HP plans to out TouchPad next month, first with WebOS 3.0

A WebOS tablet was due since HP took over Palm last year, but till now there have been only Win 7 gadgets. Finally the first WebOS based tablet called the Touchpad is due next month. HP took a long time in developing WebOS 3.0 so the tablet is better worth it.

Although there were no official communications about HP giving away units of the Touchpad to app developers, Liliputing reports of an iOS app developer mentioning over Twitter that the company is indeed giving away Touchpads to developers to encourage them to develop apps for WebOS.

The Touchpad

The Touchpad will have a 9.7” XGA capacitive screen with 1024x768 pixels resolution, a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-CPU APQ8060 processor clocking at 1.2GHz, up to 32GB of internal storage, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n with WPA, WPA2, WEP, 802.1X authentication and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support. There is mention of only a front facing 1.3MP camera for video calling. The Touchpad boasts of a monstrous 6300mAh battery that should take you safely through the day. The 190 x 240 x 13.7mm device should feel quite lightweight at 740gms.

WebOS 3.0

 HP seems to have done most things right with the hardware, so it really comes down to the OS. WebOS 3.0 has a story similar to that of Froyo and Honeycomb. The original WebOS was meant for mobile phones, so a new version had to be created specifically for the tablets. While developing WebOS 3.0, HP had to take care of mainly the resolution, and not much on the touch front as the older version was meant for touchscreen smartphones.

It has a new way of automatically stacking related apps when you work on one. There will be a new notification system that HP promises will be non-intrusive, a resizable keyboard, the IMs and messages are organized in a single view to make more sense, and the most unique way of sharing data between an HP Pre and your Touchpad just by touching the two together.  

Palm almost revived itself with the Pre and the Touchpad hopes for the same, as HP has not been very successful in pushing its tablets yet. It remains to be whether Web 3.0 can do to the Touchpad what it did to the Pre.

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