Hasta La Gadget!

Like a tiny, expensive, glowing pebble, the HP Veer is one small smartphone.

SAN FRANCISCO — HP’s diminutive Veer might be named that because the company wants to emphasize that it’s swerving in a different direction than most phone makers.

And it is: In a gadget season dominated by 4-inch and bigger smartphones, the webOS-based Veer looks positively petite. It feels like a small river rock in your hand, smooth and black and more pebble-like than any other recent phone. It should fit in a pants pocket as easily as a pocket knife, but without the TSA hassles.

Overall, it is about the size of a credit card, as HP’s senior vice president Jon Rubinstein claimed during Wednesday’s press conference announcing the Veer, along with the HP TouchPad and Pre 3. More accurately, it’s about the size of a stack of 10 or 12 credit cards. The screen’s much smaller, however. At 2.6 diagonal inches, it’s about the half the size of a business card. While bright, it’s definitely not big.

At 320 x 400 pixels, you’re not going to be reading Moby Dick on this screen, but it’s serviceable for looking at your calendar, reading text messages and composing e-mails. I checked out Wired’s website, which looked fine in the mobile version, but became much harder to read when we switched to the normal, full version of the site. Still, the Veer’s WebKit-based browser rendered everything faithfully.

The screen was reasonably responsive. The 800-MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor inside isn’t anything to write home about, but it should handle basic browsing and screen work just fine.

Like other webOS phones, the Veer will serve as a mobile hotspot, providing internet access to five devices, HP promises.

HP says it will support HSPA+, which is the GSM version of 3G wireless technology, so expect the U.S. carrier to be either AT&T or T-Mobile.

Slide it open, and HP’s Veer reveals one of the smallest qwerty keyboards ever.

A tiny keyboard slides out below the screen — and I mean tiny. It has some of the smallest buttons I’ve ever laid thumbs on. It feels like typing on a bundle of pinheads. At that size it’s of course easy to mistype (“Wited.com” instead of “Wired.com”), but it’s surprisingly usable given the dimensions.

Overall the Veer feels a bit like the Kin One, Microsoft’s failed (but cute) social phone, which debuted last year. HP has already avoided one of the Kin’s fatal flaws by basing the Veer on webOS, which has a small but existent app market (and promises to become even more useful through interconnections with webOS on the TouchPad later this year).

It’s still unclear whether HP will avoid the Kin’s other fatal flaw: price. HP did not announce a price for the Veer, but if it comes in at $50 or $100 with a reasonably cheap data contract, this could be a great phone for teenagers, social butterflies and anyone who wants basic connectivity without messing up the lines of their stylish threads.

The Veer is quite thin. It also has an unusual magnetic USB and audio connector instead of traditional jacks.

Photos by Jon Snyder / Wired.com

How does the HP Veer look up close? Cute as a button, and small — these pictures don’t do it justice at all. We just got our hands on the pint-sized webOS 2.2 smartphone, and snapped a stack of pictures for your viewing pleasure. You won’t be able to flip these around like playing cards, but they will give you a handle on what to expect from the miniature Pre 2 in the weeks or months to come, so click on through that gallery below. We’ll have video in a moment, too!

Update: We went back for seconds and came away stuffed impressed by the power of the tiny machine — its form factor may bring back painful memories of the Kin One, but the Veer feels like a multitasking beast. Before our eyes, an HP rep swiped rapid-fire through enough apps to plan and communicate a Yelp restaurant date in under a minute flat, and there wasn’t so much as an instant’s delay when switching between each. We’re big fans of the form factor, small screen aside, the sliding hinge is solid with a delightful snap, and the cute little keyboard attached to that slider is fairly usable despite its size, with rubbery little keys that reminded us of those on the Palm Centro. What’s not to like?

Update 2: Video after the break!

Update 3: While we were unable to determine with certainty what carrier the Veer demo units were using, an IMEI was clearly displayed in the device info screen, leading us to conclude these were GSM phones (likely on AT&T).

Myriam Joire contributed to this report.

Continue reading HP Veer, first hands-on! (updated with video!)

HP Veer, first hands-on! (updated with video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The HP Pre 3 is here! We just got our hands on one and snapped a whole bunch of pictures — see the gallery below. Stay tuned for our first impressions soon. We’re also still working on our shots of the Veer and the TouchPad, but sharp eyes can find both devices in the gallery below — there might even be some iPhone and Nexus S comparison shots, but we don’t want to give too much away.

Update: We just had a chance to play around with the Pre 3 at some length… and we have to say it feels good. The body of the device is sleek and solid, and the weight feels substantial in your hand. The screen is a relatively spacious 3.6-inches, and webOS looks absolutely stunning on it. The extra resolution is a big help on readability and clarity. The slider mechanism feels fairly solid, though there’s a little give just at the end of it’s movement that made us slightly concerned. Compared to previous devices, however, it seems far tighter. We’re still messing around with the phone and will report back on what we find, but in terms of hardware quality, HP has taken a big step up here. As for the keyboard, it feels really fantastic. We realize this is very much a matter of personal preference, but we had zero problems typing quickly and accurately on the Pre 3 right from the get go.

Update 2: Hardware hands-on video after the break!

Update 3: More pics, including the Touchstone 2 dock.

Continue reading HP Pre 3 first hands-on! (updated with video)

HP Pre 3 first hands-on! (updated with video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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