Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Things I Miss About webOS - Updated

I thought this post could use a refresh now that I have really settled in with my EVO

My Sprint EVO is an awesome device, Android seems like a solid O/S and Sense UI is serviceable. That being said I have started up a list of the things I really miss about webOS.

Multi-Tasking:
Sure Android has multi-tasking but the UI to leverage it is an afterthought, in fact it hardly qualifies as a thought. The "card" concept in webOS stands as the high water mark for an intuitive UI laid on top of multi-tasking on a touch based device. I am digging through a pile of Android apps that claim to help with this, no winners yet.
UPDATE: webOS multiple-tasking still rules. I have given up on any Android apps to try to help with multi-tasking. I have become accustomed to app switching in Android and it will suffice...'Nuff said.

Unique Notification Sounds:UPDATE-SOLVED
I loved being able to have different notification sounds for each mail account. Admittedly webOS didn't launch with this but they got there fast enough. Android is a bit uneven handling this. Gmail allows for notification sounds by account but the HTC Mail client does not.
UPDATE: Android 2.1 took care of this and it works nicely.

Synergy:
Android tries this, but Synergy is better
UPDATE: Synergy is still better at consolidating contacts but Android's calendar does a pretty fair job at bringing together all of my Google calendars and my Exchange calendar from work.

Palm Backup:
Sure my EVO has a microSD card but I gotta figure out how to backup to it. There's not even a stock client or app for it. Never mind that expansion card backups are worthless if you lose the phone the card is in. Palm's back up is easy, automatic and worked...even if it didn't back up every single thing.
UPDATE: Still haven't taken the time to work this out, kinda dumb on my part.

PIN Timeout - SOLVED:
With Android I have to enter my corporate enforced PIN every single time time I wake the EVO up. It drives me nuts and its complete overkill. With webOS my screen time out was 30 seconds but my PIN timeout was 15 minutes. Thus I could be trading texts with folks and generally be jumping on and off the device and NOT have to enter my PIN number a bajillion times. This makes things a lot more tolerable.
UPDATE: Android 2.1 fixed this and I am endlessly thankful.

I'll probably think of more but this is a start.

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