Palm switching over to Android with WebOS UI?

Last night Slashdot received an anonymous tip claiming that Palm was actively considering dropping the arguably superior mobile operating system WebOS for Android. The tip says Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein will release an internal memo on the matter in the near future.

Says the tipster of the memo: "While Palm is incredibly proud of our engineers who spent timeless work and effort to bring us this advanced operating system, consumers simply have not caught on. To provide a better future for ourselves and our customers, the only logical choice is to transition our hardware and software to the Android platform."

The tipster also notes that the WebOS UI will be integrated into Android, similarly to the popular HTC Sense interface which runs on top of Android 1.5-2.1.

PreCentral, the site which is pretty on top of Palm rumors, accurate or not, says the tip is likely a completely falsification, and we at AfterDawn are inclined to agree. The engineering necessary to create a working WebOS UI to work with Android will take too much time that Palm does not have.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 23 Mar 2010 14:19

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2 comments

shaffaaf

andi hope they dont. unless they go down, i hope they dont at all. though webos + andoid would be geek jizz

23.3.2010 21:18 #1

plazma247

Originally posted by shaffaaf: andi hope they dont. unless they go down, i hope they dont at all. though webos + andoid would be geek jizz Although this does on face value look crazy, is webos also uses linux which helps from the start.

But assuming they create the webos in layers (kernal/drivers/interface) it safe to assume that you could take the interface layer, extract what you wanted, complile this to an android app/software and instead of re-writing all the hooks from webos to android, you could just add an api (call interface layer) which would translate the interfaces webos calls and interface them with android. Ok its not as nice and as clean as doing it for android from scratch and it creates a tiny overhead that you dont really need. But look at the htc version its exactly the same as sense 2.5 on wm6.5, they already had all the functionality core code and images/videos created so bundeling it into an android app cant have been that hard.

It maybe also possible with webos's interface code to simply replace the api calls with the android ones without to much of a problem. But if they have root access device so its not like they have to write it using the android dev kit for apps, if there code runs at root level it can call what the hell it wants.

http://www.webosroundup.com/2010/01/the-...bos-vs-android/

Not sure why this guy thinks that you cant upgrade android devices software (os) with a later updated version ?? check xda developers u douche.

But from palms point of view it maybe a good thing, 1 the dont have to run their own app enviroment, ok it does mean less profit but does open the door to far far more apps than webos has.

It also means a much smaller focused development team writing their version of google than developing an entire os and maintaing it.

If in the coming years the smartphone market does continue to expand further its likely that webos would eventually fall fowl to the big 3.

Blackberry is in the same boat, they make lots of money out of making people pay to access their email through blackberry exchange, which is a completely pointless system as far as i can see, both in the business world and personal world as you can do the same things on other devices without the need of paying blackberry. The appear to continue in this world of brainwashed users who think you must have a crack berry to do email... anyway the point im getting at is they are not likely to jump ship as its a big money spinner forcing people to use blackberry exchange of some flavour. But at some point very soon i feel they are going to start to see their market share start to really shink further and feel the pinch as the next gen of other devices come to the market.

The wild card in this all is windows 7 phone it could be all hype but if its not and microsoft at least re-claw their market share to pre android and iphone times, it doesnt leave much for people like blackberry or palm.

25.3.2010 07:30 #2

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