Help Android Apps vs. Palm Pre Apps

[aclark414]

Do not get me wrong - I love the Android, especially the vast amount of apps to choose from. But has anyone noticed how much more vibrant and polished the Palm Pre apps are as opposed to Android apps? Take the weather apps for example (Weather Bug or Weather Channel). They are so much brighter and complex on the Pre. I know the Pre apps are far less in number, but the ones that are there seem much more polished. Am I crazy, or does anyone else notice this?

 

[Adrift]

You just need to find the apps that are polished and worked on heavily, they are out there.

You also have to remember that Android is OPEN development, and anyone can make their own apps and put them on the market. So the vast majority of apps are going to be what some person feels like cooking up themselves, most are also going to be fuctionality over form.

With Palm setting the guidlines and having to give the OK on apps, it is not surprising that there is a high amount of polish on them.

 

[aclark414]

That makes sense, good point.

 

[flu13]

When I got my Moment, my wife got a Pre at the same time. She's jealous of all of the flexibility of Android, so I'll happily sacrifice a bit of polish for more flexibility and 5 times as many apps. I'll admit that at times I'm a bit jealous of the sleeker styling of the Pre, but I'm really digging the Moment so far.

 

[numus]

Remember until recently the android 1.6 and 2.0 SDK were not avalible.. palm pre has been out for some time now... There are a lot of apps that require 1.6+ to run that we do not see in our market (the market place is coded so that only apps that are compatible with teh phone OS version are shown)...

 

[pastafarian]

My wife also has a Pre. It's no doubt that WebOS has a slicker looking UI when compared with Android, but beauty doesn't equal functionality. The very small installed app limit is a problem, the battery life is very rough (compared to the Moment) and though I love the card interface, I don't love the lack of any automatic memory management (too many cards are open). Android doesn't have 5x the apps, it's more like 30x and the gap is growing by the minute. It's true that quality counts over quantity, but the WebOS store has huge holes in its catalog and a dearth of free apps in general. How can you charge for a fart app? And who would pay for one? It's my belief that if Palm doesn't get a massive influx of developers and apps in general into its store ASAP, WebOS will soon die.

 

[steb0ne]

I agree that Android's quality of apps are inferior to that of WebOS. And that WebOS in general is more elegant than Android. But I think the release of 2.0 is changing the game (functionality wise) but appearance wise WebOS is cleaner and a lot more elegant (and its less than 1 year) I have both and I kinda agree with the Palm dude who said, Android is more "techie" than WebOS... I love the abundance of apps, eventho I don't use most of them...and agree the Palm app store is kinda over priced. My guess is these small developers are hungry, but once they notice the sales falling off, prices will drop.

 

[flu13]

Android doesn't have 5x the apps, it's more like 30x and the gap is growing by the minute.

My bad. I had heard it was something like 2000 for the Pre and 10000 for Android, but like you said, I'm sure it's growing constantly.

 

[njbianco]

My bad. I had heard it was something like 2000 for the Pre and 10000 for Android, but like you said, I'm sure it's growing constantly.

you may be thinking of blackberry app world witch is around 2000 apps. Palm Pre there are only around 500 apps in the market i believe it a little less then that actually.

 

[aclark414]

I understand what everyone is saying, and agree. I wouldn't trade my Moment for the Pre I had. Web OS is nice, but the things I didn't like about it, I couldn't change. Different story with the Android OS. I didn't like my email client, so I downloaded a new one. I didn't like my icons, so I changed them. I didn't like that my SMS client was labeled as Handcent, so I changed it to just "SMS". Sooooo customizable. Someone put it perfectly describing the Android platform: when you buy an Android phone, you have a blank slate. From there, you just build what you want. Brilliant!

 

[CriticalCritic]

you may be thinking of blackberry app world witch is around 2000 apps. Palm Pre there are only around 500 apps in the market i believe it a little less then that actually.

I'm pretty sure you are right, I'm positive they haven't reached the 1000 mark yet, and are still struggling to get anywhere close.

But @ aclark414, even if you want to compare the polished WebOS market with the Android market. How many of the Android apps ARE polished?

Look at it this way... If you count the paid apps (even the expensive ones) I'd guess maybe only 1 in 5, or 1 in 10? Or long ball it and say only 1 in 20 are polished for the Android platform (and remember, unlike the Palm apps, the Android apps must work on at least a dozen different devices and OS versions)? That long ball means there's still over 500 polished apps in Android's market. That's comparable to the approx 500 WebOS apps.

IMO the android apps are not less polished than WebOS's. There are at least an equal amount of polished apps. So then take into account the Palm 'homebrew' community vs the rest of the 'less polished' android market (that's a fair comparison right?). The Android market still stomps it by at least 5:1. Sure, the Android market suffers from apps that glitch on certain devices, but you are gonna get what you want before the Palm users do.

 

[astrobill]

I'm pretty sure you are right, I'm positive they haven't reached the 1000 mark yet, and are still struggling to get anywhere close.

But @ aclark414, even if you want to compare the polished WebOS market with the Android market. How many of the Android apps ARE polished?

Look at it this way... If you count the paid apps (even the expensive ones) I'd guess maybe only 1 in 5, or 1 in 10? Or long ball it and say only 1 in 20 are polished for the Android platform (and remember, unlike the Palm apps, the Android apps must work on at least a dozen different devices and OS versions)? That long ball means there's still over 500 polished apps in Android's market. That's comparable to the approx 500 WebOS apps.

IMO the android apps are not less polished than WebOS's. There are at least an equal amount of polished apps. So then take into account the Palm 'homebrew' community vs the rest of the 'less polished' android market (that's a fair comparison right?). The Android market still stomps it by at least 5:1. Sure, the Android market suffers from apps that glitch on certain devices, but you are gonna get what you want before the Palm users do.

I owned a Pre for 29 days, and now the Sprint HTC Hero for five. As someone who's owned both the Pre and an Android phone (Sprint HTC Hero), allow me to make a few points:

1. They're up to 700 apps in the Palm app catalog...so you're wrong about them not being close to 1000. They're very close to 1000 as of today, and the percentage of them that are USEFUL apps is higher than the android market or the iphone app store. They don't have 5,000 fart apps, for example (only 2 I think), or twelve different versions of a Washington DC metro subway map like the Android Market does.

2. The original poster is correct. The Palm Pre apps are FAR more smoother, polished, and well integrated with the WebOS on the phone than anything I've seen on my Sprint HTC Hero. One possible exception is the HTC widgets that came with my Hero, like the weather app. These happen to be pretty slick and well-integrated with Android.

3. Overall, I was more impressed with the well integrated and easy-to-use WebOS on the Pre than with Android/Sense on the HTC Hero. Don't get me wrong....the Hero OS and Android stuff is pretty slick....but WebOS on the Pre is plain better. And the calendar app on the Pre is much better than the one that came with my Hero (which doesn't even offer a weekly view).

4. Multitasking on the Pre is TRUE multitasking. I could easily slide back and forth across all open apps on the Pre, and copy and paste info among them easily. There really ISN'T good multitasking in Android. Some apps continue to run and place an icon on the status bar in Android (e.g., Pandora), others just shut down and then start up again in the same place if you re-launch them. Other apps don't even do that much, and merely start over if you re-launch them. Palm has both Android and iPhone WAAAAY beat in the multitasking area....it's night and day. Let's all just admit it.

5. My Pre was much faster, brighter screen, and FAR LESS LAGGY than the Android Sprint HTC Hero. Just plain better computing power and screen quality.

See my other post on this....I'd go back to the Pre if it weren't for the cracking screen, wobbly two-piece design, silly charger cover door, etc., on the Pre.

Also, the Pre doesn't have a compass, so I couldn't play with augmented reality on the Pre.

- Astro

 

[Adrift]

@astrobill..... once again there is still a reason for this. Open development. Palm doesn't allow it. Palm dictates how, what, when, why of all apps. This is also why the majority of apps are charge based on the WebOS market.

If Google were to do the same, you would see similar devolpment of apps on Android Market. But then gone would be the freedom to develope what ever app a person feels like making. Gone would be the majority of free apps. We would be limited to 2 fart apps instead of the 5,000 we enjoy now.

I'll take open development over dictated devlopment any day.

And as far as multi-tasking goes. It's still multi-tasking . It way be a bit better on Pre, however you can't say it's not multi-tasking.

Plus you are commenting in the Moment forum... about the Pre vs. Hero. Please don't try to start a flame war in a forum for a phone you are not even commenting on. Noone here was saying that there was anything wrong with the WebOS apps.

 

[CriticalCritic]

I owned a Pre for 29 days, and now the Sprint HTC Hero for five. As someone who's owned both the Pre and an Android phone (Sprint HTC Hero), allow me to make a few points:

1. They're up to 700 apps in the Palm app catalog...so you're wrong about them not being close to 1000. They're very close to 1000 as of today, and the percentage of them that are USEFUL apps is higher than the android market or the iphone app store. They don't have 5,000 fart apps, for example (only 2 I think), or twelve different versions of a Washington DC metro subway map like the Android Market does.

2. The original poster is correct. The Palm Pre apps are FAR more smoother, polished, and well integrated with the WebOS on the phone than anything I've seen on my Sprint HTC Hero. One possible exception is the HTC widgets that came with my Hero, like the weather app. These happen to be pretty slick and well-integrated with Android.

3. Overall, I was more impressed with the well integrated and easy-to-use WebOS on the Pre than with Android/Sense on the HTC Hero. Don't get me wrong....the Hero OS and Android stuff is pretty slick....but WebOS on the Pre is plain better. And the calendar app on the Pre is much better than the one that came with my Hero (which doesn't even offer a weekly view).

4. Multitasking on the Pre is TRUE multitasking. I could easily slide back and forth across all open apps on the Pre, and copy and paste info among them easily. There really ISN'T good multitasking in Android. Some apps continue to run and place an icon on the status bar in Android (e.g., Pandora), others just shut down and then start up again in the same place if you re-launch them. Other apps don't even do that much, and merely start over if you re-launch them. Palm has both Android and iPhone WAAAAY beat in the multitasking area....it's night and day. Let's all just admit it.

5. My Pre was much faster, brighter screen, and FAR LESS LAGGY than the Android Sprint HTC Hero. Just plain better computing power and screen quality.

See my other post on this....I'd go back to the Pre if it weren't for the cracking screen, wobbly two-piece design, silly charger cover door, etc., on the Pre.

Also, the Pre doesn't have a compass, so I couldn't play with augmented reality on the Pre.

- Astro

1) I stopped checking about two weeks before I was eligible for my upgrade (mid-Oct), good to hear they are starting to accept apps from devs. 700 is great, but still far from a grand (remember I was using 1/20 as a "long ball" estimate). Remember that Android is at 10 grand. which is far superior to if PalmOS combined with its 'homebrew' community.

2) Remember, Polished for the Pre vs Polished for Android. Sadly they are two different scales of what is considered "fully polished" for their appropriate OS. But I agree, PalmOS certainly has superiority in visual quality, and therefore the appearance of superior app polishing (for its own platform).

3) Yeah, Palm has had over a decade to perfect the calendar. Their stock app is better at it (until the Android 3rd party market is allowed to make up the difference).

4) Hold down your 'Home' button on the Moment for 1 sec, it opens up a menu of the previous 6 apps. Its not the same as re-launching a previously used app. They do not shut down and start up again as you have stated. They will pick up where they left off or even loaded up in the background if switched to something else... same as WebOS. Android is easily equal to the Pre in multitasking, but I will admit that the UI is not as pretty as the WebOS 'card' interface.

5) This is a discussion about the Sprint/Samsung MOMENT vs the Pre. The Moment is faster and less laggy than the Pre. Plain, Simple, Straight Forward. The Moment has the Pre beat on ALL aspects of hardware. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Yes the Pre is prettier. The OS looks great and the Apps are stringently checked and re-checked for compatibility with WebOS. But the open development and feedback of the Android free market vs Palm's socialized controlled app system is unequivocal. Android wins hands down, otherwise... why would you have switched?

 

[dbpaddler]

Open development is nice, but there are times I'd easily sacrifice it for a little smoothness and polish. Personally, I could care less about the openness if the product is constantly being updated, and the quality of the apps is high, and they fit my needs. Not everyone is going to take the time to roam the app market and just keep downloading this that or the other thing. If the Pre had better hardware, I might have toughed it out a bit longer.

One thing you do get when you have more control is more timely updates and fixes, especially from a company that's behind the 8 ball. Would be nice to see them license the OS out to another mfg. Maybe they'll make a better phone that's worthy of the OS.

I'd also think about that faster comment. Maybe if you have a ton of cards open, but otherwise it's gotten a little zippier. Not to mention there's quite a few market programs that lag and sputter quite a bit on my Android phone. So you have to take into account 3rd party programs as well as the native ones.

 

[PiggyGirl]

IMO, despite the lack of apps, WebOS is better than Android, but only slightly. On the other hand, the Moment is vastly superior to the Pre, IMO. I'm hopeful that Palm will build a better 2nd gen device, but until then, I will enjoy my Moment, but if Android keeps steadily improving, I'll reconsider.

As for apps, right now I have discovered (and grown to rely on) a lot of great apps that aren't on WebOS, yet. Hopefully they will be by this time next yeat.

 

[agent0014]

700 is almost 1k? That's debatable lol.

Also, looks like the Market is definitely way over the 10k mark:

Washington Post | Google: Actually, We Count Only 16,000...

looks like it's somewhere between 16,000 and 20,001+

 

[astrobill]

700 is almost 1k? That's debatable lol.

Also, looks like the Market is definitely way over the 10k mark:

Washington Post | Google: Actually, We Count Only 16,000...

looks like it's somewhere between 16,000 and 20,001+

My point was that the guy above said Palm was"nowhere near" 1000 apps in their App Catalog, and claimed they are struggling to get there. Untrue on both counts...they've shot up from 0 to 700 in a few months, and the pace has been ACCELERATING....they're not struggling, they're speeding up. Also, one could argue that the "Homebrew" apps for Palm WebOS on precentral.net are better tested than half the cr*p in the Android Market. So add another 500 or so there, and you're up to 1300 Palm WebOS apps and growing. Most of the Homebrew apps eventually seem to get promoted into the offiical App Catalog anyway. Finally, there's an app that allows the Pre to use many of the old PalmOS apps, so add a good chunk of those in as well. So there! LOL

And by the way, the Palm App Catalog isn't even officially fully open yet!

My other point was basically that we ALL know that most of the "apps" in both the Android Market and the Apple App Store are total bunk....of the 50-80,000 apps in the Apple store, what percentage are actually useful??

Seriously....you and I BOTH know that once you remove the 50,217 Android or Apple dancing baby or fart apps, and then take out the apps that are basically just people's personal lists of trivia questions, sound effects, or light saber graphics, you're down to VERY few apps that are downloaded a significiant amount or even used. We all know this to be true....nobody seriously argues that looking at the sheer number of apps is important. It's the quality, utility, and maintenance of the apps that counts...and we ALL know it.

As far as the other points of comparison between the Pre and the HTC Hero, I stand by everything I said. I'm one of the few people commenting here who has seriously owned both phones for myself and used them. And it sounds like most folks AGREE with me about the superiority of WebOS in some ways....

....Again, if only the Pre were built more solidly, the darn screen wasn't crack-prone, and the battery and charger door cover silliness weren't there. I'd go back.

Also, the redhead in the Pre commercials is sort of cute. I buy products based on the attractiveness of the females in their advertisements....doesn't everyone?

- Astro

 

[agent0014]

Also, the redhead in the Pre commercials is sort of cute. I buy products based on the attractiveness of the females in their advertisements....doesn't everyone?

- Astro

Ha I definitely don't, and... sort of cute? Maybe I'm not the best judge, but I think she's downright creepy. I had every intention of getting a Pre originally (couldn't get Sprint to renew my contract early) but those commercials made me shiver and want the phone less lol. Her skin is the same color as her hair which is the same color as the field she's standing in... which I always imagined she sprouted from, when I saw those on TV, haha.

As for the topic that's really at hand, I have nothing intelligent to add besides the numbers in my previous post. While I was all set to get a pre... since then I've definitely been charmed by Android, both by what it is and what it has the potential to be... which to me is more than webOS. My disclaimer is that is much more of a subjective opinion than an objective one though.

 

[aclark414]

I previously used the Pre, but now have the Moment. Each day (even since I started this thread) I find out how great Android really is. Of course many of the apps are useless. But the fact that they are so easily designed, built, released, changed, and updated - along with the fact that I can arrange them any way I like on my desktop - is just awesome. I still stand by my original statement that Palm apps seem more polished. But I can't have widgets on my Pre. I can't change the icons, or even shuffel them around (well, I guess you sort of can with the cards). I love having all of my text/phone type apps on my middle screen, all of my applications on the right screen, and all of my news/sports widgets on the left screen. Definitely cannot organize apps like that on the Pre.

 

[dbpaddler]

I thought this was pretty cool. Wonder if the Pre and Android would be able to access them. And it makes the iPhone a little more "open".

Developers defecting from App store to HTML5

There's offline caching of the program so the web browser can load it without an internet connection. Kind of cool. Figure as long as the browser supports it, it should be good to go. Could be a plus for the Pre since web language is its basis.

 

[numus]

I thought this was pretty cool. Wonder if the Pre and Android would be able to access them. And it makes the iPhone a little more "open".

Developers defecting from App store to HTML5

There's offline caching of the program so the web browser can load it without an internet connection. Kind of cool. Figure as long as the browser supports it, it should be good to go. Could be a plus for the Pre since web language is its basis.

How is that different then app backup (or installation) via the sdcard and a program similiar to ASTRO File Manager that can install apk files without requiring internet connection?

 

[dbpaddler]

Don't believe I was making a comparison to what Android can do. And programming isn't my forte so I don't know. Was more so just showing something cool that would help the Pre and the non jailbroken iphone users.

And the only difference I can see in my layman's eyes are things could be written for the iphone that aren't written for Android so it doesn't matter how it could be saved, opened or what not if they don't make it for Android. That's all I got

How is that different then app backup (or installation) via the sdcard and a program similiar to ASTRO File Manager that can install apk files without requiring internet connection?

 

[numus]

Don't believe I was making a comparison to what Android can do. And programming isn't my forte so I don't know. Was more so just showing something cool that would help the Pre and the non jailbroken iphone users.

And the only difference I can see in my layman's eyes are things could be written for the iphone that aren't written for Android so it doesn't matter how it could be saved, opened or what not if they don't make it for Android. That's all I got

Sorry didn't mean that as an attack or negative.. just was wondering how the concept differed from current android...

As a side note, this would not be beneficial for non iphone users at all ... apple has made their stance very clear (if you have an iphone (nonjail broken) you can not install anything that we don't allow you to install.. and it must all come from teh app store)... This is why apple can tout their "most apps in app store" title.. because there is no other avenue to proceed to get an app except their app store (unlike blackberry, palm, android and winmo that all allow you to install apps from the web instead of just the appstore)

 

[dbpaddler]

Don't think I took it as really negative. just rattling off a bunch of different things so it came off a little short probably in my haste.

this is the one nice thing about the html5 way. there is no installation on the phone. It's all web based with part of the app being cached in the browser for offline use or at least startup which would also ease data congestion which AT&T should appreciate. It completely circumvents the app store and install and takes control away from Apple. So for other phones, if the browser can support the app, it should work, I would think. Seems like if it's embraced, the apps could be more universal and cross platform.