Today HP had a press conference in San Francisco and unveiled their new Tablet PC to be released very soon, the HP TouchPad using WebOS 3.0.
The HP TouchPad has a 9.7-inch 1024 x 768 capacitive touchscreen and dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8060 processor, squeezed into a 242 x 190 x 13.7 mm chassis weighing around 740g. Onboard storage will be either 16 GB or 32 GB and have different pricing depending on what model you go for.
The TouchPad will have Adobe Flash 10.1 support for a full internet experience and will be able to handle your e-mail via the Microsoft Exchange support. Also if Google Mail, or Yahoo is your thing, the Touchpad supports Push, POP3 and iMap support.
One of the great aspects about this new tablet is the front facing camera able to handle video conferencing and video calling. Right now the camera appears to only be 1.3 MP, so don’t expect glorious video. It is also full of some other great features such as improved sound quality using the “Beats Audio Tech” found in their notebook line. For Audio formats it supports MP3, WAV, AAC, AMR, and QCELP.
What about content distribution? HP has a service called the HP Movie Store, offering movies, and TV Shows. The video formats compatible with the device are MPEG4, H.263, and H.264. For e-reading, Amazon has made a WebOS application that will allow you to buy books directly and use their app to load books. HP has also signed a deal with Time INC to provide magazines and newspaper subscriptions.
“We’re working with Amazon to bring HP customers the free Kindle app and, along with it, the largest selection of the most popular books,” said Jon Oakes, director, TouchPad Product Marketing, HP. “TouchPad’s beautiful, fully featured Kindle app supports the Kindle features users already know and love, and it’s one of the first Kindle applications to support the latest Kindle features like Collections.”
One of the cool features about the Touchpad is the integrated support for the Palm Pre. There is a new Touch to Share function that allows you to share URLS, Phone Calls and flip whats on your Palm Pre to your Tablet.
In order to take advantage of this you need obviously a HP TouchPad and a Palm Pre. The Touchpad needs at least the WebOS 3.0 operating system, while the Pre neds WebOS 2.2 or higher. Both of these devices also have to share the same user account.
Although there is no pricing yet for either of the two units to be launched, HP confirmed it will come out this summer. The first offerings will be WIFI only and then followed up by 3G models. More information can be found on the official Press Release.
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Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
