The Pre has a single button on the front — the ‘Center button.’ Hitting this button takes you into ‘Card View,’ which allows you to swipe left and right between your open cards and then tap on one to enter it. It’s very quick and works rather well.
You can also hold your finger down on a card and then drag it left or right to reposition it next to another card, i.e. placing an email draft next to the web page you’re researching.
Finally, within Card View you can simply swipe up on any card to get rid of it — to essentially close the app. There are no save or close dialog boxes in webOS. Everything is saved automatically.
What I’m working towards saying here is that webOS has the single most intuitive multitasking setup I’ve ever used on a smartphone (and I’ve used nearly all of them). It’s not enough for a smartphone to simply multitask (although it’s enough for it to beat the iPhone in that department), a smartphone today needs to multitask in a way that’s easy to understand to all users.
With Card View, webOS has in one fell swoop made multitasking intuitive and understandable to any user after only a couple of minutes of use. You can tell immediately what apps you have open, choose which apps to close, and navigate between apps quickly and easily. If you have to many cards open, the Pre simply pops up an alert letting you know you need to close some before you continue.
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Sat, Oct 24, 2009
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