HP has announced a new tablet called the HP TouchPad. The TouchPad is a webOS 3.0 device that has a 9.7 inch XGA capacitive touch screen. The 9.7 inch screen has 1024 x 768 pixels.
The technical specs reveal that this webOS based tablet has a storage capacity of either 16GB or 32GB. For connectivity it has wireless 802.11b/g/n as well as Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. The two capacity models will also come in two varieties with one having 3G and the other being WiFi only (same as the iPad).
HP has made the TouchPad touchstone compatible allowing you to place it on the touchstone dock to wirelessly charge. Powering the tablet is a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual processor that runs at 1.2 GHz.
A front facing camera is included on the TouchPad allowing for video calls to be made. The tablet has printing built in allowing you to print documents to a range of HP printers wirelessly. The TouchPad also communicates with Google Docs and Box.net for document collaboration.
One handy feature of the new webOS is that touchstone has been upgraded. What you can do now is touch devices together to share information across them. For example, you are browsing a webpage on your webOS smartphone. All you do is tap the phone on your TouchPad and the webpage you are viewing jumps to the TouchPad. The same also happens in reverse from what we understand.
For those who are not keen on a virtual keyboard at all times, a physical keyboard has also been created. The keyboard is slim and curves around to life the back off the table a little. The batteries are almost made invisible on most viewing angles.
Overall, we are impressed with what HP has done here.
As for the most important bit… pricing and a release date, as of right now we only know that the HP TouchPad will be shipping in the summer with pricing yet to be determined.
Full details along with specs can be found over at Palm.
The TouchPad is really nice