Hasta La Gadget!

Another day, another major blow to the webOS community. The Open webOS project announced today in its blog that the fledgling OS won’t support any of the existing hardware — like HP’s Pre 3 and TouchPad. While not completely surprising, this is disappointing for those who were hoping to wring a little more life out of their current webOS devices. Open webOS is targeting SoCs that support the Linux 3.3+ kernel and components with open source drivers. The blog post blames the existing hardware’s “many proprietary components, including graphics, networking and lack of drivers for a modern kernel”. Despite having access to these proprietary drivers, it appears HP isn’t willing to make them available to the Open webOS project — proof that sometimes you can have your cake, but not eat it too.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Software

No Open WebOS support for existing WebOS devices, no soup for you originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 21:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s hard not to still feel the pain over the demise of webOS, although maybe you can take comfort in the fact that HP was working until the very end on new devices. webOS Nation has unearthed a video from design company Transparent House that shows a webOS device without a portrait QWERTY keyboard. Both Palm and HP’s webOS devices offered portrait QWERTY keyboards, but it looks like a full touch experience was being working on behind the scenes.

The phone is condemned WindsorNot, showing a design that’s not too far off the HP Pre 3 or the Veer. webOS Nations notes that the back is flat, and would most likely have been constructed from glass. A microUSB port, volume, power, and ringer switch are also found on the device. The screen is said to be around 3.6-inches, and the home button looks to be physical like on the HP TouchPad.

Most notably, it would have been the first webOS device to work purely with an onscreen keyboard, although the details about how HP would implement that aren’t clear. The video showing off the WindsorKnot has been pulled from Vimeo by Transparent House, but you can check out the pictures above for a taste of what could have been.

[via Engadget]

HP WindsorNot webOS phone ditched physical keyboard is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Well, it looks like there’s still a few surprises left from HP’s brief foray into webOS hardware. As webOS Nation has discovered, the design firm Transparent House posted a brief clip of a device described as “WindsorNot” some eight months ago, which is very clearly a touchscreen-only webOS smartphone. As the site notes, that appears to be the very same device that had previously turned up in leaked photos under the codename “Stingray,” and it estimates that the phone has the same 3.6-inch screen as the Pre 3. Details are scarce beyond that, but you can get a good look at what might have been in the video after the break — not to mention yet another look at the unreleased TouchPad Go (a.k.a. Opal) on Transparent House’s Vimeo page linked below.

Update: Looks like this one is remaining elusive. The video has now unfortunately been pulled.

Update 2: We’ve removed the still from the video at the request of Transparent House. The image above is the previously leaked photo of the device.

Continue reading Design firm’s video offers a glimpse of the touchscreen webOS phone that never was

Design firm’s video offers a glimpse of the touchscreen webOS phone that never was originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Jul 2012 12:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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