Hi there,
Just got N9 back from a friend (havent actually even really used it yet before).
After i gave it to him i got a Pre3. But boy i was wrong to dont get another N9 i got an impression now.
I actually wanna sell my Pre3 now.
But i was wondering what WebOS can, which MeeGo cant? And vice versa.
I mean like special hacks and stuff.
For example on n900 you can install PwnPhone.
Or Sainfish on n9.
What is there something which could make me keep the Pre3?
ty

What's better on webOS/Pre3:

1) Ability to patch the system to fit your needs. This is one pro among many cons of HTML apps, but it is a nice option. Possibilities are much more limited on Harmattan. I think that SailfishOS takes the best out of these two approaches (QML files are nicely patchable and the patch framework by SfietKonstantin is actually based on the webOS' one).

2) Hardware keyboard.

3) Gestures are nice (not saying better than those on Harmattan, but different) - app stacks and way you swipe off apps to close them are a joy to use.

4) Not sure if you've got a Touchpad, but the interoperability between the phone and the tablet is something the N9 truly misses. It doesn't live to its full potential, but sharing links or photos between devices with a simple touch is nice and very user friendly.

5) Account integration. Syncing Google Contacts/Calendar is a PITA on Harmattan, compared to webOS - their Synergy was quite ahead of any OS.

6) Wireless charging.

What's better on Harmattan/N9:

1) The community an the future-proofness of the device. While in my eyes the N9 is not as future-proof in this way as the N900, it still goes way beyond webOS. This is partly caused by some parts of webOS being closed - for example the Synergy is closed source and while the community tries to patch it every now and then, it will slowly die.
You don't see much development around Harmattan today, but webOS app development has been (unfortunately) conpletely dead for some time.

2) Packaging system - APT is not ideal (worse than Pacman or Zypper IMO), but is way better than IPK. It's hard to find useful packages in the extra repositories on webOS and most of it is very outdated. You can fixed some of it by chrooting Ubuntu, but there are problems with it as well.

3) Reliability. Now this is not for sure - my experience with the N9 was not long and I did not find any issues, but today, in hands of another user, it seems like the most unreliable phone I have seen (losing SMS messages, freezing, restarting, apps crashing, even after few factory resets).
Judging solely from my experience, webOS was less reliable - besides some crashes, it was mostly caused by one missing function - unlike Harmattan, webOS cannot wake up the phone when alarm is supposed to ring. I know that pretty much all modern phones (except Jolla) miss this feature as well, but it was a major drawback for me.

4) Higher quality apps - this is probably caused by webOS' unfortunate choice of HTML based development.

5) System logic - you can find many small features in the N9 that ease user's life, like Nokia used to do in its golden days. webOS seems more ordinary in this regard.


These are just my opinions - I think both devices are quite nice and neither of them is perfect

Thank you very much for your ideas (ill think about different things of them in some coming days to) 501th time

I agree with most of nodevel's points but the Pre3's hardware keyboard is pretty poor when compared to the N900's or N950's. It's not obvious how to type certain special characters from the keyboard and IMHO it's only marginally better than a virtual keyboard.

I'd also like to add a few things about webOS. Note that my experience of webOS is mostly on the TouchPad (webOS 3.0). I've also used the Pre3 just not as extensively as the TouchPad. Most of the points listed below apply to both the Pre3 and TouchPad.


Advantages:

You can do pretty much whatever you want with webOS out of the box as it's not crippled by Aegis.

Gestures are pretty similar but I actually prefer them slightly in webOS as it's faster to close apps from the task manager.

webOS has a better Skype client than Fremantle/Harmattan where the sound frequently distorts such that it becomes usable. Having said that, I strongly recommend that everyone abandons Skype as soon as possible. It's closed, proprietary, monitored, spyware, etc. Microsoft are likely to soon drop support for both webOS, Fremantle and Harmattan as they have already done so for other old Skype clients.


Disadvantages:

Frequent memory leaks in WebAppMgr and other OS critical processes results in "Too many cards" warnings meaning you are forced to reboot the device every few days.

The BrowserServer process frequently maxs out the CPU even when there is no web browser window open. This results in slow performance and rapid battery drain.

Crap web browser which doesn't load pages in the background if you immediately switch to another window.

Rotation sensor (sensord) uses too many CPU cycles resulting in battery drain.

Despite the fact that webOS/libpurple supports XMPP/Jabber out of the box for Facebook and Google accounts, it requires a hack to use another XMPP server.

Other than the bugs I've already mentioned, webOS has far more bugs than either Harmattan or Fremantle. It's pretty awful in that respect.

X11 is not the native display server and runs as an app.

webOS CE (similar to CSSU) is practically a dead project.


To be honest I would recommend Fremantle over both webOS and Harmattan due to CSSU, it has a better, more active community and also has a future with the Neo900. Having said that, I'll eventually be moving to Debian on my N900 and Neo900 too once it's available.

Assuming software could be fixed in time by the community (missing SIP built in or by 3rd part, Software keyboard etc..) at the time I had a Pre 3 the biggest let down was the hardware quality and the only 8GB and 16GB memory options.
Ok there was also this obliged register your device and settings on the HP app server that could not be reset to other local.

From the smell of it during unboxing (I am not kidding) I could tell it was a creation by a generic Chinese hardware manufacturer.
If you deal with Chinese OEM manufacturer you should not let them cut cost corners by allowing using these smelly and sticky coatings.
Different the from Nokia (N9) that just got a generic albeit quality hardware casing.

Lost count of the times (3 -4) I had to send it back to the Palm service point before it finally stopped crashing.
I told them early enough: replace the motherboard but they kept on flashing it and returning it fully tested (of course the problems started to show after prolonged use , say 30 minutes but that was obviously beyond their scope).

My misery finally came to an end when I decided to send a letter to the HP CEO (that lady at the time) and all other "managers" I could find contact details of and the support event got "escalated" and the motherboard replaced.

Once fixed to stable I quickly sold it and a couple of months later I received a phone call from the buyer: did you experience this sudden issue with network reception blah, etc...?
Luckily I had been playing open card about my previous experiences and reason to sell and could ask him to contact Pre support if it still exists

Although the WebOS showed real potential it was another story like the N900 / N9 with a promising software trapped forever by corporate incompetence in hardware that shows its limits way too soon.
All this experimenting because of Nokia declined to put 256MB extra ram in the N900 to make it 10 years future proof. :/

On a final note I found Web OS on the Pre3 only second to Fremantle in terms of interface ergonomics (sorry Jolla)

How could I forget about this one...

This is a major drawback. It has one of the worst web browsers I have dealt with. The UI is alright and can be easily extended by patches (then you can share to Instapaper/Pocket in the menu, switch to Private browsing etc.) which makes it quite powerful, but the engine behind it is just terrible. It fails to download most files (pretty much every time you don't deal with straight links, but php redirection) and the fact that it is the only web browser on webOS makes it even worse.

Sure, you can use a browser in Ubuntu chroot or Firefox for Android on the ACL (only for Touchpad IIRC), but those are just emergency solutions.

I think that if webOS had a decent web browser, it would be quite an appealing system even today. How ironic is it that a web-based OS has such a bad web support.

One big plus for the Pre3 that I forgot to mention is that there's a 4G/LTE option. I'm not sure which frequencies are supported but from what I remember it was aimed at the US market.

Is WebOS dead?

It seems just a few days ago someone at LG was working on a nexus 5 image: github

webOS is no more developed by HP, updates'll never hit Pre3. Even if openwebos is released, it is not to be for these old devices.
And it has no sensible maps which cache, afaik.