One day after Hewlett-Packard announced that it will be suspending the production of webOS-based phones and tablets, news has surfaced that members the webOS team itself had misgivings about the TouchPad hardware on which it was running.
The promising mobile operating system is said to have run twice as fast when loaded onto Apple’s iPad 2 tablet compared to when it was running on the TouchPad hardware on which it was sold to consumers, according to The Next Web. WebOS reportedly ran considerably better in the iPad’s Web browser than it did natively on the TouchPad.
In our own review of the TouchPad last month, we found the hardware to be clunky and not as well-suited to the impressive WebOS operating system as it could have been. And we apparently weren’t the only ones.
The TouchPad devices, which have not sold very well, were apparently maligned by some members of the webOS team who “wanted them gone,” according to the report. The potential of the OS itself was allegedly hampered by the limitations of the hardware, which limited the degree to which the team could innovate.
“In its current implementation and form factor, webOS is not delivering as stellar a performance as we would have liked,” wrote Sarah Perez in her review last month. “The hardware is heavy and dated, especially in comparison with the iPad 2, the app ecosystem isn’t large enough and the browser not functional enough to serve as a Web app platform.”
Retailers like Best Buy reportedly have had a very hard time selling the TouchPad, which has been repeatedly discounted. Any speculation about what may come of the tablet in the future ground to a halt this week when HP announced they were getting out of the mobile hardware business all together.
