When HP abruptly announced it was discontinuing the TouchPad and ceasing work on any future devices running webOS, we took that to mean the underdog operating system had died a premature death. But when the company ousted bumbling CEO Leo Apotheker and replaced him with Meg Whitman, we had to wonder if webOS might have some life in it yet.
There’s a fresh new twist in the never ending Apple / HTC patent battle. The Taiwanese handset manufacturer is hitting back against Cupertino using newly obtained firepower: nine patents picked up from Google last week.
It’s looking like there’s a little shuffling happening at HP in the wake of the TouchPad ‘s release — and its somewhat less than flattering reception.
Well, it’s a bit past May 2nd , but AT&T has now finally officially announced that it will be carrying the HP Veer — or Veer 4G, as it prefers to call it.
How does the HP Veer look up close? Cute as a button, and small — these pictures don’t do it justice at all. We just got our hands on the pint-sized webOS 2.2 smartphone, and snapped a stack of pictures for your viewing pleasure
Palm HP didn’t bother mentioning the webOS versions during its ‘Think Beyond’ event today, but based on a little fine print on the outfit’s official Touchstone portal, we’ve learned that the TouchPad will ship with webOS 3.0 (a heretofore unheard of build), while the Veer and Pre 3 will get going with webOS 2.2. That said, the incredible Tap-to-Share functionality that’ll enable these slates and phones to converse with one another will also support “webOS 2.2 or higher” on the phones, suggesting that an update could be in the waiting
HP and Palm aren’t being shy about hyping up next week’s big webOS event , and they’re following up on that nod to our leak and CEO Leo Apotheker’s comments with this “Think Beyond” teaser video. As is undoubtedly intended, we can’t make much of the product from these brief glimpses of tapered curves, elegant switchgear, and what appears to be a charging connector — but we’d like to think it’s a tablet, because we are fundamentally very hopeful people.
Citing “personal reasons,” the Symbian Foundation has just announced that executive director Lee Williams has left the company — yes, “left,” as in he’s not going to stick around for a while to manage a transition. Williams has been steeped in Symbian for some time, having previously led Nokia’s S60 business — but the dude’s been floating around the upper ranks of the entire mobile industry for ages, doing time with Motorola (through its Symbol acquisition) and Palm / PalmSource by way of Be. He’s been replaced by the organization’s reigning CFO, Tim Holbrow, and it appears that the appointment is permanent; what this means for Symbian’s roadmap (if anything) is unclear, but we’d love to hear the backstory on what led to this power shift
Okay, we know what you’re saying: why would a Europe-bound device be getting FCC certification?
Today at Research In Motion’s annual BlackBerry Developer Conference, CEO Mike Lazaridis announced the company’s new tablet — the PlayBook. The tablet will utilize an OS created by the recently acquired QNX (just as we’d heard previous to the announcement) called the BlackBerry Tablet OS which will offer full OpenGL and POSIX support alongside web standards such as HTML5 (which is all tied into RIM’s new WebWorks SDK). Lazaridis was joined on stage by the company’s founder, Dan Dodge, who said that “QNX is going to enable things that you have never seen before,” and added that the PlayBook would be “an incredible gaming platform for publishers and the players.” RIM also touted the PlayBook’s ability to handle Flash content via Flash 10.1, as well as Adobe AIR apps
Palm first started telling us webOS 1.4.5 was coming “soon” back in May , but after an interminable wait it looks like Pre Pluses on Verizon and AT&T are starting to get an OTA update. The release notes page on Palm’s site is currently down, but we’re looking for better PDK support, some GPS fixes, and improved gaming action.
It’s only been a couple short months since HP announced its intentions to buy Palm , but apparently all the investors are happy and the lawyers are rich, because the two companies have just announced that the $1.2b transaction is official and the buyout is complete — Palm is now part of HP. Yes, it’s the end of an era — Palm’s been a part of the tech landscape in one confounding way or another since 1992 — but it’s also the start of what could potentially be a webOS renaissance , as HP plans to use Palm’s ideas and OS on everything from smartphones ( phew ) to tablets to even printers
We’d heard rumors this morning that webOS design guru Matias Duarte had left Palm for Google , but now we’ve got it straight from Mountain View: Mr. Duarte is the new User Experience Director for Android.
IntoMobile (blog) Palm's buy-out drama revealed in federal filings NetworkWorld.com It was a bitter conclusion to the 2007 re-orientation of Palm , to focus on a new mobile OS, and the first device to use it, the Palm Pre . …
World’s Breaking News Palm WebOS now available on all leading US mobile carriers World’s Breaking News Sіnce then, the Palm webOS family of phones has grown to include Palм Pixі, Palm Pre Plus, and Palm Pіxi Plυs. Today, with the arrival of Palm webOS phones …
