Palm: webOS speed fix in the 'immediate future'

Palm device owners have little to complain about when it comes to webOS; not after enduring Garnet and empty Access promises for so long. Still, that OS which relies so heavily upon web technologies like HTML 5, JavaScript, and CSS can be surprisingly sluggish when compared to other smartphone OSes. Now we have a hint as to why thanks to Palm's Ben Galbraith and Dion Almae who made an interesting admission Tuesday related to the Pre's UI latency compared to the iPhone 3GS -- a phone based on the same ARM architecture. According to the duo, "the path to the GPU didn't exist" in webOS, something that will be solved in the "immediate future" using CSS transforms to modify visual elements thus freeing-up CPU cycles for other tasks. Hmm, immediate future sure sounds like a webOS update to accompany the Palm Pixi release on November 15th.

[Via Everything Pre]

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 4th 2009 8:51AM]

I believe you guys may have the quote wrong:

http://www.everythingpre.com/blog/palm-webos-update-will-address-speed-of-ui/2009/11/03/
"On ease of use, multitasking has been great; UI latency is still an issue even though the hardware is comparable to 3GS. The problem is the path to the GPU didn’t exist, but now with CSS transforms, that will be solved in the immediate future."

I read that as, the path to the GPU doesn't exist (or it may now), but in the short-term, they plan to use CSS Transforms to speed things up. Which MAY point to even more speed increases (and of course more graphical games) in the future when they actually start using the GPU

[edwardjpalmer Posted Nov 4th 2009 10:27AM]

Ok, so admittedly, I would be pleased if they sped up the Calendar app...BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CAN WE GET SOME WMA SUPPORT PLEASE??? I can't stream Sirius/XM or even half the internet stations out there because Palm won't license it. Droppin' the ball, Palm.