HP today enlarged the HP webOS world with the first webOS slate – the HP TouchPad – the breakthrough webOS user interface fully realized in the tablet experience. TouchPad is one of three webOS products, the HP Veer and HP Pre announced today.
The HP Touch pad has an 9.7-inch diagonal flush capacitive multitouch display, virtual keyboard, integrated GPS (3G only), instant-on access, support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta in the browser and access to thousands of webOS applications.
“Today we’re embarking on a new era of webOS with the goal of linking a wide family of HP products through the best mobile experience available,” said Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president and general manager, Palm Global Business Unit, HP. “The flexibility of the webOS platform makes it ideal for creating a range of innovative devices that work together to keep you better connected to your world.”
Designed to be used alone or as a digital companion to your webOS phone. Never miss an important call or SMS message – they can be answered and viewed right on your TouchPad. HP’s exclusive new touch-to-share feature will let you simply touch an enabled webOS phone to your TouchPad to share web URLs.
With the HP Synergy feature, you simply have to sign in to your Facebook, Google, Microsoft Exchange, LinkedIn and Yahoo! accounts and your contacts, calendar and email automatically populate your TouchPad.
TouchPad UI
webOS is a true multitasking OS which lets you have multiple applications running at the same time. webOS shows you your activities in the form of cards, rather than list of application icons on numerous home screens.
TouchPad also features a webOS communication suite powered by HP Synergy that keeps you connected and creative, making all of your communications simpler, richer and in your control. It’s a complete solution, including email, instant messaging, contacts, calendar, videos and a front-facing camera for video calling. Connected photo albums make it easy to share and view your pictures directly from popular services such as Facebook, Snapfish and Photobucket. It works seamlessly with TouchPad’s user interface for a natural and efficient experience.
Entertainment
Amazon.com today announced that it will launch a free Kindle app for HP webOS tailored for TouchPad that will give you access to more than 810,000 titles from Amazon’s Kindle Store. You also can subscribe to popular magazine titles, such as Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and People, and download movies and TV shows through the HP Movie Store. The TouchPad music app lets you transfer and play all your favorites from your personal music collection, with amazing sound quality by Beats Audio.
Mobile productivity
You can read and write email, view your work and personal inboxes together, or easily toggle between them. Integrated messaging conveniently combines all your text messages, picture messages and IM conversations with one person into a single view, and you can connect through SMS, Google Talk, AIM and Yahoo! Messenger.
TouchPad’s virtual full QWERTY keyboard includes a number row, which reduces keyboard switching, making typing easy and fast. It powers on instantly and brings you back to exactly where you left off, whether you were in the middle of composing an email, playing a game or browsing a web page. With webOS true multitasking, it’s like you never left.
For maximum productivity, HP is working with Quickoffice to include the Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite, which lets you view and edit documents, such as Microsoft Word and Excel. It also comes with VPN support to connect to corporate networks.
With its 1.3-megapixel front-facing webcam, TouchPad offers video calling capability. It’s also compatible with HP’s industry-leading printing solutions, so you can wirelessly print documents, photos and emails to compatible wireless and networked HP printers.
TouchPad has built-in HP Touchstone technology for easy charging, so it’s compatible out of the box with the HP Touchstone for TouchPad (sold separately), and you can charge in either portrait or landscape mode, even without removing the TouchPad case (sold separately). The webOS Exhibition feature lets you run applications designed specifically for Touchstone. Set your TouchPad on Touchstone and Exhibition launches automatically, showing you anything from today’s agenda to a slideshow of your photos.
Availability
HP TouchPad is scheduled to be available in the summer. Exact pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.
HP TouchPad features and specs
- HP webOS
- High-speed connectivity
- Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-CPU APQ8060 1.2-GHz processor
- 9.7-inch diagonal XGA capacitive, multitouch screen with a vibrant, 18-bit color, 1,024 x 768 resolution display
- The option of either 16 GB or 32 GB of internal storage
- High-performance browser with full access to the web, including support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta for access to rich, Flash-based web content
- Wireless connectivity:
- Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n with WPA, WPA2, WEP, 802.1X authentication
- A-GPS (3G only)
- Bluetooth wireless technology 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
- Multimedia options, including music, photos, video recording and playback, and a 3.5 mm headset/headphone/microphone jack
- Internal stereo speakers and Beats Audio
- Front-facing 1.3-megapixel webcam for live video calling
- Email, including EAS (for access to corporate Microsoft Exchange servers) and personal email support (Google Gmail push, Yahoo!, POP3, IMAP)
- Robust messaging support
- Light sensor, accelerometer, compass (magnetometer) and gyroscope
- Rechargeable 6,300 mAh (typical) battery
- Micro-USB (Charging and PC Connect) with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
- Built-in HP Touchstone technology for easy charging (HP Touchstone for TouchPad sold separately) and HP touch-to-share to share web addresses between TouchPad and compatible webOS phones
- Dimensions: 190 mm x 242 mm x 13.7 mm (7.48 inches x 9.53 inches x .54 inches)
- Weight: approximately 740 g (1.6 pounds)
