“Palm was ahead of its time in trying to build a phone software platform using Web technology, and we just weren’t able to execute such an ambitious and breakthrough design,” said Paul Mercer, former senior director of software at Palm, who oversaw the interface design of WebOS and recruited crucial members of the team. “Perhaps it never could have been executed because the technology wasn’t there yet.”

WebOS was tested on an iPad 2, Brian says. The results? It performed beautifully–more than two times as fast as the TouchPad, and running WebOS through Safari on the iPad 2 produced similar results.

If this is true it means HP’s crappy hardware killed the platform, and not the OS itself. That just floors me.

Why is this? Brian claims that his sources told him that HP had the WebOS team build the TouchPad on 2-year old hardware. Considering we’ve heard rumors and rumors of rumors on HP’s tablet plans for that long, it makes sense. But why after these tests would the company still release a sub-par product?

That’s certainly a question for the ages. Perhaps it was to save face: the company could never seem to follow through with its tablet aspirations. Or perhaps it was to assure investors that it was at least planning to do something with the technology it had acquired through the Palm buyout.

HP’s lack of hardware capabilities hampered the device, says Brian, because the WebOS team then decided to limit functionality.

John Gruber over at Daring Fireball is skeptical of the whole report, and HP’s capability to run WebOS on an iPad. I’d like to remind him that Android has already been running on the iPhone for some time and on the iPad too, thanks to the folks at OpenBoot. Thus running WebOS on the device would probably take some of the same finagling.

Regardless of how HP did it, if the reporting is true it just goes to show you how misguided some of these manufacturers are when attempting to compete in the tablet market. Instead of ensuring what they’re releasing is a solid product, companies are instead rushing out substandard products.

No wonder we’re going to see a glut of tablet deals come Black Friday. The sad thing is some poor sap is going to buy this junk, and have a bad tablet experience which hurts the entire sector in general.

Kind of frustrating, don’t you think?

Those of us who think that WebOS is one of the best mobile operating systems in the business are looking forward to the WebOS event HP is holding on Wednesday, the first big bash it’s thrown since it acquired Palm last year. The company has pre-announced that it’ll announce something related to WebOS tablets, and there could be more news. (I’m still waiting for a handset that looks a bit like an iPhone but runs WebOS.)

The event is happening at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, and kicks off at 10am PT; I’ll be there and am looking forward to liveblogging the proceedings at technologizer.com/webos. Come hang out with me, won’t you?

The bad news is that it looks like rumors that HP would unveil its WebOS tablet (possibly called the PalmPad) at CES were wrong. The good news is that the company has scheduled a WebOS press event in San Francisco for February 9th at 10am–and it seems like a very good bet that the tablet will make its debut there. (It presumably sent out the invites today to inoculate itself against anyone being disappointed if CES comes and goes with no WebOS news.)

I’ll be at the event and will provide live coverage–more details as we get closer.

I queried a few of our Last Gadget Standing judges and they’ve got no shortage of opinion on which phones should be in the running for the award we’ll hand out at CES next January.

Some voiced concern about the Nokia N8 being an oddity.  Yeah, well, it’s an oddity with a 12 MP camera (with Zeiss lens) and HD video recording.  Those video watchers amongst us will be intrigued by the form factor; those who are dubious about Symbian less so.

Laptop Magazine’s Avram Piltch, already an admirer of Verizon’s Droid line, is waiting to get his hands on the Droid Pro. It may be the perfect blend of business and pleasure. Piltch is also betting on Android screens that hold up to the Apple Retina on the iPhone 4.  Joanna Stern of Engadget says that she’s a Blackberry fangirl and thinks that RIM’s Torch–currently one of the state of the art slider keyboard contenders–merits consideration.

Steve Wildstrom gave a nod to Samsung’s Galaxy S phones, available under various names on every major carrier.  I have to agree that they have sex appeal.  Everyone can agree that the HTC EVO 4G’s screen real estate is lust-worthy, too.  A few raised the Palm Pre flag, mostly out of curiosity to see what HP has planned.  Any tips?

And you?  Which new or upcoming phones would you pick as the hottest of the bunch? Your nominations could help us find our CES winner.

Today, HP announced the first WebOS phone to emerge since the company bought Palm. It’s the Pre 2, shipping this week in France and at an unspecified future date in the US. It looks like–well, like the Pre only better, with more modern specs (such as a 1-GHz CPU) and a meaty-sounding software update in WebOS 2.0. If it’s all it’s cracked up to be, it sounds like a phone that Palm Pre lovers will love even more.

Except…

It seems obvious that HP’s challenge with the WebOS platform isn’t keeping existing customers happy; it’s building phones that large numbers of people want to buy instead of iPhones, Androids, BlackBerries, Windows Phone 7 handsets, and other choices. I like the Pre’s smalllish case and slide-out keyboard personally, but I wonder if the market hasn’t already voted decisively against that basic design. (Palm tried hard to market the Pre to women, but daintiness seems not to have been a sufficient selling point.) With phone screens getting bigger and bigger–hello, Droid X–I’d think that HP would want to give WebOS a try on a hardware design that’s in tune with industry trends. I imagine it’ll do so, and the only question is when.

When I heard about the Palm Pre announcement, my impulsive reaction was “Darn, I guess this means no radically new Palm phone for the holidays.” Then it dawned on me: There’s no reason why HP couldn’t do both the Pre 2 and a more significantly new phone at more or less the same time. And here’s a Pollyannish thought: Maybe the fact that HP is sneaking the Pre 2 out with a press release means that it’s saving up its promotional firepower for a smartphone unveiling that’s a bigger deal in the not-too-distant future. I hope so.

As the name suggests, the Palm Pre 2 doesn’t deviate much from the original. Instead, it modernizes the hardware — there’s a 1 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and an unspecified bump in battery life — and refines the design, with a flatter screen and what looks like a matted finish to reduce cracks in the plastic. And of course, WebOS 2.0 will be on board. Think of it as the Droid 2 to Motorola’s original Droid.

It’s tempting to look at the leaked Palm Pre 2 evidence and wonder what HP and Palm are thinking. When HP announced its plan to acquire Palm, it seemed giddy about getting WebOS, but didn’t mention the Pre at all. All signs pointed to some kind of smartphone reboot, not a rehash of the same hardware models that bombed commercially.

But updating the Palm Pre to reach parity with other smartphones doesn’t preclude HP and Palm from being more ambitious at the same time. A slab-like phone codenamed “Mansion” is reportedly in the works, and we know nothing about HP and Palm’s strategies for pricing, marketing and wireless carrier deals.

Certainly, HP is in a deep hole with Palm phones. The App Catalog is tiny and brand awareness is lousy. Maybe the solution lies in releasing a lot of solid smartphones to a lot of carriers, and the Pre 2 is just the beginning. We’ll see.