Former HP/Palm devrel member, Lisa Brewster (@Adora), posted this awesome webOS collection photo on her Twitter yesterday in commemoration of webOS’ 7th birthday. Several things in this photo are eye-catching to say the least! Go ahead…click the picture!
Ok, are you seeing what I’m seeing? Let’s start with the most rare and work from there.
Mako
It’s a little hard to tell and she hasn’t answered me on Twitter yet but that phone looks like the never-released HP Mako.
The Verge and completely NOT by coincidence Lisa’s husband, Dieter Bohn, had the story of The lost secrets of webOS that really outed the Mako for the first time. (Read my take on it).
There’s speculation that no Mako could actually turn on and was a hardware-concept only. This lines up with a conversation I had with former webOS Internals and webOS Ports team lead, Tom King, about an off-site meeting he had with a then HP employee. He showed him a device he’d never seen before that didn’t turn on but was a large phablet-like phone. I showed Tom a picture of the Windsornot and he confirmed that it was completely different from that and bigger.
Windsornot
We’ve seen these before but it’s still cool. There are only a handful that anyone has been able to track down. No surprise that a devrel member would have one. I have to wonder though, does it work? I for one would like to see a short video on its functionality. Wuddaya say, Lisa?
TouchPad Go
Third rarest on the list as far as devices go is the TouchPad Go or “Opal”. It’s tough to say exactly how many Gos were made but they’re still pretty prevalent for parts in China. Everyone on the forums’ favorite Go-provider, Igor (Sumy), recently returned from a trip and saw many parts and devices in a market. Unfortunately, he couldn’t bring them all back but they’re out there! They pop up on China’s eBay equivalent, TaoBao, from time to time.
It’s tough to say how many Gos exist. There’s a thread on the forums about it. In a conversation I had with Igor, he said he’s seen sequential serial numbers before and indicated they range from 0001-4000 or so but it’s anyone’s guess. Some of those units had Android on them too. Yuck. These have been found to also have 16, 32, and 64gb storage with Ericsson (3G) and Sierra (4G) modems in them. Not too shabby since it also packed in a 1.5GHz processor just like the…
White HP TouchPad
You can still find these guys on eBay and Amazon from time to time. Hey, there’s one on Amazon right now! At that price point it’s likely to stay there for a while too. I saw one on eBay about a month ago for about ~$120 Buy It Now. It’s pretty cool cause it’s White, a 1.5GHz processor, and 64 GB storage. It is WiFi only though and only slightly rarer than the…
HP TouchPad 4G
You can still find these too. In fact, I sold all of my TouchPads when I bought my 4G TouchPad. (I still haven’t done that Sierra MC7700 swap yet. I’m too chicken to open it up!) This bad-boy also has a 1.5GHz processor and 32GB storage.
AT&T was to release the “4G” tablet to the world but a certain CEO we don’t speak the name of around here pulled the plug on webOS hardware before they had a chance. At any rate, a bunch ended up finding their way to the masses in the same similar manner as the HP Pre3.
The rest
There are LOTS of cool things in the photo. The Palm stickers, EnyoJS patches, greeting cards, buttons, chocolate, glasses, water bottles, and business cards are all stuff you just don’t see anymore. The last time we saw this type of collection, it was auctioned for a great cause by Lisa’s former devrel associate, Josh Marinacci. Anyone else think she should pick a great cause and have an auction too?!
Thanks for the memories and the post, Mrs. Brewster-Bohn. Oh and mazel tov!
I owe everything I am to webOS. My career. My husband. Having some serious feels rn. #webOS20090606 #neverforget
— Lisa Brewster (@Adora) June 6, 2016
We’re having the feels too. We won’t soon forget either.
#webosforever
