have focus, and that they're confident in the value of WebOS.

I think Windows Phone 7 has a lot of promise itself, but HP has everything
they need here for full vertical integration of their mobile experience. Good
to see they don't plan on wasting it.

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MC27
With Windows Phone 7, they would be essentially selling commodity phones, in a
similar vein to Android manufacturers. Going with WebOS potentially puts them
into the Apple league, where - if they play their cards right - can allow them
to charge a premium and have a strong, dedicated following.

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commandar
I had the chance to use a reference WP7 device last week, and walked away
almost entirely unimpressed. I had my doubts about its chances of success
already; this news doesn't bode well at all for Microsoft.

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endtime
>walked away almost entirely unimpressed

I'd be curious to hear why - most of the feedback has been good so far. I
haven't had a chance to play with one myself.

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commandar
The simplest answer is style over substance. The UI _looked_ nice enough, but
I wasn't that impressed with the way it actually worked. One of the central UI
paradigms seems to be a carousel interface, that loops upon itself.
Personally, I feel like a more linear interface that has bounds at each end is
easier to navigate.

There's also no clear way to navigate between applications. If I started a
song playing in the music player then played with maps, there wasn't any easy
way to jump back to the media player app to skip songs, etc. There's basically
no paradigm for moving between apps other than dropping all the way back to
the home screen and digging for the app you want.

I'm an Android early adopter, so that may color my opinion some. The guy who
had the device for me to look at is a hardcore iPhone guy. I think his
description is probably best -- "it feels like iPhone 1.5." That may have been
passable in 2007, but not now.

I guess the bottom line is I came away feeling like Android, iOS, and even
Blackberry's OS were far better, and I'm not a fan of the latter two. There's
just absolutely nothing compelling about WP7 that makes me feel like I'd want
a handset running it. It's a far better system than WM6, but that's a rather
low bar, IMO.

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endtime
>"it feels like iPhone 1.5."

This part actually does match what I've seen. I know it's behind iOS 4. But if
I could use iPhone 1.5 but ditch AT&T and use the Zune client instead of
iTunes, well, that's actually interesting to me.

That said, my iPhone contract lasts another year, and I am kind of hoping
there will be a big 1.1 patch in sight by next summer, with some of the core
features that didn't make release.

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robin_reala
So who, apart from HTC, will be an MS partner? Samsung made the reference
hardware but are heavy on Bada these days. Sharp have history but got burned
by Kin? I guess that leaves Asus and maybe LG.

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kenjackson
The list has: HTC, Dell, Asus, LG and Samsung.

I don't think many were expecting an HP phone (who has an HP phone?). Probably
the biggest name not on the list, IMO, is Motorola.

And lets be clear about Samsung -- they have Bada, but they're still big on
Android. Ever heard of the Galaxy S phones? And I fully expect they'll be big
on WP7 too. If Apple let them do an iOS phone, they'd ship that also.

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rbanffy
Unless WP7 allows for user interface customization, its licensees will be
competing in a fully commoditized market, making phones that cannot
differentiate themselves from one another in anything but physical form and
price and doomed to low margins.

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kenjackson
Actually more than physical form, but device characteristics also. For
example, if HW companies can do great customized chipsets, ala A4, for WP7
they may be able to get improved battery life.

Also, remember MS specifies minimum HW requirements, but vendors can go above
and beyond (except in the case of screen resolution). For example, there's
nothing stopping one from adding front-facing cameras, with software
supporting it. Or a gyroscope, etc...

One thing we have seen though is that HW manufacturer skins are not a desired
feature. The only one that people even moderately like on Android is Sense.
And even there people say that straight Froyo is better. And believe that with
Gingerbread, this situation is exacerbated.

Plus the custom skins is largely what blocks these phones from being quickly
rev'ved to new versions of the OS. Apparently one of the things that MS has
worked out with the carriers is that they'll own the update of the OS.

At the end of the day the HW companies really should be competing on the HW.
The SW is probably better left to MS and Google.

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rbanffy
> At the end of the day the HW companies really should be competing on the HW.
> The SW is probably better left to MS and Google

We agree on these. I am not sure if our telcos agree with us :-/

Telcos want lock-in and experience control. They want to remove features that
they don't like and features that would reduce their revenue. Many phones have
crippled Bluetooth or even cable connections so that when you want to move a
picture over to your computer you need to send an MMS.

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paul9290
I wonder how they will brand this? Use HP or Palm?

Subjectively both brands are a little stale comparing to Android and Apple.
Maybe they could work with Nintendo and use WebOS to create a Nintendo branded
IP/Phone device.

Id buy that and download many of their games onto such a device. Games are the
biggest draw on Apple, a Nintendo phone would probably be huge!

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tiles
The "Palm" brand name still has huge mindshare. I wouldn't say the Palm brand
has been so much stagnated in recent years as it has been under-marketed. A
large marketing push by HP for new Palm phones, with the well-received WebOS
behind it, could be very successful.

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paul9290
Yeah Palm to me is not as stale HP. Of course this subjective, but when I
think sexy and elegant I do not think HP (Apple and somewhat Andriod).

Overall I still hoping for a Nintendo IP/phone type device.

