IT‘S VERY POSSIBLE that tablets are finally getting to the stage where they’ll deliver what have been promised for so long and HP looks set to be close to front of the pack if details of its new tablets prove to hold true. Full specs of its 9.7-inch webOS tablet currently codenamed Topaz has leaked and it has just about everything a good tablet should have.
Pre central is the site behind the leak and they’ve posted a full spec sheet that looks fairly authentic detailing, well, all the details. So let’s start with the juicy bits which consist of a dual core Qualcomm MSM8660 SoC at 1.2GHz with Adreno 220 graphics, up to 64GB of eMMC storage (16 and 32GB options also available), touchstone wireless charging support and a 9.7-inch capacitive touch IPS screen. The not so good is the fact that the screen has a native resolution of 1024×768, which means it’s not the ideal media consumption tablet, but that’s pretty much it when it comes to possible let downs.
The rest of the features include dual band 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optional 3G (or possibly 4G) connectivity with GPS (sadly no GPS for the Wi-Fi only models), 512MB of DDR2 RAM, a micro USB port, a 3.5mm headphone jack that also accepts a mic input, a pair of stereo speakers, a front facing 1.3Megapixel webcam for video calls and a 24Whr battery said to be good for up to 8h of usage. There’s also a built in accelerometer, an “eCompass” which we presume means digital compass, an ambient light sensor and a microphone.
Apparently the new touchstone interface also allows for communications this time which will allow the tablet to do a wide range of things without having to be physically connected to anything, although it has to be on its dock. We’re not sure how useful this will be, although HP has come up with a range of scenarios as to how this is meant to be used, including wireless picture sharing, music sharing, wireless printing and even HD video streaming via a video dock with HDMI output.
So is HP going to have a game changer on its hands? Well, maybe, but it really comes down to how well HP has managed to levy the advantages of webOS on a larger screen device. We can see HP stealing market share from the current crop of Android tablets quite easily, but it will be interesting to see how well the Topaz stacks up against Android 3.0 tablets. As for the iPad, well, Apple is rumoured to have something new coming and Apple is Apple and we don’t think HP is going to convince many Apple users to move to its new tablet. The proof is in the pudding as they say and we’ll have to wait and see what the actual tablet is like and how well it works before we can draw any real conclusions.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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