Enyo support to be present in webOS 2.2 on the HP Pre3 83
Fri, 29 Jul 2011 3:23 pm EDT 
Ask any webOS 3.0 developer and they'll tell you that despite its many good qualities (sliding panels, web view, modular coding, etc), Enyo still has some rough edges. But it works well on the HP TouchPad. When the TouchPad was announced back in February, HP also announced the Veer and Pre3 smartphones, with the latter due to support Enyo in addition to phone-sized Mojo apps. The other day HP started accepting apps for the Pre3, but failed to mention Enyo, much to our disappointment.
Now we know why. As HP noted when accepting app submissions, they planned to push out an updated Pre3 emulator this week. According to reports coming out of the Early Access Program, the webOS 2.2 emulator was made available last night, and it has support for Enyo. That Enyo support is for version 1.0, which comes with the same rough edges as Enyo 1.0 on the TouchPad. Additionally, there are some other kinks to work out. Namely, the absence of high-resolution graphical assets for Enyo on the Pre3. See, the Pre3 has a pixel density of 260ppi, while the TouchPad's significantly larger screen clocks in at just about half that at 132ppi. The Pre3, however, upscales by a factor of 1.5x, which means some Enyo user interface items (like the sliding panel grab handles) will be all sorts of fuzzy on the phone. They could do 2x scaling, but then the UI items would be massive on the phone's smaller screen.
Then there's that whole part where there are not yet any Enyo phone app design guidelines and the difficulties with cramming an app designed for the phone onto the tablet. In short, you can do Enyo on the Pre3, but it won't be perfect. HP hasn't started accepting Enyo app submissions for the Pre3, but plans to in the next few weeks. They’re also working on full Enyo support for the Pre3 and other webOS smartphones (likely just the Veer and Pre 2), but that will come at a later date.
Thanks anonymous!
83 Comments
Try to complain about platform fragmentation now, haters.
True that. You can run TouchPad-optimized apps that'll look fuzzy on a Pre 3. The vast majority of WebOS phones for the foreseeable future will be stuck on 1.4.5.
There will be at least three different resolution targets for developers to hit, and as Derek notes, UI elements will kinda suck on at least one of the devices.
Is Armageddon Squadron II here yet?
If HP had told us this earlier, many of the discussions would have been a LOT calmer. It would NOT have been so horrible for HP to make a statement about Enyo and the Pre 3 a month ago, would it?
As HP already said, they're still figuring this end user PR stuff out.
EXACTLY! I think that a lot of anger comes from all the delays etc., but if HP were more vocal and announced what was coming, where and when, people would know what to expect instead of just waiting and getting frustrated. Why is it so hard to give some updates on the phone you announced 6 months ago and then just left people hanging?!?
The thing about that is, they need to be more vocal and announce what's coming TRUTHFULLY.
If they keep saying they're going to do something they have no intention of doing ("We won't release a product until it's perfect....even though we've been working on bug fixes for four months and haven't solved them yet") or pulling numbers out of their posterior ("We expect to have apps in the tens of thousands"), then it only makes things worse.
in my opinion these people working at hp's gbu really dont have a clue of whats going on. they go to these interviews and start talking out of their a$$ without knowing whats really going on or what its really going to take to accomplish what they are saying they are going to do. also they really need to learn how to develop and manufacture products 200% faster than what they are doing now. they are already playing catch up as it is (i dont even see them on the map on the mobile phone front) and they still cant get a release date for a phone that is suppose to compete with iphone4 release almost a year ago. they need to get it together now!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree, having the phone and tablet apps be totally incompatible would be a death sentence for WebOS, no sane developer would develop separate Mojo/Enyo apps for such a tiny user base. Being able to reach users of the touchpad, pre 3, veer and possibly the pre 2 using Enyo, developers may consider coming back to the platform. They should've made it clear long ago that this would be the case.
Now if HP is smart and releases a slab and horizontal slider phone within the next year, the platform may actually survive.
Are you a developer? If so, I'd love to hear how "You can do it but it won't be perfect" translates to no fragmentation.
If not, then why are you talking about something you know nothing about?
While news on the Pre 3 is exiting, it would be kind of cool if they would get patches for the Veer (that is out right now) fixed up.
LOL, all HP news is "exiting".
In fact, there is a line to get out.
When is the pre3 coming out PLSSS?
like!
Pre 3 will launch about 4 weeks before iPhone 5.
At this rate it's more then likely 4 weeks after the Iphone5 Launch.
wait it will be released on the day they announce pre-4.
No, they'll just announce the Pre 3 4G on the day the Pre 3 is releasd, with 1.7GHz processor bump.
I can't imagine why so many of you are thinking the Pre3 and the iPhone 5 are for the same market.
So the new Ford F150 will come out next month but it'll be DOA because the Chevy Camaro is faster, more iconic AND has a smaller physical volume while being not much more expensive.
See what I did there?
The Pre3 is a different kind of phone entirely. Compare it to hardware keyboard phones of roughly the same screen size and we're talking. Compare it to a completely different beast, and instead of debating which cat is the prettiest when visiting a cat breeder's show, you'll argue that it doesn't matter since dogs are clearly superior to cats in every way.
I think it's great that HP is ready and willing to break out of the usual cycle of everybody doing the same thing and instead release something different like the Pre3 and Veer with their vertical sliders and, in the latter case, microscopic measurements, and I think it's great that instead of rushing to do everything at the same time and stumbling over its own legs, HP is putting one foot in front of the next in very regular two-month intervals.
People always claim HP's webOS division is too slow to keep up with the industry. What other manufacturer releases more than a new device every other month on average? And keep in mind that the Pre3 would be right on time for that two-month pace if it was released in late August / early September.
So in which year will H/P release a competitor for iPhone-5? If it doesnt release a competitor for Iphone-5 it will never get more than 5% of market share and thats an exaggeration. I thought pre-3 was supposed to compete w IPhone-5.
To that I say (like I've said all along) if you want an iPhone, get it. It's not like it's only available in another country. Go to an AT&T or Verizon and buy it.
I want webOS to continue to improve but I don't care if it's an "iPhone killer" because I don't care much for the iPhone (or more accurately, Apple). As of right now I'm very satisfied in the direction HP is taking webOS. I love the TouchPad. Can it be better? Absolutely, but it's not as if it's unusable right now.
When the Pre3 is released I will leave Sprint and buy it. And while all the haters are whining how it doesn't do "this" or "that" or it's "not as good as blah blah blah" I'll be gesturing and card swiping and multitasking like a mo-fo lathered up to my ears in Synergy greatness.
"When the Pre3 is released I will leave Sprint and buy it. And while all the haters are whining how it doesn't do "this" or "that" or it's "not as good as blah blah blah" I'll be gesturing and card swiping and multitasking like a mo-fo lathered up to my ears in Synergy greatness."
So would the people moving on to other platforms. Multitasking card switching functionality will be in both WP7 Mango and Ice Cream Sandwich on Android phones - both arriving in the next few months.
Funny thing is, all of the things you tout are true of the same Pre- from over two years ago too. Same apps, even.
There's the problem. Think of how far Windows Mobile or Android has come in two years. Even iOS. They're moving at incredible speeds on both the hardware and software fronts. HP is not.
Abosolutely, I've made this point several times since Feb 9. This warm fuzzy glowing greatness has been here for two years. Where'd everybody go? (echo)
Touch To Share is not a game changer. If it was, we'd have it now, not in coming months.
Mango huh? There's still phones that don't have NoDo out there.No solid date from Microsoft,huh? Explain why you've given them the hall pass to the Window Phone users who are waiting for their upgrades.
If Ice Cream Sandwich is as smooth as Honeycomb was when it was released,HP has little to worry about.ah, how quickly folks forget. Just look at those reports about Honeycomb 3.0 articles on ZDNET...memories, memories.
AFAIK, the only holdup is Samsung who shipped multiple versions of firmware with the Focus. Otherwise, every Windows Phone device has NoDo, several have gotten additional maintenance releases and they will all get Mango.
Did the first generation Palm devices ever make it to 1.5?
Funny that you slander Honeycomb devices. They keep individually outselling TouchPad, and collectively, it's not even close. Just look at Amazon's bestselling tablets list. Touchpad's been on the market for a month now with waaaay more advertising than any competitor - iPad included. Yet, it just keeps lagging.
"Touchpad's been on the market for a month now with waaaay more advertising than any competitor - iPad included."
Uh, no. That's not even close to being correct. I still see half a dozen commercials a day for the iPad. The TouchPad? If I see one every couple of days I'm impressed.
There's more advertising than TV commercials, but if we're speaking anecdotally, then I see the exact reverse of what you've seen: non-stop Touchpad commercials, especially the Lea Michele one, and a few instances of the new iPad 2 commercial.
Apple is selling every one they can make already. HP....well, anyway....Who do you think is doing more TV buys? Who's "featured" in more store circulars? Who's running more specials and doing more print and radio adverts? HP is.
NoDo was supposed to released in December on every Windows Phone. You explained Samsung's situation but omitted the other vendors who didn't release phones with different firmware. The delays for everyone else was related to the cell phone carriers. Kind of reminds me of the update Palm intended to release to provide Flash to the Pre. The mysterious 1.5 update you alluded to. I know you think Sprint is the victim here, no need to restate your case. I think I've made mine clear.
Slander? Between you and few other regulars here, what I've said was rather tame.I was merely pointing out another take from someone who gets paid to cover all sorts of technology. There's comment section beneath the article : http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/android-tablets-motorola-xoom-returned-... Speaking of ZDNet, take a look at this post:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/hp-touchpad-still-better-than-honeycomb/3524?tag=mantle_skin;content
You can lead the witchhunt with your torches and pitchforks over there if it'll make you feel better.
How is a phone with a hardware keyboard ever going to compete with a phone without one? The two aren't in direct competition with one another, even if it may seem that way.
A station wagon and a convertible, for instance, are not directly competing with one another even though people in the market for a car clearly have the choice of whether to buy one or the other, and even though people clearly buy more station wagons than convertibles, this doesn't mean that station wagons as a class compete with convertibles as a class, or that any one station wagon is in direct competition with any one convertible.
In smartphones, slab phones are currently much more popular than anything else, granted. But even so, there *is* a market beyond them, and just because a station wagon and a convertible are sold right next to each other doesn't mean everybody will automatically pick the station wagon - even though statistically, more people definitely would. And it CERTAINLY doesn't mean car companies should stop building convertibles because they're just DOA anyway and won't ever sell as many units as a good big spacy station wagon will.
As for the slab phone you desire so much, you're absolutely right in asking when HP will release one - I have no idea. Hopefully the next batch of devices to be announced will include one because the majority of the market is definitely into slabs.
But the fact that HP does not currently produce a competitor in the slab phone market, however tragic, does not magically make the Pre3 a contender in that market.
You and HP keep believing there is a market beyond slab phones. If there was, care to explain the failure of the BB Torch? How about the relative lack of new portrait sliders since the Torch?
If HP really wanted to make a slider, they would've made a landscape slider. Even then, the best landscape slider out there, the HTC Arrive, doesn't have the sales numbers to write home about. But it will steal the market from the Pre 3 anyway, because people don't want portrait sliders.
"You and HP keep believing there is a market beyond slab phones"
.
Can you explain me then the success of the Motorola Droid in the US or the success of the BB Curve 8520 in Latin America ?
It's not about physical keyboards or virtual keyboards, It's about the most powerful smart phone in the eyes of consumers. If the Pre3 was a performance powerhouse with many apps, it would have the perception as a worthy competitor to the iPhone, but it will not get that kind of buzz because it falls short on hardware and apps.
Imagine a Slab with WebOS which has specs that surpass any phone on the market. WebOS flies, and even though there's a shortage of apps the OS and Hardware are inspiring. This scenario leaves reviewers with only one thing to complain about (apps), more importantly, they will gush about the phones potential. If HP keeps releasing hardware that meets requirements, they are asking for continued bad press, which will always overlook the more important unique features of WebOS.
why don't you all get it. this is not a smartphone-war, this is a "who has the best ECOSYSTEM COMPETITION"!
"And keep in mind that the Pre3 would be right on time for that two-month pace if it was released in late August / early September. "
HTC, Samsung, Vizio, Motorola, Asus...
Between November and April, HP released nothing (but promises).
Between November and April, HP released A HUGE NUMBER OF PCS AND PRINTERS AND SERVERS AND NETWORK SOLUTIONS. Meanwhile they were busy integrating a company they had just acquired in a billion-dollar buyout which resulted in a February announcement of the *first** products to spring from that buyout to be released in summer. We're currently well on schedule.
Well, so did other companies, but they also managed to put out a lot more wireless devices with wireless o/s supporting them. What happened to HP? And the devices the other companies released were cutting edge, market definers. Not outdated, underperforming, incomplete, unpopular devices.
Lol, ALL devices released by anyone except HP were "cutting edge, market definers", eh? Or only maybe one or two out of every dozen or two to be released? Or just trollin'? ;) But nevermind, you would never.
Instead of having software of their own - like Apple did with MacOS - all of these companies you're listing decided on getting a ready-made OS for free (which is how it got popular: by being free for all of these companies to take) and become OEMs for it - like HP and Dell and all the others did with Windows.
Meanwhile, what happened to HP? They're doing both software and hardware, and now they're going to release a very competitive business phone. Who releases outdated, underperforming, incomplete, unpopular hardware? That sounds like the Motorola Xoom to me. The Pre3 will have one of the fastest single-core CPUs on the market and everybody who has ever held one says it's really quick, so I really don't know what you're talking about.
Meh, the market has spoken. Bring on another 3G phone that doesn't edit documents. The Amish need new handsets.
(I expect nothing less than two dozen down ranks if I am truly wrong about this, GET ON IT)
nah...the webOS faithful won't vote you down. But I see the 6 (7 if you didn't vote yourself up) vocal regular trolls still on their merry rampage.
Thank you for chiming in JAFO, here, go eat this cookie, the adults are talking.
Android isn't free as it appears on phones, and the Pre 3 isn't a competitive business phone yet.
At the time of release, high end phones from all those different manufacturers were close in specs, between the CPU and RAM. Now, the real issue here is that HP announced a product that really was ahead of the pack back in February, but now, will it be seen as a top end phone, or a mid-range phone?
I understand the difficulties in the OS, but guess what, they could have released the Pre 3 with WebOS 2.1 MONTHS ago, before the Touchpad, it may not have had TTS ready, but the Touchpad wasn't out...and 1.4GHz for the CPU would have made it a cutting edge device. It would have sold well due to specs and screen size. So, why make the Touchpad the device to release when the phone would have outsold the tablet 10 to 1?
They released the Veer with 2.1.2, why not the Pre 3? Heck, it's been a month since the Touchpad was launched and STILL no TTS with the Veer.
Has fanboy written all over it. You're blind to what everyone else is doing. At this point, the Pre 3 will not be a "very competitive" phone. Heck, it might not even be a "mildly competitive" phone. In fact, right now it is just vaporware without a release date.
What happend to HP? They're doing software very poorly (Veer shipped with all the bugs of the Pre 2 and STILL has no updates, and the promised release of the Touchpad update by the end of the month is late as usual), and they're doing hardware very poorly (lost the opportunity to market the Pre 2, made the Touchpad unattractive compared to the iPad and Galaxy Tab 10.1, and the Veer... lol).
Too bad everyone's doing dual-core now. Fastest single-core CPU means nothing. People buy dual-core 2GHz computers, instead of 3.0GHz P4's.
So I really don't know what you're talking about.
The Veer is a fantastic phone. Just sayin'.
Look, we're on the same team here, I really want HP to succeed. I'm expressing genuine concern about HP's execution. HP needs to start living up to its commitments.
Like it or not, iPhone sets the benchmark for mobile phone value comparisons and functionality. I'm merely pointing out that HP's Pre3 will launch in the shadow of the most anticipated mobile phone in the world, a phone that one-third of consumers have said they want to buy sight unseen. Another highly anticipated phone, Samsung's Galaxy, has sold nearly 7 million units and hasn't even launched in the US yet. Microsoft has shipped Windows Phone Mango to manufacturers, so Nokia and others will be coming to market with a variety of form factors supporting that platform. If every one of these players is taking share from the keyboard player RIM, what's HP's plan.
HP's plan is the same as it has been for month: focus on the tablets and do nothing with phones. Veer and Pre3 are forgettable compared with everyone else. And that's the kind of effort HP has put into those phones. They don't care about phones.
The sad part is that their tablet is forgettable as well not to mention flawed with cracking. And as you say, that's where the focus has been.
And the really sad part is they're moving all their attention to getting WebOS ready to be on all laptops in 2012, so expect updates on Touchpads to be terribly infrequent.
Sorry, but your analogy is more delusional than anything else. The Pre 3 and iPhone 5 are both "smartphones". Comparing a "pickup truck" and a "sports car" is utterly pointless.
If you can answer me this question honestly you will see the fallacy in your analogy: "What are users going to do similarly and differently on the two devices?"
The same: Email, surf, tweet, play games, listen to music, send texts, yada, yada, yada....
Differently: umm, umm, ya I couldn't think of anything either except you can edit documents on an iPhone.
I think he was referring to the physical keyboard/slider vs slab aspect of the devices. More of the HOW they complete the tasks not the tasks themselves if that makes sense.
regardless of the physical keyboard or digital they are both still smartphones. a better comparison would be a mustang convertible and a camaro. they are both in the same vehicle class.....
What was all that hoopla about a single app for phone and tablet.Looks like it wont happen. Your app would scale just fine, eh not so.
What? Read it again.
A single app WILL run on phone and tablet alike, but currently Enyo only ships with asset images like back buttons etc designed for the TouchPad's pixel density.
And since these images aren't vector images they lose detail when they get scaled up as they need to be in order to have the correct size on the Pre3's smaller-but-denser screen.
And since they need to be scaled by a wonky factor of 1.5 instead of, say, a nice 2.0, the result is ugly.
That IS a problem.
However, all that HP needs to do to fix this problem is provide higher-resolution versions of these images. I can assure you that any 60x60 pixel element you see in webOS now started life as a 600x600 original if not in fact as a vector image and saving the image set in a different resolution, say 90x90 instead of 60x60 is a triviality.
Enyo IS coming to phones despite what naysayers have been preaching in the past, and one app WILL fit all. They just need to change one system folder full of little button icons in order for everything to work perfectly on a phone which is only going to be released in a month or so.
The hoopla is still on :)
I am a developer and would hate to have to "scale" the app. That would make for a very crappy experience.
I don't mind making two different interfaces because the phone UI needs to be alot different than a tablet - in both looks and function. Also I can reuse existing logic without having 2 bilion lines of code.
What HP really needs to do is make Ares for Enyo. Typing the whole UI takes 10x more times than a visual editor.
And it's really mind-boggling why they have not yet released Ares for Enyo, when supposedly Enyo was inspired by Ares.
What HP is trying to do with WebOS isn't easy. Google and apple haven't unified their tablet and phone OS, have they? Before slamming HP , we should try to see what the competitors have done or not done.
Well, their phone OSes were wildly successful and well-established before putting out tablets.
HP/Palm's is not.
Now the final piece of the puzzle is to update the Pre2 and Veer to webOS 2.2, which is well possible as long as HP bother to do it.
I'm willing to bet money that the Veer will get webOS 2.2, and 2.3 whenever that actually gets released.
I'm *almost* willing to bet money that the Pre2 will not get anything, but that's just a hunch.
Everything under the Pre2 won't get jack. I'll eat my hat if the Pre+ gets updated to 2.2.
If you didn't get webOS 2.0 on your Pre+ why would you get 2.2?
Because I got webOS 2.1 on my Pre+.
I understand that it's a rarity, but some carriers actually relay official software updates provided by hardware manufacturers to their customers instead of forcing them to buy a new phone.
But yeah, 2.1 is as far as it'll go. Having seen ios4 on an iphone 3GS (and webOS 2.0 on a Pre-) maybe HP is actually doing well not to release every software update to every hardware that could theoretically somehow run it.
With 2.1 available for the Pre Plus, it SHOULD be possible to get it to 2.2, so the Pre 2 MIGHT get it...we will have to see. If the Pre 2 gets it, then the dev community should be able to come up with scripts similar to the WebOS 2.1 meta-doctor methods.
Thank Godshapedhole. You are really dropping some dollars and sense to the regular naysayers that want hp and webOS to fail. The PRE3 really is unique and in a class of its own. IPhone sized screen and a portrait keyboard and a true multitasking OS to boot. This will be my next phone. So ill be selling this nexus s 4g. For a pre3 that will play nice with my TouchPad. Go ahead haters. Try and tell me apple and and android is what I want. I've used them all and webOS fits what I need.
Nah, it's just that you guys still have faith in HP, where everyone else already sees them for who they are: either liars or just incompetent.
You forgot one, OR BOTH!
I hope WebOS is ready for real retail in about a year, as right now there are so many "rough edges" it just can't be taken too seriously.
I'd encourage you guys who are concerned with this whole enyo vs mojo debate and how it can work with phones to check out some of the youtube videos (search palm enyo) from the developers conferences. There is some very good information specifically on how enyo is designed from the ground up to work really well on phones and with full gesture support. As GodShapedHole has touched on, really all that needs to be done is some of the control images resized for each resolution used. Also touched on is how Enyo is already hardware accelerated. I had no idea.
It's javascript. Javascript works everywhere. There's no mystery there.
The mystery is when HP will allow it.
with each passing day how relevant is the Pre3 remaining?
People were justifiably calling the Pre 3 DOA when it was first announced...
i didn't mean when it was first announced, which was Feb 9th, or about 172 days ago.
It may not be relevant at this point. It still may be. The Veer hasn't really blown anyone away, so we'll see.
Some here can run their mouths about how you can't compare the Pre all day long. It doesn't mean anything at the end of the day if enough paying customers don't give a rats **** about the device or the ecosystem.
There is a reason there is an "explosion" of iPhone-like slabs. It works. People want it. If it turns out that people dont want a candybar slider, then you can forget about WebOS or Pre seeing 2013 or beyond.
Yes - Dont hold it against Pre that its not an iPhone or an Evo or a clone of another device, we should definitely see it for how unique it is. However, if HP cant sell that to customers (or if they just dont care), then dont blind yourself to the real possibility that you will be using a Android/iOS or WP7 based device years from now (if you aren't already - and are just watching WebOS from afar).
This find is a good sign - if Enyo is already proven to work on the Pre 3, thats a sign that its not far off, and to me as a developer, lets me know that I can start experimenting with Enyo smartphone apps (even more so if you already have Enyo development experience with the TP). If HP can bring together the development experience on the phones and tablets, then they'll have a chance at really attracting developers to the OS.
Customers, on the other hand...is a different story....
Agreed, in terms of hardware they need an iphone and Motorola Droid clone for the platform to survive.
Presumably they've filled in whatever missing bit of code causes my enyo test app to barf errors to log (and not respond correctly) on my pre+ (webos2.1) when it realizes there's a physical keyboard and then tries to toggle a framework setting that doesn't seem to exist?
Enyo isn't in 2.1. Thats probably the reason it "barfs errors".
I copied the Enyo framework from the SDK into the app itself and set the app to load the framework from there. It works fine in the touchpad emulator, in Chrome on the desktop, and in-browser on Android. I suspect there are some hooks in Enyo to libraries IN WebOS that must load conditionaly depending on the platform detected. So when it runs on the last two mentioned, it probably doesn't even try initialize those linkages, and on WebOS 3, it obviously finds what its expecting,but under 2.1 it sees WebOS so it tries, but doesn't get what its expecting.
Yawn - release date please.
I love all the people coming out complaining about the "haters". Fanboys...
And they're all over at the webOS Roundup forums.
Heh....right now, all HP and WebOS needs are "haters".
The ones who are here, and the ones who own post-Palm devices, are the early adopters. We need to give as much constructive criticism about WebOS, hardware design, build quality, support, etc, as we can before this ecosystem starts making a mass attempt at pushing into the average consumers hands.
Some here might think the "haters" are being harsh. Just wait until the average customer gets involved. They wont care, they wont stick around for the **** ups and have "faith", or wait "in the coming months". They'll chuck the thing and get an iPad.
I'm just a satisfied user . . .
dont tell....just bring it.
Waiting on the Pre3 is like "Waiting for Godot."
"We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it.."
This stuff better work on the pre2, otherwise it was a wasted purchase of a phone.