HP open sources Enyo framework, makes webOS-style apps possible for iPhone, iPad

HP has made good on [releasing a roadmap for their webOS open source initiative] and, as part of it, have fully open sourced the Enyo 2.0 application framework. But what does all this mean for the iMore crowd? In the short term it means you’ll be seeing at least a few webOS apps made available in the App Store and in your browser. In the longer term it means you’re likely to see a day where webOS is compiled to run on other hardware, though if that’s possible with Apple’s locked-down designs is another question entirely.

We’ll tackle the apps thing first. At its core Enyo is based on web tech like everything webOS (whereas the iOS framework is based around Objective-C). Going open source means that developers who have written in Enyo can compile their apps to be loaded in a browser or on webapp-supporting operating systems like iOS and Android with little issue. In fact, it’s already happening – multiple webOS Enyo apps are available through WebKit-based web browsers — like Safari — and at least one, an Instapaper client called Paper Mache, is available now in the Android Market. Of course, there’s some tweaking that’ll have to be done to make things nice and smooth, but apps like Paper Mache look and behave (minus the lag and jitter) exactly as they do on webOS.

The second major announcement was that HP is dumping their custom kernel and coopting the standard Linux kernel for use in Open webOS. This is the basic principle behind Android’s kernel by making the switch webOS will gain support for a wide breadth of hardware. Where there’s Cyanogen for the Android Open Source Project we certainly expect the same to happen with webOS. The question is… will anybody want to install it?

Sprint iPhone 4S review: Unlimited, kind of, sort of

That, above, is a Sprint iPhone 4S. Physically, it’s the exact same iPhone 4S you can get on Verizon. Or AT&T. Or Rogers, O2, KDDI, Vodacom, or any other carrier that sells the iPhone 4S anywhere in the world. Apple makes one iPhone 4S (okay, technically six, when you include the storage variations and colors). But this one runs on Sprint. There’s no user-facing software difference – it’s an iPhone 4S inside and out.

So here we are, three months after the biggest network load freight train in history smacked into Sprint’s network. CEO Dan Hesse was begging for it. Literally, he really wanted the iPhone. After the long-term sales disappointment that was the Palm Pre (rest in peace, shiny webOS pebble) and the failure of the Android-powered HTC Evo 4G to really take the market by storm, Sprint found themselves really needing the iPhone, and publicly proclaiming such.

With three months of more-and-more users switching to the iPhone on Sprint (including myself, I know at least seven webOS, BlackBerry, and Android users on Sprint that picked up a Sprint iPhone), it’s time to check in and see just how well the pin drop network is holding up. And the answer is… quiet well.

Unlimited data and Apple’s no bloatware policy make for calm, clean experience.	Sprint’s network isn’t as fast as AT&T or as expansive as Verizon.
The iPhone 4S is the best smartphone on Sprint. The iPhone 4S on Sprint is for people who want to be on Sprint. And as I want to be on Sprint, it’s the iPhone for me.

I’ve been on Sprint since 2004, and in seven years I’ve owned five-and-a-half phones on America’s perpetually third-place cellular carrier. The last phone-and-a-half before the iPhone (a Palm Pre and a hacked-together Sprint Pre 2 (there’s the half phone)) were on Sprint’s EVDO Rev. A 3G network, the same network used by the iPhone 4S. And the experience has been largely the same as far as that network is concerned.

Coverage

The iPhone on Sprint does just as well as any other Sprint smartphone as far as coverage is concerned – I can’t say I’ve noticed it picking up a signal any better in fringe-coverage areas than my trust old Pre did, nor has it performed more poorly. Pretty much right on the mark wherever my Pre failed the iPhone fails as well. That said, those failures were pretty rare. Sprint’s done a commendable job of expanding its network footprint, and nine times out of ten, if Sprint isn’t available, you can roam onto Verizon 3G without hiccup. As a caveat: I live in Ohio, and the Midwest is “Sprint Country” – the Ohio/Indiana/Illinois/Michigan area is one of Sprint’s strongest (along with Sprint home state Kansas).

Sprint 3G coverage: Orange is good

Call quality

Call quality is adequate, in that callers will be able to understand what you’re saying and you’ll be able to understand them. It’s not for broadcasting concertos to a remote audience, and as CDMA calls are routed over Sprint’s 1xRTT (2G) network, it never will be.

International roaming

Well, there’s one hiccup – the Sprint iPhone is carrier-locked internationally. Sort of. You can purchase an expensive international data pack and Micro SIM through Sprint for your international travels, or if your Sprint customer service rep is feeling particularly nice, they can unlock the iPhone’s SIM slot so you can just buy a prepaid card for your trip overseas.

Data speed

Speed-wise, the iPhone does seem to manage the Sprint network better than my previous Sprint smartphones, albeit marginally so. Does the iPhone get a stronger signal than other Sprint smartphones or is it just better at optimizing what it pumps through the datapipes? Hard to say, but the user experience is that it does its thing faster. The speeds are roughly comparable to Verizon’s 3G service (though roaming onto Verizon isn’t that speedy). Download speeds over 3G rarely cracked over 1.5mpbs, which is right around average for a Sprint smartphone. Yes, that’s rather pathetic compared to the HSPA+ service available on GSM carriers, which itself performs as-well-as if not better than Sprint’s ill-fated WiMAX network. There’s a reason Sprint’s going full steam ahead with LTE.

Bloatware free

The Sprint iPhone doesn’t hold an edge over AT&T or Verizon when it comes to speed or network coverage, respectively, and thanks to Apple’s no bloatware policy, it doesn’t bring any of Sprint’s gratis services like Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation, Sprint Music, or Sprint Anything Else. That’s a good thing, in that the phone isn’t loaded down with unwanted and undeletable apps like so many Android devices, but it’s also a bad thing in that these apps are not available in the App Store either. Will Sprint make them available for Sprint iPhone users? Only time will tell, but it’s been three months already and they’re not there.

Unlimited data

Sprint has one signature advantage over AT&T and Verizon. It’s something that the other carriers, with all their coverage and speeds can’t match. Or rather, something they won’t match. It’s unlimited data. Not “unlimited but really 5GB”, not “unlimited but throttled.” Just plain unlimited. With your Sprint iPhone you can download as much as you want. Well, as long as you’re doing it on the phone – like the other carriers, tethering requires an addition; $30-a-month tethering/hotspot plan and is limited to 5GB in a month. To be honest, 99% of users would struggle to break 2GB of use in a month, let alone 5GB.

Sprint’s advertising for the iPhone has focused almost exclusively on this unlimited aspect, because really that and the plan pricing are Sprint’s only true selling points. Every carrier at this point offers some form of unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling (a feature first implemented by Sprint), and with the exception of business and grandparents, most of your calling is going to be done to landlines. So who is the Sprint iPhone for? Sprint and Sprint customers. Just as customers didn’t flee en masse to Verizon or AT&T for the iPhone, they aren’t going to switch to Sprint for the iPhone.

Should you buy your iPhone 4S on Sprint?

It all comes down to our perpetual advise for smartphone buyers: pick your carrier first. Coverage where you live/work/play and how much you’re willing to pay for that service, by far the most expensive part of purchasing a phone on contract, should be the first decisions you make. It doesn’t matter if the iPhone or whatever other phone you’re looking for isn’t on the best carrier for your situation if you can’t use it. With the iPhone now on Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon, that makes the decision even easier.

• With AT&T you get spotty but improving coverage but fantastic speeds so long as you stick close to urban centers.
• With Verizon you get a generally reliable network with fantastic coverage and so-so speeds that you’ll pay out the nose for and still have to deal with Big Red’s meddling ways.
• With Sprint you get good coverage, underdog status, so-so speeds, unlimited usage, and cheaper prices.

Conclusion

There you have it – the iPhone 4S on Sprint. Sprint’s smartphone selection hasn’t been great recently, with the Samsung Galaxy S II, Epic 4G Touch (yes, the name has a comma) serving as the closest competition to the iPhone 4S. We might be a bit biased here, but it’s safe to say the iPhone 4S is the best smartphone on Sprint. It’s certainly going to be a sales king for the Overland Park, Kanasa-based network. The iPhone 4S on Sprint is for people who want to be on Sprint. And as I want to be on Sprint, it’s the iPhone for me.

OnStar’s RemoteLink App slings remote directions to your car, keeps tabs on fuel

When Chevy finally launched the Volt plug-in hybrid electric car, they also kicked out an app with in-car communications and monitoring subsidiary OnStar to integrate owners’ mobile phones with the vehicle. Similar to the MyFord Mobile app that Ford put out to integrate with their own Focus Electric, OnStar RemoteLink being shown off at CES 2012 hooks into the OnStar system onboard the vehicle, allowing the owner to remotely monitor the fuel levels, and in the case of the Volt, also check in on how the battery is charging, plus set off-peak charging schedule. RemoteLink also can plan routing on the phone and send it remotely to the car, saving you time the time of generally tedious address inputting when in the car.

The OnStar App is available for iPhone and Android phones and is compatible with most 2010-and-newer GM vehicles with OnStar.

• Free – App Store link

Ford talks Focus Electric and it’s deep integration with iPhone

Ford talks Focus Electric and it’s deep integration with iPhone

Ford’s Sync system has been leading the way as far as in-car mobile technology is concerned. With the upcoming launch of the Focus Electric, Ford is leaping into the mobile space with a new app that allows owners to manage their vehicle remotely. While it won’t let you drive (sorry James Bond wannabes), the MyFord Mobile app they’re showing off at CES 2012 enables Focus Electric owners to manage how and when their cars charge at home, allowing you to set it so the car charges at night off peak hours with lower electric rates or override it to get your car charged up for an impending trip. MyFord Mobile users will also be able to find charging stations out and about and even plan trips around those charging stations (useful, given the 100 mile range of the all-electric vehicle).

The app, which will be available for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones is launching with the Focus Electric, which itself is ramping up production right now.

Special edition Mobile Nations podcast tonight at 9PM Eastern

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this special announcement: Mobile Nations podcast is broadcasting live tonight at 9PM. There’s a lot for us to talk about between HP dumping webOS hardware to Google gobbling up Motorola, and we can’t sit on our hands anymore. So we’re broadcasting live tonight at 9PM Eastern (6PM Pacific, 1AM UTC).

Mobile Nations brings together the heads of the SPE communities, with at the very least Rene Ritchie of TiPb, Kevin of CrackBerry, Phil of Android Central, Dan of WPcentral, and – of course – Derek of PreCentral (plus maybe a few others). There’s going to be a lot to talk about, and things will be kicking off at 9PM Eastern, so be there. It’s going to be amazing. There might be tears.

Join us here, or at MobileNations.com.

Guest Editorial: Forget about innovation

After letting the initial dust Apple kicked towards HTC settle, my iPhone-toting compatriot Rene (I think you guys know him or something) and I had a discussion about the patent lawsuit and Apple in general. It was kicked off by this video dug up by the fine chaps at Gizmodo, and it made me realize, at least from my perspective atop my pile of defective Palm Pre phones, that Apple has changed as a company over the past year. Now before you go thinking that I’m so Apple-hating bozo from Cincinnati, be warned that I do like Apple products: I’ve been using and loving a MacBook Pro of one variety or another for the last six years, upgrade to the next version of OS X the day it’s available, and own both an Airport Extreme and an Apple TV. But I’m worried that Apple’s recent successes may be leading to a dark place. And that place is the land where innovation is forgotten.

Apple’s attack on HTC underscores two things for me. One: user interface patents are silly. It’s like patenting the chair and saying nobody else can make chairs and they’ll have to figure out different ways for people to sit. And no, couches and benches aren’t cool, they’re just big chairs. Two: Apple seems to have forgotten how to innovate and sees lawsuits as the only way to protect their business model.

It seems mighty silly to me to think that Apple is worried about HTC knocking off the iPhone as king of the smartphone hill. The iPhone is still relatively fresh (two and a half years on market) and the smartphone market itself is rapidly expanding. As Palm CEO Job Rubinstein says: there’s plenty of room for several large players. And I think I’d like it that way. Not just so Palm can stay around, but because having several large players ensures that there are multiple parties spurring innovation in each other and that the failing of one doesn’t result in the complete and utter dominance of the only other platform. In this case, the smartphone market is more like the automobile industry and less like the Windows-Mac duopoly that is desktop computing.

Either way, my fear is that Apple is instead going to rely on these sort of lawsuits as a way to maintain their fledgling dominance of the smartphone market. But it’s only going to result in really bad PR for Apple. The only claims that they can make are claims in principle that HTC is violating their patents, while HTC can argue in principle that those patents are a silly thing anyway. Apple certainly can’t argue that HTC’s alleged patent violations are cutting into Apple’s ridiculous profit margin – the people that buy Android or Windows phones aren’t the type that are out to buy an iPhone anyway, and it’s not like there’s a person on the planet that hasn’t heard of the iPhone.

But as I think of it, this whole lawsuit feels indicative of a new mindset at Apple. It’s been a large, but unnoticed, shift in the way they do business. Apple has move away from being the underdog innovator to being a defensive maintainer. Look back at the products Apple has unveiled in the past year and tell me what’s truly innovative:

• 3rd gen iPod Shuffle? We moved the controls to the earbuds just because. It doesn’t make any sense, but we’ll do it anyway.

• iPhone 3GS? Make it faster and give it more memory. Pack it all into the same package as before and let’s call it a day. Wait, no, let’s call it the 3GS – it’s much more hip that way.

• iPhone OS 3.0? MMS and tethering! And a whole tone of new APIs for unexplored niche products, just because we can. The iPhone user experience? No need to change that. It works, and it can’t possibly be made better.

• New MacBook Pros? We’re going to revolutionize the laptop computer by adding, wait for it, SD card readers! Yeah, that’s awesome and totally unlike anything anybody’s ever done before. We even did a study to see if that’s what people wanted. What they don’t want is Blu-ray or HDMI. Those are bags ‘o hurt, I say. People want iTunes.

• New iMac? Make it bigger and use a better screen. Also, a screen this big doesn’t need Blu-ray either. It’s far too good for that. Use iTunes instead; who even wants the option of 1080p video off a disc? Pfft.

• Magic Mouse? Okay, I’ll give Apple this one, adding multi-touch gestures to the mouse is a really different move. But if the mouse is the only cool thing you’ve done…

• iPad? It’s magical, it’s amazing, it’s beautiful, it’s a giant iPod Touch and fails to provide and real innovation above and beyond what you can already do on an iPhone and evel loses several features, it’s the iPad! (the tech media goes wild, soils themselves, and then thinks about how silly and underwhelming the whole thing is when they’ve got new pants).

Don’t get me wrong, I still love my MBP (ExpressCard slot and all) and OS X. But Apple’s competitors are threatening to out-innovate Apple at every turn. Android 2.0 (with HTC’s help) and Palm webOS have far outpaced the iPhone OS user experience, so much so that the only thing the iPhone has going for it is all the apps and iTunes (which itself in need of something more than major innovation). Windows Phone 7 Series has turned my idea of how a mobile OS should work completely on its head, and honestly, Windows 7 ain’t that bad. I no longer dread booting up Parallels.

Now, we may very well be in a lull when it comes to Apple’s innovative progress, but these are the kind of lulls that can kill a company. Technological development is moving faster than ever and the multi-year lulls that struck Palm circa 2006 and Apple circa 1994 are the kind of lulls that can kill a company today. The market has changed so dramatically that even with arguably the most innovative mobile OS out there Palm is struggling to recover from a few years of uninspired products.

This new defensive, offensive, and numbers-touting (look at how many apps we have!) Apple worries me. Apple’s innovations have kicked the industry in the head multiple times before, but now it looks like the tables have been turned.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and be blown out of the water by iPhone OS 4.0 and OS X 10.7. But the bitter pill that the iPad, and now this lawsuit, have left me with has me concerned for Apple’s foresight. Maybe they’ve gotten too big and lost touch with what made Apple the success that it is today. But in the end, getting all defensive and trying to sue their way out of a problem is only going to hurt Apple and the industry as a whole.

Derek Kessler is editor of TiPb’s sibling site, PreCentral.net.

Guest Editorial: Forget about innovation is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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