Slideshow: HP Tablet Announced
We are here at beautiful Fort Mason in San Francisco on a spectacular day. The Bay is sparkling, Alcatraz beckons (for some of us), and somewhere inside the theater HP is making all the final preparations. The line to get in is already pretty long, and growing. We are about to see the launch of a new lineup of HP mobile products based on the company's WebOS platform.
February 9, 2011
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HP chose Fort Mason, nestled in the Marina district in San Francisco, along the Bay, for the unveiling of a new line-up of mobile products that included two new phones (the tiny Veer and the Palm 3, which the company deems its workhorse phone) and a tablet (the TouchPad).
The InformationWeek team arrives early for HP's event, just in time to snap some fun photos of its crew: Gina Smith, Fritz Nelson, and Dan Resciniti.
Techweb's own Gina Smith was on hand on behalf of Byte.com, and wrote about all of the announcements here. She was supposed to bring popcorn to feed me during the event, but that big bag contained nothing but a few dinner mints.
Somewhere inside the theater HP is making all the final preparations. The line to get in is already pretty long...and growing...these lines are typically peopled by the usual suspects in tech media.
Inside, the venue surrounds its visitors with hues of blue and a bit of techno music. Early attendees get some video, speculate about what's to come, and anxiously get on the wireless network, ready to blog and tweet.
HP slathered slogans everywhere. The event's theme -- Think Beyond -- changed by the time the event ended, wherein HP began to label its announcements as if they were shirt sizes: S, M, L (small, medium, large).
Inside, reporters drink bad coffee, check their e-mail and prepare for the event.
We are staged with video equipment right outside the main theater, waiting to get in. The rumors among those in line are about a new, really small phone, and a tablet, at the very least. No surprises there. From left: Fritz Nelson (Editorial Director, InformationWeek), Dan Resciniti (videographer), Gina Smith (Editor, Byte.com).
This place is absolutely jam-packed. It's nice to see this many people come to an event NOT hosted by Apple, Google or Microsoft. Grunge music, HP execs at the ready in reserved seats. About to start.
Jon Rubenstein, who heads up mobile for HP (SVP & GM, headed up Palm.) Rubenstein ran Palm, but decades ago was an employee of HP.
Rubenstein talked about Synergy. Not the term, but the product -- the way HP/Palm connects data in the cloud, especially social data. This was a big innovation Palm created with WebOS back in early 2009. WebOS is two years old, with the latest release now at WebOS 2.1. It takes multitasking, universal search, and Synergy further. Fifty more features added.
Rubenstein says that most companies are taking things larger and larger. But what works well for some is something smaller but with all the world class smartphone features. "Thinking small." HP Veer.
Looks like a mini Palm Pre phone, pager-size (like the old school pagers), about the size of a credit card. Vivid 2.6-inch capacitive touch 320x400 resolution display, full qwerty keypad, built-in GPS, gesture area, flash, 5 MP camera, USB and 3.5mm audio jack.
The Veer also supports HSPA+, 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 8 GB storage, uses Snapdragon 7230/800MHz processor, and is a mobile hot spot for up to 5 wifi devices. Tiny product with big phone features.
OS Bowl 2011. Rubenstein crows about all of the big media accolades that have been ladled on WebOS, including this one from Laptop Magazine. Of course, the press aren't the main target for these products . . .
The Pre and the Pixi were the earlier generation WebOS products.
The Veer again. HP is taking a big leap of faith here -- that while others are going big, it's time to also get small. Others haven't succeeded here, but HP's giving it a try. It also has an accelerometer, light and proximity sensors.
HP Touchpad. Weighs a bit more than 1.5 pound, 13.7 mm thick, 9.7 inch, capacitive multitouch 1024 x 768 display, front facing 1.3 MP webcam. It supports video calling, Beats Audio technology, and stereo speakers.
It supports Wifi (all flavors), 16 or 32 GB sorage (2x memory of Pre 2), Gyro, accelerometer, compass. Qualcomm dual core 1.2 GHz snapdragon processor.
With Synergy -- enter your WebOS user name & password and all of your information just shows up -- calendars, e-mail, and so on. This has been available since the beginning of WebOS, but HP has expanded the capabilities to include more devices and more apps.
The TouchPad comes bundled with Quick Office, can use Google Docs, Dropbox and Box.net; it supports VPN, and (again) video calling. Integrated with wireless printing. You get a full web/Flash experience.
Ultra compact wireless keyboard will be available too. And a Touchtone doc will recharge the tablet. The devices (the tablets and other WebOS devices) can work together -- sharing information among themselves wirelessly using Touch-to-Share.
The TouchPad uses the WebOS user interface -- the multitasking is even more compelling. Activity cards (representing data or apps) are grouped into card stacks (this is the same as the phone, but I imagine it would be so much better on a tablet). (Note: After the event we got a demo of this and it was very compelling.)
Sachin Kansal, Director of Product Management, does a demo of the tablet, showing off all the new features and capabilities.
Steven McArthur, Senior VP, Applications and Services talks about some of the applications that partners are working on for WebOS devices, especially the tablet.
The e-mail client has the concept of panes, where you can get, say, a larger view of your entire message, without the list of messages, or of the inbox. You can just move things around. This is similar, it seems, to the fragments that Google showed for Honeycomb. This demo had a little glitch and the full HTML e-mail wasn't rendering.
With e-mail, you can create "cards" for each e-mail. That's a very nice way to manage through important e-mails. Sort of like multi-tasking e-mail.
Each of the applications is represented by a card -- each is kept in the state the user left it. And you flip through these cards. Very easy. This is standard WebOS, of course. It was innovative in 2009, and it's still well done today.
You can stack cards -- say a web site tied to a to-do list. Or related web pages, or other data sources you might want to keep together.
HP wants the TouchPad to become a viable gaming device -- or at least show that it's capable of some fancy graphics, thanks to the dual core Qualcomm processor inside. It can run HTML5 apps and OpenGL 3D games. Here, HP showed a game that was put together in just a few days, a flight simulation game called Armageddon....complete with reflections from water, and the sun, and other 3D effects.
In the demo, HP's exec stopped the game before he crashed the flight simulator. It left the state of the application -- represented as a card -- where he left off.
Next, HP talked about content, publishing and media, and partnering with Amazon on Kindle. None of this is new to the tablet discussion, but HP's got to have its game plan in order. Time Inc exec Jeff Katzenberg also showcased some spiffy looking WebOS versions of magazines like People, Time and Sports Illustrated.
The Amazon Kindle app, which works like the Kindle app on the iPad. OK, so no big deal here.
Of course, with the Kindle app, all of your Kindle purchases come to the TouchPad with you.
Now showing video calling. Works like on a Motorola Xoom running Android 3.0. This is likely to be one of those killer apps for the tablet -- and one that the iPad has yet to provide because it doesn't have a camera, yet. The Android devices will provide this as well.
Here's the new lineup, from the TouchPad tablet to the Pre 3 workhorse phone to the tiny Veer. And all of them can use Touch-to-share to sync content between them by simply tapping one device with another.
Serena Williams was there too. We're not sure why.
The Pre3 (left) and the Veer (right). The slide out keyboard on the Pre3 is bigger than it is on previous Palm devices. These devices will be out this Spring.
The Pre3 is a typical Pre slider device. It's a bit thinner than previous models. We'll have to test these new phones to see if they are sturdier and more usable than past versions.
HP says that the keyboard, one of the weaknesses of past Pre devices, is bigger and more usable. We can't vouch for that, but we can say that the resolution is a vast improvement, as is the bigger screen size of the Pre3.
HP says that the keyboard, one of the weaknesses of past Pre devices, is bigger and more usable. We can't vouch for that, but we can say that the resolution is a vast improvement, as is the bigger screen size of the Pre3.
HP chose Fort Mason, nestled in the Marina district in San Francisco, along the Bay, for the unveiling of a new line-up of mobile products that included two new phones (the tiny Veer and the Palm 3, which the company deems its workhorse phone) and a tablet (the TouchPad).
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