And I almost thought we’d missed 2013’s Christmas miracle! Yes, it’s a little bit late, but the webOS TV from LG, the most anticipated product of CES 2014 and a true Christmas miracle, has materialised thanks to Twitter tech-snoop @evleaks.
Despite promises of a Card interface, the leaked image shows more of a horizontal-grid of apps rather than active applications. The current application, which is Live TV, does show a preview of the app running, however other applications, which may or may not be running, are simply icons in the stack.
In more positive news, the UI has been cleaned up and, unlike other LG products, actually sports a clean and even, dare we say it, pretty GUI. With sharp lines and a fairly clutter-free style, it’s refreshing and nice to see that LG didn’t just copy-pasta the previous style of webOS, which would look dated in 2014.
The screenshot gives few other details, apart from the availability of YouTube, Facebook, Skype, AccuWeather and Twitter, however whether these are native apps or links to the also featured web-browser is yet to be seen. Also seen is what could be a notification icon in the top right-hand corner of the display, possibly delivering the promise of a connected TV. Who knows, this could just offer TV reminders, but it does help the hope for native webOS apps being built for the TV, rather than desktop-friendly ‘web-apps’.
So far rumours have pointed to a 2.2Ghz dual-core processor and 1.5GB of RAM. As well as the inclusion of apps based on the webOS Enyo framework, so some apps above could possibly be built with this.
Get your party poppers out webOS fanboys, 2014 is about to start with a bang. Stay tuned to TechGeek for an Australian look at CES, with local details and coverage.