The year was 2009, and the room was packed with thousands of journalists to see the latest from Palm. The excitement was thick, something normally only experienced at an Apple launch event. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein took the stage to unveil the Palm Pre with its innovative new OS, webOS.

Sadly, the lifespan of webOS and the phones and tablet it powered was far too short. Palm was acquired by HP in short order, and the webOS hardware was soon gone from this world.

The webOS platform had innovation baked in at every level, and it's probably the best mobile OS to end up a commercial failure. The phones didn't sell well, and the TouchPad tablet released by HP after the acquisition was cancelled a mere 45 days after its release.

It's easy to believe that webOS was not a good OS based on its short history, but it was built on features so innovative some are still in use today. This blast from the past highlights the major innovations introduced with webOS that are so good they have been adopted by every major player in the mobile space.