It's Not Qualcomm's Fault: Dispelling TouchPad Myths
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on August 19, 2011 6:40 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- HP
- Snapdragon
- OMAP
- Qualcomm
- Smartphones
- touchpad
- Mobile
webOS Needed Work
From the very beginning, webOS needed work in the optimization department. The hardware wasn't at fault, it was the software that always needed tuning, and as we saw with the Pre Plus even throwing more RAM at the problem didn't speed things up enough. We mentioned a number of places where webOS 2.0 still needed work to improve performance and smoothness in the Veer review. First among those really were the criminally long boot times:
"Unfortunately loading times on the Veer are still incredibly long due to some mismanagement of the linux boot process. Unfortunately it appears that WebOS increases the sleep time that apps send to the caller during the boot process from an already crazy 60 seconds to 120 seconds. There's discussion of this on WebOS Internals, but the situation is even worse now, at 120 seconds."
What Palm managed to develop was an excellent UI and front end to an OS, but there's little doubt that the underlying Linux code needed (and still needs) work. Simple tricks like disabling logging and implementing the boot process properly would result in noticeable performance gains. There's little dobut that other similar simple things could dramatically improve performance.
The fact of the matter is that Palm needed a lot of development time to turn webOS into a mature product. The HP of today is trying to turn itself into a fully focused enterprise company and as a result, webOS wasn't going to get the support it needed. An internal source at HP told me that the sales targets for the TouchPad were between the best selling Honeycomb tablets and the iPad. When that didn't happen, HP saw no reason to continue down the webOS hardware path.
As an enterprise company the move makes sense for HP and its shareholders. As consumers, we're disappointed. But the blame doesn't fall on Qualcomm or any chip vendor in the TouchPad, just on HP itself. The TouchPad needed more work, and webOS as a whole needs more work. You can either scale a project out by taking more time to get it done, or you can scale its width by committing more resources to it. The latter (and more efficient development) is what Palm has needed since day one, what HP promised to bring to it, and sadly exactly what it ultimately failed to receive at HP.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
79 Comments
View All Comments
Impulses - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link
I don't see how they're paying any special service to Qualcomm while dispelling myths... I read the article in question and saw other sites parrot it verbatim, Engadget even erroneously claimed the TouchPad had a single core SoC... That kinda blatant rumor mongering and headline grabbing (let's not call it journalism please) may seem obvious to you or me, but a lot of other people would read it and take it as gospel. AT's just trying to set the record straight.NeoteriX - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link
Seriously, what are you talking about?If you've been following AT's discussion on the evolution of the mobile SoC space, you'd know that with each generation of ARM SoC, the performance has been roughly the same, with OMAP, A5, Tegra, and Snapdragon trading blows on different benchmarks and metrics. The kind of "two times" performance gains between a dual core A5 and Snapdragon SoCs are not simply possible from a sole hardware perspective. This isn't about being an improper Qualcomm apologist, but it's clearing the air of misinformation.
z0mb13n3d - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link
Not sure why you think I'm contending what Anand and Brian are saying here.Please read my comment once more. I agree that the article itself is quite factual and explains the scenario very well.
What I'm not so comfortable with is how or why AT felt the need to 'clear the air of misinformation' as you say, when this is definitely not the first time a particular vendor has had fingers pointed at them by random, less than well informed bloggers, for what is basically not their fault.
This should have been more of a Pipeline post than a full-fledged article. I don't remember AT coming out to defend a myriad of other vendors who have been caught in a similarly difficult situations in the past.
bplewis24 - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link
I totally understand where this guy is coming from.I personally don't have any problem with the article itself, but I was shocked to see AT write the article at all. Like the OP, I've seen plenty of misinformation on tons of subjects that AT covers, but I've NEVER seen them write an article to clear the air on any of those subjects. Why this one? Why this time? It's almost like they took is personally.
It's just an odd development IMO.
z0mb13n3d - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
Exactly. The tone of the article seemed more like a knee-jerk reaction to defend Qualcomm than to really prove some already useless report wrong.And just to make sure I wasn't out of my rockers, I did a quick search of AT and realized that there was absolutely no mention at all of the Apple-Samsung fiasco. Surely that would be something a lot more people are interested in knowing more about as it affects two of the major platforms and many major vendors, than how one vendor has been called out for the death of a platform that probably had less than 1% of the market.
Again, hope this article was just a one off. I can always hit up any one of the numerous blogs for product endorsements.
GrizzledYoungMan - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
I think you are incorrect. This isn't an effort to defend Qualcomm, it reads more like an admonishment of HP for neglecting the performance aspect of webOS. Seems like the point of the article isn't that Qualcomm's feelings were hurt, but that HP made a mistake as a hardware manufacturer in not paying attention to software performance.Which is a good thing to remind people of, since the biggest issue with, say, Android, is the actual real world performance, what with bloatware and custom UIs installed by the device maker.
feelingshorter - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
This deserves an article due to the fact that HP is liquidating their TouchPads and a lot of people (including me) was thinking it was the hardware. But infact, it is due to HP not optimizing the hardware. WebOS was reportedly runs 2x faster on the iPad 2 than it does on HP's own hardware. This liquidation is breaking news and has made google news headlines. Why wouldn't it had its own article when he is giving out a ton of technical details that bloggers no nothing about.Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
My apologies if this came off as being something posted to protect Qualcomm, I just thought it was a fitting headline given the horrible misinformation that's been floating around.You're right that it's not the first time folks have made silly claims online, nor will it be the last. This just struck a nerve with a lot of us. It was clear from the start that webOS needed work. Using silly things like Qualcomm as a scapegoat just seemed very wrong. I had some time so I started writing, Brian added his thoughts and we published. Nothing sinister, I promise :)
Pipeline is limited to ultra short pieces, I didn't figure it was a good fit there as we're trying to build that section to just be for ultra short/quick news to augment our in-depth coverage.
Take care,
Anand
B3an - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
I liked seeing this article Anand and have no problem with it. Infact i think that you should start doing these kinds of articles with other similar BS myths and so called "news" thats contently posted around the web and gets lots of attention.Kaboose - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link
Just ordered from HP directly for 90.09 after tax (using code SAVE15HP) for the 16GB model (or code SAVE30HP) for the 32GB model. Used an academic account.