There’s been a vast cavalcade of Android tablets trotting over the hills in the recent weeks, but the one tablet that’s got us more interested than most is the upcoming one from HP/Palm running their fabulous webOS multitasking operating system.
Up until now the retails have been rather hazy, but precentral.net has got its hands on what it reckons is the lowdown on HP’s new wonder tablet, codenamed Topaz.
The webOS-powered machine is said to offer a 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768-pixel oil and scratch-resistant display, and be powered by a 1.2GHz processor, backed by an Adreno 220 graphics processor.
Minimalistic looks
Just three buttons will adorn the rather familiar-looking design: power, volume up, and volume down, with Palm breaking from their traditional dedicated silent / ringer switch..
Onboard there’s 512MB of DDR2 RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a front-facing camera for video chat, integrated Beats audio and two 3,150 mAh batteries promising 8 hours of use.
The tablet is reported as launching as Wi-Fi only at first, but with 3G and 4G versions following soon.
Touchstone-enabled
It looks like HP wil be using the next-generation Touchstone technology, offering cordless charging, as well as image and file sharing, multimedia streaming, wireless printing, integrated cloud services and the intriguing sounding prospect of “wireless video game playing via Touchstone video dock.”
Specs:
Its all about the apps, and its where palm fell short
Yep: the webOS remains the best I’ve used on any mobile platform, but the lack of apps – especially for UK users – made it a non starter.
Most iPad users don’t even use apps; most activities are spent surfing the internet or reading an e-book. This HP webOS tablet will be using a processor faster than the Apple iPad 2, Motorola Xoom, and the RIM Playbook..with a Dual Core 1.2 GHz chip so rendering web pages, applications, etc., will be much faster and enjoyable. Direct Printing, Wireless Charging, with wireless streaming video technology to your HD Television is going to be very interesting. HP might just conquer the tablet space with their webOS technologies just as they’ve done for computers, notebooks, and servers.
I don’t think that’s true you know – everyone I know with an iPad has loads of useful apps on them, doing all sorts of clever stuff like image processing, music making, word processing and the like.
I don’t like iPads very much mind, but HO has got one hell of a job on its hands unless it can serve up comparable functionality and versatility – and that means loads of great apps.