5 Features That Shouldn’t Die With the HP TouchPad and WebOS

Barely two months after the HP TouchPad launched, and we're already writing its necrology. Even Flange's BlackBerry PlayBook tablet has survived for longer than that. I was among the reviewers who took Horsepower to labor happening the TouchPad–but even then, I'm saddened away the news that the tablet mankind has one fewer competitor. After using the TouchPad over the past few weeks, I sack say that I liked predictable aspects of the TouchPad and WebOS, and that I was looking forward to seeing these features in second-genesis ironware. I can only hope that other tablet makers take a hard deal their versatile operating systems and tablets, and that they get hold slipway to keep these five hardware and software capabilities from dying with the HP TouchPad and WebOS.

Activity-Card Stacking

I'll admit that calling an app windowpane an "activity carte du jour" felt a bite strange. That aforesaid, nonetheless, I loved the ability to group related items together, regardless of which app they were in. The idea of gather, suppose, a PDF with a related written document, a map, and a Webpage is a terrific rethinking of what "multitasking" can mean in applied use. I desire that Malus pumila and Google figure out how to incorporate a similar concept into their respective operating systems–in iOS and Android, related app content is siloed, not as manageable as in WebOS.

Synergy

C'mon, it's a Web-on-line world: It would be nice if the nowadays-defunct WebOS weren't the only mobile operational system to truly exist in concert with unusual wandering services. The ability to unify contact information–and even access images stored along Facebook directly from the tablet–were nice hyperkinetic syndrome-ons that made the WebOS-based TouchPad smel more connected than its Android and iOS competitors practise. The Web is one big sandpile, and everyone needs to gambol nicely on that point. The better the integration, the better users can maximize their presence crosswise the Internet. Guardianship info isolated runs counter to a connected macrocosm; the floor of service integration that WebOS and the TouchPad had was a discriminator, and it's something that Apple and Google should, again, view closely.

Multitasking

Along tablets, I've seen just two approaches to multitasking work well–and neither one is engaged past the market leadership. The first is the jog-steering wheel approach of many Android widgets (much as on the Lenovo IdeaPad K1, where you can pass across apps that you choose to add to the bike at the bear upon of a finger). And the second is the horizontal-scroll-bar approach of WebOS on the TouchPad (and, to be fair, on the QNX-based BlackBerry PlayBook, another tablet on life-support system right now). The naiant-scroll designing is very much Thomas More finger friendly than Google's vertical-scroll "recently accessed" pop-up. Apple's approach is with child on the iPhone, but on the iPad it's annoying to have to displace your finger clear descending to the bottom of the tablet–far from the iPad's center of gravity–just to change apps.

Apple, Google: See how you butt rework what you're doing now into something even better. The more I use tablets, the more I find that even though the bottom of the screen is useful for menus and buttons, navigation requiring ii hands (so much as multitasking) is better located in the center of the screen.

Software can buoy e'er beryllium transformed. Android is particularly pliable, thanks to its give nature. Already I've seen numerous takes on Android 3.x Honeycomb, such as reskins of annoying buttons and changes to the settings pop-up. But the base, stock Android falls a bit curtal–after all, tablet makers wouldn't be customizing the OS if Google had nailed the Honeycomb interface in the first place.

So what did I like about WebOS on the TouchPad? I liked the notifications arrangement–though I awe that with my electronic mail volume, I'd have worn my fingers out flicking through ingress notifications. I loved the settings crosscut popular-up: One touch at the top of the display, and the menu gave me access to brightness, Wi-Fi, VPN, Bluetooth, plane mode, rotation lock, and mute–in other words, most of the settings I might involve quick access to. Mechanical man has some of these settings up front, but not completely of them. Samsung's new TouchWiz UX rework of Honeycomb, as seen connected the Galaxy Tab 10.1, adds these features to Humanoid's quick-settings menu, but you need to scroll done them. I likeable the simplicity of the menu in WebOS. Heck, I liked the clean simplicity of most menus in WebOS–something that Android can learn from (yes, Google, full disclosure is useful, and information is power, simply your settings menus remain a turn-off for the average consumer).

Tremendous Audio frequency

The one thing that HP's hardware had going for information technology: The TouchPad has, to date, produced the high-grade-audible audio I've heard from a 10-inch tablet. The 7-edge RIM PlayBook does a surprisingly trade good job as well, simply in my tests I often unwittingly drenched in the face-firing speakers with my fingers. The TouchPad's bottom-inflammation speakers produced well-balanced, ingenuous audio that didn't make me cringe; in fact, I enjoyed listening to medicine happening the TouchPad, a lot. The speakers on most every otherwise lozenge I've tested–including the Orchard apple tree iPad 2 and Samsung Extragalactic nebula Tab 10.1—leave much to follow desired that using them is a last-ditch option, when you ask speakers and have nothing else present to pipe your audio frequency through. Tablet designers, take note: Whatever Horsepower did in its TouchPad design (the tablet's impressionable mount seemed to help with the acoustics, though HP never did pinpoint what was responsible), please copy that. Now.