Phones, phones, phones, phones, PHONES! There are some good ones this week. The Sidekick makes a blurry return to reality, the real-but-not-too-real Sony Ericsson Xperia Playstation phone struts its stuff on The Engadget Show, and a small suite of BlackBerrys leak their way into the blogosphere. It’s a mini-avalanche of news on the Engadget Mobile Podcast, guest starring Professor Vlad Savov — come join us, won’t you?
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The last Palm-branded holdout on Verizon’s inventory — the CDMA Pixi Plus — is now gone from the company’s online store, once again leaving the country’s largest carrier without a webOS option to be had. Of course, the Pre 2 has been lined up for release on Verizon for some time, but in light of the lukewarm reception the phone’s received so far, the coming webOS 2.0 upgrades for the older models, and the big news presumably coming out of HP’s early February event, we’d say they’re now dangerously close to releasing an obsolete device. For what it’s worth, Palm’s site insists that the new model’s still “coming soon,” but that had better happen on the double if they want to sell any of these things.
It’s been a few months since Leo Apotheker took the top spot at HP following the Mark Hurd debacle, and it sounds like he’s got some big plans for the company — speaking to the BBC, he says he hopes “one day people will say ‘this is as cool as HP,’ not ‘this is as cool as Apple.’” How does he plan on doing that? By speeding up ship times, for starters — unlike the year-long wait for the HP Slate, Apotheker says that “when HP makes announcements, it will be getting ready to ship,” and that the new webOS products announced on February 9 will ship just a “few weeks” later. Speaking of the February 9 event, Apotheker said the new product line of tablets and mobile phones will have a new name that falls under the HP brand, which sounds like the Palm name is done for. (If we had to guess, it’ll be HP webOS, but that’s just a guess.)
On top of all that, the BBC calls February 9 just the “starting gun,” because Apotheker’s “secret answer” and “vision of what HP is capable of in the future” will come on March 14, where he’ll try to pull together HP’s vast product portfolio into a cohesive narrative. According to Apotheker, HP’s size is its “basis of strength,” and no other company sells everything from servers to phones the way HP does. Sounds extremely exciting — and if Apotheker can pull it off, there’s a chance we’ll remember Mark Hurd’s dalliance as the best thing that ever happened to HP.
HP has been burning through US trademark filings over the past few months, presumably hoping to nail down as many possibilities for the new Palm webOS tablets as it can — a “shoot first, ask questions later” type of situation. To that end, it’s filed for three more under a very broad computing category that could definitely include the Topaz and Opal models we’ve been hearing so much about: “Touchslate,” “Touchcanvas,” and “Duopad.” We’re pretty lukewarm on the unwieldy “Touchcanvas,” but we guess both Duopad and Touchslate could work under the right circumstances. Then again, what’s wrong with Topaz and Opal, really?
Anyone excited about the HP Topaz webOS tablet will be downright giddy after reading this latest news. The folks at PreCentral have received some leaked slides of the new webOS Tablet interface. Is it hot?
Hell yeah.
First: New Gestures. Double-Tap, Tap & Drag, Tap & Hold, 2 finger tap and 2 finger tap with drag are all coming to Palm tablets. There will be pop-up text selection dialogues that go up when you make certain gestures to allow for copy/past and similar options.
The new webOS virtual keyboard is the coolest bit of news. It features a top toolbar that you can customize with all sorts of functions. Hide keyboard, jump between form fields, and step through all characters were explicitly mentioned. A keyboard like this would be fantastic for gaming.
The updated mail interface will support panels, with lists on the left and content on the right. Tabs and pages are coming to the web browser, no surprise there. But HP has also developed a weird paged interface that allows you to treat your different web sites as pages in a book.
It also looks like pop-up dialog boxes will be how Palm tablets handle a lot of their multitasking. The Google Maps UI is also set for a big update, though exactly what that will entail is unclear. We’re likely to see the Topaz at MWC 2011, so think of this as a little appetizer before next month’s webOS feast.
Further details on HP’s Topaz webOS tablet have emerged, detailing the specifications of the 9.7-inch XGA slate we’re expecting to hear about at the event on February 9. According to documents finding their way to PreCentral – and which date back to sometime in 2010 – Topaz will use Qualcomm’s dual-core 1.2GHz MSM8660 CPU with Adreno 220 graphics, together with dual-band WiFi b/g/n, optional HSPA and, eventually, LTE and CDMA, and a battery good for over 8hrs. More interesting, though, is the Touchstone v2 dock.
Processor Dual-core Qualcomm MSM8660 at 1.2GHz Graphics Integrated Adreno 220 GPU Screen 9.7″ XGA 1024 x 768 Dimensions 190mm x 240mm x 13.7mm Weight 700g / 1.5lb (estimated) RAM 512MB DDR2 Storage 16g / 32g / 64g eMMC Camera Front-facing 1.3mp camera for Video Chat Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR WiFi Dual-band 802.11 b/g/n Other Radios Optional WWAN for HSPA, LTE, perhaps CDMA later Sensors Accelerometer, eCompass, Gyro, Light Sensor, Microphone Speakers 2 integrated speakers with Beats Audio, 3.5mm audio jack Battery 24WHr for >8hrs, using two 3150mAh cells
As with the Palm Pre and Pixi, the Topaz will support the Touchstone inductive charging technology, though it will use a second-gen version of the dock that offers far more than simply rejuicing the slate. Instead, it will support wireless picture, site and contact sharing, audio streaming via Bluetooth to a speaker dock, wireless access to mapping and directions, music sharing from a Palm smartphone to the Topaz slate, wireless printing, wireless video streaming to an HDMI/VGA output, and even wireless video gaming via the video dock.
There’ll be Flash support and various cloud services – including Snapfish for photos, Melodeo music, HP Cloud Drive and HP Cloud Canvas. The images also show both HP and Palm branding, though it remains to be seen whether that will survive now that Palm has been fully subsumed into its new parent. SlashGear will be at the February 9 event with all the details, so join us there next month!
Remember that day when Emblaze wowed the world with its First Else “death of main menu” smartphone? What a shame, eh? While it’s unlikely that said Linux handset will ever be resurrected, there’s a small chance that bits of its legacy will be passed onto other products. For instance, a recent LinkedIn newsletter led us to Itai Vonshak, who was one of the main engineers behind the architecture that powered the First Else’s brilliant, mesmerizing UI. Now, according to his profile, our man has recently moved into HP / Palm’s comfy little house to do UX strategy. Whether this means webOS will get a slice of that Minority Report action, we don’t know; but it’ll be interesting to see what Vonshak will surprise us with at the HP / Palm event next month. For now, there’s a hands-on video of the First Else after the break for old time’s sake.
With all this talk about HP and Palm’s upcoming tablets, perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the company has officially filed for a new trademark that, for all intents and purposes, screams out “tablet.” At the moment, it’s impossible to say whether or not HP plans on using their recently filed for Touchpad name for anything at all, let alone a tablet. But, tablets are mentioned in the filing, if that’s any sizable indicator.
The trademark covers plenty of devices, making sure not to name one specifically. It actually covers not only products, but also services. However, “tablet computers” is the one many are most interested in. With HP’s webOS announcement right around the corner, it’s likely that the tablet devices we’ve seen hit the Internet will be officially named and detailed. Whether or not Topaz and Opal, which are currently the codenames for the tablet devices, stick around remains to be seen.
It’s also possible that the Touchpad name falls under a product lineup, featuring tablets and other devices of that sort, and not one particular tablet (or other device) specifically. We’ll have to wait and see if the HP Touchpad name pops up anywhere else.
Looks like the details regarding HP’s webOS-based tablets aren’t staying secret, even as the company’s official announcement looms closer (of which they were nice enough to remind us about). Engadget‘s unnamed sources have come through yet again, detailing some of the design elements of the upcoming pair of tablets.
The unnamed source was up-front about the measurements of the two tablets. The Opal, which we know is the 7-inch webOS-based tablet, will measure in at around 180 x 144 x 13mm, which means it will be about the same size as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Android-based tablet, albeit slightly shorter and wider. The capacitive touchscreen display will feature a TFT LCD with a resolution of 1,024 x 768. While the Topaz, the 9-inch version, will measure in at 241 x 190 x 13mm — or practically identical to the measurements seen in the current generation iPad from Apple. Unfortunately, the source wasn’t sure what the resolution of the Topaz will be, but suggested that it could be the same as what the Opal’s. A good bonus, though: it looks like HP will be including their Beats premium audio processing.
As for storage, the tablets won’t be hindered by the physical storage on the devices. HP and Palm have made sure that there will be “tens of gigabytes” made available up in the cloud, for each tablet owner.
Some additional information regarding the Topaz and Opal webOS tablets may have been revealed in a recent consumer survey, which was conducted by GfK Custom Research North America. While the survey doesn’t mention HP or Palm, or even webOS specifically, there are mentions of “Synergy,” along with talk about a feature called “Touchstone.” The survey asks if people would be interested in using programmable wireless charging docks that would change their tablet device into a digital photo frame, or an alarm clock. Features that we’ve seen in webOS 2.0′s Exhibition mode.
And then there’s one additional feature worth mentioning: Tap-to-Share. By “tapping” two tablets together, owners will be able to easily transfer content like web pages, or a document, from one device to another. Furthermore, it sounds like HP’s focus on cloud storage may come in handy in the way that applications are loaded. It may be even possible to run some applications, and saved documents, right from the cloud storage. This is apparently a move from HP to make the laptop the new desktop, so that while someone is out and about, they only need their tablet.
Other mentions are features we’ve seen in webOS 2.0: Flash support, and “true multitasking.” Of course, it’s good to see that these features are being carried over to the tablet experience. On a lesser note, it sounds like the tipster does know that HP and Palm are planning on launching handsets, but that what they have seen is “nothing too amazing.”
Now that the kitty’s out of the gemstone bag, we’re slowly starting to connect the dots that obscure the details of Palm’s soon to be announced “Topaz” and “Opal” tablets. First up is information from one of our original trusted sources who claims that the Opal will measure 180 x 144 x 13mm (making it a bit shorter and wider than the 190.1 x 120.5 x 12-mm Galaxy Tab) and feature a 1,024 x 768 pixel TFT LCD display. We’re told that the bigger Topaz tablet will ship about three months before Opal and measures in at 241 x 190 x 13mm (making it nearly identical to the 242.8 x 189.7 x 13.4-mm iPad) with a pixel resolution that could be the same as the Opal (our source wasn’t 100 percent on this). We’re also hearing that the “premium audio” we saw on that leaked marketing slide will indeed be powered by HP’s Beats audio processing, and that the tablets will be provided with “tens of gigabytes” of cloud storage — so much that it dwarfs the local storage on the devices. Good, because you’re going to need it from the looks of some additional information we just received. Click through for the detail.
It’s been a few months since Leo Apotheker 
