Earlier today I received the dreaded webOS “too many cards open” error message and was forced to reboot my Sprint edition Palm Pre smart(er)phone.
The funny thing about the error was that I didn’t have any cards open at the time. I know that Palm is working on fixing mutlitasking issues with webOS and that is a good think. But I still don’t have to like rebooting. Besides, it takes forever, doesn’t it?
The answer to that question is, “Not really.” I waited with my finger poised hovering over the Restart button waiting for the clock on my phone to advance to the next minute. When I saw the time rollover, I jabbed at the Restart button an let webOS do it’s thing.
It turns out that “forever” is really about 3 minutes. Not took bad, and certain less than forever. I know it can seem like forever when you are waiting for the the phone to close up shop, reboot, and reload everything. Sorta like a watched pot will never boil kind of thing.
Fortunately for me, I don’t get the too many cards error message on my Pre. Maybe it’s because I don’t load too many third-party apps on my Pre. Na. Maybe it’s because I don’t keep a lot of cards open all the time. Na. I’m not sure, really, why I don’t get the error message as often as some people report. It probably really does relate back to how we all use our phones and how webOS handles multi-tasking and background tasks. Then again, I’m not a software developer, so I can’t say for sure.
Anyway, the time to bet is 3 minutes to reboot a Palm Pre smartphone. I’ll have to reboot my 8GB 2G (first generation) Apple iPhone and see how long it takes to start up. Could be interesting.
One Comment
4Dolio
There is a nice little Preware app called “JSTop” that shows you all the JavaScript processes and lets you kill any that are using to much memory. It also lets you do a manual “Garbage Collection” which frees up memory that is no longer being used. Using it can keep you from having to restart in order to get rid of the to many cards error.