Comments on: HP Pre 3 Hardware Analysis

HP's just-announced Pre 3 contains a notable list of improvements over its predecessors, as well as a list of notable "firsts" for a "Palm" device. Read on as we examine the nitty-gritty specs of this device and see how it compares to the competition and to its older WebOS stablemates.

CPU
The Pre 3 arrives with a 1.4Ghz "Snapdragon" 8x55 CPU, easily making it not only the fastest WebOS smartphone yet but also the highest-clocked single-core smartphone currently available or officially announced by any manufacturer. This definitely seem to be the most future-proof, cutting-edge aspect of this device, just like the TouchPad's 1.2 GHz dual-core CPU.

While no official reason for the lack of a dual-core processor in the Pre 2 was given, I would hazard a guess that WebOS 2.x, like Android 2.2, currently lacks the necessary optimizations for dual-core architecture. By necessity, HP's new WebOS smartphones are more legacy-oriented offerings than the new TouchPad, running WebOS 2.2 instead of 3.0. Therefore, a faster single-core CPU makes more sense in the short term, leaving the core-core parts to the heavier lifting done by the TouchPad and version 3.0 of WebOS. However, one thing that is certain is that the new HP-backed WebOS devices are going full speed ahead with Qualcomm Snapdragons and leaving the TI OMAP 3600-series processors behind.

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Hopefully the apps will be there.

Tuckermaclain @ 2/10/2011 12:53:18 PM #

The Palm OS phones had some pretty nice apps making most of the Android apps look a bit like Hacks (in the Palm sense, not the crappy sense). If there are some workable apps when my Evo lock-in is up I'll be back to give it a try. Always a sucker for a Palm device.

RE: Hopefully the apps will be there.

jca666us @ 2/10/2011 4:30:45 PM #

Keep hoping.

RE: Hopefully the apps will be there.

Gekko @ 2/10/2011 4:39:58 PM #

hope is not a strategy.

RE: Hopefully the apps will be there.

StrawMan @ 2/11/2011 3:16:37 AM #

"hope is not a strategy."

But continual disappointment is... and they have mastered that well.

I personally would have used Nvidia's Tegra

HellcatM @ 2/10/2011 1:46:05 PM #

Snapdragon is ok but you get good graphics and processor with Tegra, plus from what I read its better with power management.

We'll see what happens. I'm rooting for Palm, I like them and WebOS is pretty cool!

RE: I personally would have used Nvidia's Tegra

hkklife @ 2/10/2011 1:51:54 PM #

I agree, Tegra 2 is a beast and will be the reference platform for Google's Honeycomb platform. But sadly, HP saw fit to continue the trend of penny-pinching that Palm began long ago. Why root for a dead company? It's HP now, not Palm. WebOS would be even "cooler" if it was made available for older devices as promises. HP looks set to have major fragmentation for the platform:

legacy devices topping out at WebOS 1.4.5
Pre 2, 3, and Veer on 2.x (presumably updated to 3.x in the future but carrying around that useless gesture area in the future).
Right now, the only WebOS devices truly worth purchasing is the TouchPad. Like Android Honeycomb, the next generation of WebOS is being spearheaded by tablets, not smartphones.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X + Palm TX

RE: I personally would have used Nvidia's Tegra

Gekko @ 2/10/2011 2:31:41 PM #

doesn't matter. sales would still be anemic.

RE: I personally would have used Nvidia's Tegra

mikecane @ 2/10/2011 5:16:48 PM #

Eh. The flavor of the past moment, the made by India Notion Ink Adam uses a Tegra 2. Where's the huge sales? Where's the big hype after the initial ga-ga reaction over the Pixel Qi screen? It's going nowhere despite having Android, despite having many things other tablets don't have. Having a CPU that's gained favorable PR is meaningless. It's the damn apps that count and how snappy they are.

The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

bhartman34 @ 2/10/2011 6:55:58 PM #

....where's the apps?

Unless there is a serious app infusion from the switch to Enyo, I don't see the Pre 3 competing well. And if the plan is to fragment WebOS between the large and small screens...well, that's the kiss of death.

It looks to me like HP is banking on people developing for the TouchPad and Enyo. If they get a slew of developers doing that, and the TouchPad can make phone calls, maybe I'll get that, when it's released. Otherwise, I'm going Android.

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

Gekko @ 2/10/2011 6:58:52 PM #

only a real dumb ass would buy any of these 3 products.

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

hkklife @ 2/10/2011 7:08:42 PM #

Apparently the TouchPad doesn't make phone calls in the conventional, stand-alone sense. Rather, it "handles" calls forwarded to it by a compatible WebOS smartphone.

Between the Mojo to Enyo changeover and the abandonment of all the legacy WebOS devices, I see the hobbyist and smalltime developers leaving WebOS in droves, with a few "big names" sticking around for at least at year or so after the TouchPad/WebOS 3 rollout.

So basically we have to develop for:

-Legacy WebOS phones on 1.4.5 w/ 320x400 or 320x480

-The "bridge" WebOS phones on WebOS 2.x w/ gesture area and 320x400, 320x480, and 480x800 running BOTH Mojo and Enyo natively (!?!) Presumably these will eventually be updated to 3.x as well

-The TouchPad on 3.x with no gesture area and 1024x768, running both Enyo native apps and Mojo stuff in emulation with onscreen buttons etc.

-Future new WebOS smartphone hardware running WebOS 3.x out of the box with no gesture area and a probable wide array of resolutions

Sounds like a near Android-size mess in the making but without the Android-size hardware options or market momentum.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X + Palm TX

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

bhartman34 @ 2/10/2011 7:31:12 PM #

Gekko wrote:

only a real dumb ass would buy any of these 3 products.

I actually don't think the phone's that bad. If your needs are small (in terms of apps) the WebOS UI is nice, and it's a perfectly serviceable phone. Hell, my original Pre is a perfectly serviceable phone, if you're not that into apps. Trouble is, I'm looking with envy at the Android world. The Pre 3's size is adequate, but the app catalog is too sparse for my desires right now.

If a sudden plethora of apps hits the TouchPad or Pre 3, that might be enough to keep me on, but I'm not optimistic at all. Palm screwed up the marketing of the Pre too much, and the subsequent handsets never recovered.

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

ssid12 @ 2/11/2011 6:00:45 AM #

Hkklife, in theory it should be easier for developers to work in the Enyo environment as the software will be "resolution agnostic". For me that is a big step in the right direction. While the Pre3 and Veer are being released with WebOS 2.0 they will all move on to 3.0. Going forward there is only one platform to work on and that is Enyo. Mojo will be phased out very rapidly.

While I agree that it is tough on the early adopters who bought a Pixi or the original Pre as with most modern phones I think it is unrealistic to think that these phones will be supported forever. I had an iphone 3G and it of course does not have all the features of the current iphone4. When the next iphone comes out I doubt very much that I will get a software update.

If you want to talk fragmentation you should buy an Android phone. I am using a Samsung Galaxy S and am very frustrated with the pace of Android updates and some of the software is buggy and battery draining as hell....

In terms of specs/form factor the Pre3 is in the ballpark for me, I am a big fan of webOS but my concerns were about the limited software availability. The big test will be HPs ability to get devs onboard and given how hard they are pushing in that direction I think they can pull it off.

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

LiveFaith @ 2/11/2011 6:28:52 AM #

... oops (use of bad character) here's the full story ...

Nacho dumps a ladle full of refried slop in a monks bowl ...

monk: There is no flavor

Nacho: Enjoy it my brother

monk: Where are the cheeeps?

Nacho: Someone stole them

monk: Did you not tell them, they were the Lord's cheeeps?

Nacho: (getting upset) I tried but, uhhh ...

Head monk nearby: (Interrupts argument) Silence brothers! (short pause) Theeese is the worst lunch I have ever had.

monk: Do you not know that I have had diarrhea since Eashters?

Nacho: (slamming bowl on table) maybe I am not cut out for these duties?

Nacho: (runs out)

** Anybody around here see the parallels? **

or this tells it more directly ... :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI056nhaduk
(warning: crude language)
Pat Horne

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

rpa @ 2/11/2011 5:19:48 PM #

bhartman34: I have an iPhone4 and hardly use any apps....maybe I am an exception but the 300,000 or so apps on iTunes is a pain to wade thru. I would be tempted to get a Veer as a back up phone if unlocked and the price is right as apps aren't important at all to me. A good phone with PDA functions suits me fine and the iP4 syncs with my MacBook Pro well enough.

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

bhartman34 @ 2/12/2011 8:31:48 PM #

rpa:

My stepfather has an iPhone (although he has the 3G), and he hardly uses any apps, either. I don't think that's all that uncommon. I have a lot of apps installed on my Pre, and the majority I probably don't use, but there are some I find handy. And the thing that bothers me about the current state of WebOS is that there are some apps from the PalmOS days that I used a lot that never made the jump to WebOS (e.g., HanDBase, eWallet, and an editable Docs To Go). And it just seems like every time I turn around, I see different media orgs launching an app specifically for either iOS or Android, with WebOS nowhere to be seen. Hell, even Dominos has an iOS app now. It just gets a little frustrating to be left behind in the event that I'd want to run an app.

That said, there are things I like about WebOS (the multitasking, Synergy, the card metaphor) that I'll miss, so I'll probably at least wait to see in July if HP has made any headway, but I think the hardware and app advantages of Android are getting pretty formidable.

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

rb @ 2/12/2011 8:32:46 PM #

I may consider the new Pre if Sprint sells it because I'm a Loyal Sprint customer! There's no way I'll go to AT&T or Verizon for any new phone!

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

bhartman34 @ 2/12/2011 8:44:06 PM #

Well, there are lots of Sprint phones. :) But I want to see the Pre 3 in hand. If it's considerably larger, that might be a good thing. :)

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

nastebu @ 2/13/2011 10:03:04 AM #

It's not the quantity of apps you use, or even, quite the quality. It's the specificity. What makes hundreds of thousands of apps impressive is not that everyone uses a lot of them, but that everyone can find exactly what they need.

My wife has an iPhone and uses maybe three apps regularly, a Japanese dictionary, an English dictionary and a conversion calculator. In getting these three, she had a wide range of choices of different, but similar, apps, each aimed at a slightly different audience. The result is she got (and paid quite a bit for) three apps that meet her needs close to perfectly.

RE: The Pre 3 Looks Nice, But...

bhartman34 @ 2/13/2011 1:00:42 PM #

That's a good point. I can think of a half dozen apps that if WebOS had them, I'd be pretty happy. And they're nothing fancy, either. It's just the fact that they're available on Android and iOS that kind of annoys me. WebOS needs to catch up if it's going to be successful. But I probably won't be waiting that long, barring something surprising happening.