HP Pre, Pixi variants too slow for webOS 2

HP in the aftermath of its webOS event on Wednesday said it had scrapped plans to bring its webOS 2 update to older phones with a promise of some consolations. The Pre, Pre Plus, Pixi and Pixi Plus were all deemed too slow to run the major revision. Mobile division head Jon Rubinstein told Engadget that the company had "missed a product cycle" in the fiscal crisis that eventually led to the HP buyout.

In return, HP would still have "something special" for the earliest adopters of webOS hardware, the executive said. The possibilities are uncertain but could include a stopgap upgrade that gives the Pre and Pixi some of the software features of the Pre3 and Veer or a less expensive upgrade path to one of the contemporary phones.

The new OS, already up to 2.1, adds deeper multitasking, Just Type search and a number of other features that increase the demand on the devices. Most of the earliest webOS phones used 500MHz or 600MHz processors where the Pre2 uses a 1GHz chip; they also used 256MB of RAM to the Pre2's 512MB. The Veer uses an 800MHz Snapdragon, and the Pre3 uses a future 1.4GHz version of the same chip.

By Electronista Staff