HP's Comin' Up!

HP has unveiled three new webOS devices, including a pint-sized smartphone known as the Veer, a beefier business phone dubbed the Pre³, and, yes, the first Palm tablet: the HP TouchPad.  The devices are designed to work in concert, and to dovetail with myriad "cloud-based" services, consolidating your calendar appointments, contacts, photos, email, SMS, and other messages.  Weighing little more than a pound and a half and measuring 13mm thick, the HP TouchPad includes an iPad-esque 9.7-inch capacitive multitouch display, 1.3-megapixel front-facing webcam, 1.2GHz ARM-based Qualcomm dual-core processor, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and stereo speakers. HP will offer one version of the tablet with 16GB of storage and one with 32GB.  Also the device does video calling, and it's specifically designed for multitasking. It ships with a full version of Amazon’s Kindle app and QuickOffice, which lets you view and edit Microsoft Word and Excel documents, but it's also designed to work with Google's online word processor and spreadsheet app, Google Docs. You can adjust the size of the keys on the device's software keyboard, but you also have the option of using an external hardware keyboard. You can dock and charge the device on an optional HP Touchstone wireless charging contraption, which works even when the TouchPad is in its case.  The Touchstone has been upgraded to automatically set docked devices to an "exhibition mode", displaying photos or serving up other applications suitable for use when the device is docked. HP's Touchstone technology also lets you share URLs between webOS devices. To share a URL (uniform resource locator), you simply touch a phone to the TouchPad, Via Bluetooth, you can also share SMS messages between phone and tablet and send voice call alerts from phone to tablet. In the future, an HP spokesman told us, the company plans to offer other sharing between devices, either through Bluetooth or Touchstone. HP said that a Wi-Fi only version of the tablet will be available "this summer," with 3G and 4G versions following. A webOS tablet SDK (software development kit) will be made available to developers on Wednesday evening.

Lastly, we find the smart phones; HP's Veer smartphone is no wider or longer than a credit card. It offers a 2.6-inch 320x400 display, a five-megapixel camera, 802.11 b/g, 8GB of storage, and an 800MHz Snapdragon processor. There's also a slide-out keyboard, and the device can serve as a mobile hotspot. The device will be available "this spring."  Meanwhile, the Pre³ offers a 3.6-inch 480x800 display, a five-megapixel camera, 8GB or 16GB of storage, a 1.44GHz Snapdragon processor, and full QWERTY slide-out keyboard. Like the HP Touchpad, the Pre³ is said to be available this summer. “Finally HP is getting it, if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” I’ts always been about the toys and what they can do, we live by the tips of our fingers now and for one of the top hardware competitors to develop their own type I think helps ensure their success in the field of touchpads and smartphones.