Hey, did you hear? It’s true! Now you can stop dreaming and really have your WebOS slate/tablet in the “near future”, thanks to confirmation directly from HP via a press release reporting their Q2 2010 financial results and also their Twitter feed (they have a habit of placing the most exciting things in the oddest of places, don’t they? Like listing new processors in service manuals). HP has also mentioned that we should also expect WebOS (or some sort of variation/edition) to make its way into printers (huh?!) as well – I presume these will be all-in-one printers as well as high end business printers where using a dedicated OS would come in handy the most.
Strange enough, they haven’t mentioned anything about stuffing WebOS into digital picture frames yet… I was kinda expecting that one.
HP has just announced their new Slate tablet with a full color display, multimedia and reader functions. They’ve also got their new Android-based Smartbook on the table. They’re keeping mum about specifications at the moment, so I’ll keep you posted once they come out.
HP Slate: This tablet appears to be a 9 or 10 inch device that runs Windows 7, probably with some enhancements and dedicated software by HP (Touchsmart UI anyone?) to enhance the ‘touch’ experience, seeing it doesn’t have any keyboard. The 9 (or 10) inch display is a touchscreen which supports multi-touch. Functions of the HP Slate include multimedia capabilities (music and video playback), photo viewing and “reading mode”, supposedly via the Amazon Kindle app for PC. Of course, you can do all sorts of other stuff you do on your computer as it runs Windows 7.
So far, we can see the HP Slate’s power on/off button at the top and what appears to be a volume control rocker. On the right side is a wireless on/off slot and 3.5 mm headphone jack. None of HP’s videos or photos reveal what’s on the left side of the HP Slate, which may or may not be deliberately hidden by creative camera angles.
HP says prototypes of the HP Slate will start appearing later this year (huh?!). Well, they’d better hurry up if they want to start selling these BEFORE Christmas 2010!
Here’s a little 18 second promotional/mini-preview video of the HP Slate, courtesy of Hewlett Packard USA:
HP Android netbook: The HP Android smartbook (or netbook, whatever you prefer call these things) is not nearly as exciting as the HP Slate, but it appears to be a white HP Mini (looks like the Mini 110) with a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor in it and it runs Google’s Android operating system. No word on pricing, availability or battery life so far.
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