Palm OS - WebOS

With the Pre, Palm also debuts its long-delayed new phone operating system, webOS. WebOS is one of the silkiest and best-designed smartphone platforms to come along in a while–it’s right up there with Apple’s iPhone OS and Google’s Android.

But webOS does have a few quirks. For the most part, though webOS is zippy to navigate through, apps sometimes loaded slowly and the organization and placement of certain features was a bit confusing or counterintuitive at times.

The home-screen interface has customizable application widgets running at the bottom. Touch a widget, and the app instantly pops up. Unfortunately, you can display only four shortcuts of your choosing (plus the Launcher shortcut, which you can’t switch out) at a time.

Like Google Android, Palm’s webOS can handle full multitasking–something that iPhone OS 2.0 can’t do. The Pre manages multitasking with a deck-of-cards visualization: You can view each of your open applications at once, shuffle them any way you choose, and then discard the ones you want to close. You do all of that with gestures that mimic handling a physical deck of cards. Apps remain live even when minimized into the card view, so changes can continue to happen in real time, even if you’ve moved on to another activity. Overall, this arrangement is a playful and intuitive experience for managing multiple apps.

WebOS also has a great notifications feature, a small alert that pops up at the bottom of the screen when you have an incoming call, text message, or e-mail, but that alert comes up without interrupting the app you have open (similar to Google Android). Though the notifications are nifty, but their placement–below the Quick Launch Bar–a bit annoying. Notifications also pop up on the Pre’s stand-by screen.

Fans of Palm OS will be happy to know that the Pre retains the copy-and-paste function: You simply hold down Shift on the keyboard and then drag on the touchscreen to select the desired block of text. Afterward you open the application menu in the upper-left corner of the screen and select copy, cut, or paste.

For more information please visit Palm Programming