Hasta La Gadget!

Looks like buttonless is in this season.

No, not on this spring’s selection of evening wear. We’re talking about renderings of HP’s rumored webOS-powered tablet published this week on Engadget. It’s a sleek, all-black rendition of what we may be seeing from HP soon, and like the soon to be debuted Motorola Xoom, the tablet has got a button-free face.

While the pictures, leaked by an anonymous Engadget source, aren’t the most detailed, there are a few new things we can glean from taking a look. The finish on the back of the all-black tablet is slick-looking, differentiated from the rubberized backing you might find on, say, the new Galaxy Tab 4G. There’s a mini USB port at the bottom of the tablet along with front-facing camera, both found in many of this year’s forthcoming tablets. Two speakers appear to be on the left side and one on the right, a configuration which adapts to stereo listening in both portrait and landscape orientations. And of course, Palm’s webOS is running on the mystery tablet’s screen.

While HP is rumored to have both a 7-inch and 9-inch tablet in the works — codenames “Opal” and “Topaz,” respectively — the pictures we saw were of Topaz. Engadget has posted additional details on the HP tablets, reporting that they will be bundled with a cloud-based storage service, HP’s “Beats” audio processing, and a “tap to share” feature for transferring URLs, documents and music between the tablet and a phone simply by tapping them together.

When are we going to see these bad boys? An exact date remains to be seen, although the leaked Palm marketing materials suggest both a Wi-Fi and AT&T 3G version of the 7-inch Opal to ship in North America, Europe and China in September of this year. The sheet also lists a 4G Verizon-carried Opal to ship in September, and a 4G AT&T-carried version to come in July of 2012.

HP did not comment on the rumors.

Separate reports have emerged suggesting we could see the 9-inch tablet even sooner. HP will begin shipping Topaz units as early as March, according to sources who told DigiTimes. HP expects to ship somewhere between 45 to 48 million notebooks in 2011, with the webOS-operated tablets being the lion’s share of those numbers.

Before HP acquired Palm last April for $1.2 billion, Palm had tried to reinvigorate its ailing mobile market with webOS-based smartphones like the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi. Since Palm’s acquisition, HP has been trying to move the much-lauded webOS over to HP products like the ill-fated HP Slate.

A September release for HP’s Opal would put HP behind the forthcoming tablet debuts from Motorola, Lenovo and a potential iPad 2 release. But a staggered approach with Topaz’s March shipping date could keep HP up to speed with its competitors, and keep us puzzled with yet another tablet to choose from in the spring.

Photo: webOS interface/HP

See Also:

• HP Buys Palm for $1.2 Billion
• Palm webOS Headed to HP Tablet, Printer
• HP Slate Could Get a Makeover With Palm’s WebOS
• HP Slate Details Leaked: $550 Netbook, Minus Keyboard

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.

Continue reading HP / Palm tablet to feature Touchstone dock, cloud storage, Beats audio and Tap-to-Share smartphone integration

HP / Palm tablet to feature Touchstone dock, cloud storage, Beats audio and Tap-to-Share smartphone integration originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh sure, it looks like some glorious Palm / HP Web OS tablets are headed our way (even if we are hearing it won’t be until late summer / early fall), but you know what has been supposedly headed our way for over two months now? The HP Slate 500. Yep, HP’s seemingly-abandoned Windows 7 tablet is still suffering from major delays, and according to our sources and an HP customer support rep, a “material shortage” combined with a “high volume of orders” are causing these tablets to be held up. We don’t have any real details on the numbers — although, last month we had heard they received about 9,000 orders thus far — but we do know that our very own HP Slate, which we ordered back on November 9th, still hasn’t shipped and is now slated to ship out on January 22nd. And we’re definitely not the only ones still patiently waiting — a look through the TabletPC Review forums reveals that a number of irate customers are still longing for their 8.9-inch, Atom-powered tablets — although, many of them were offered a $100 discount in exchange for not having their tablets in time for the holidays. We’ve reached out to HP for further comment on this, but in the meantime, we’ll be refreshing our account page and hoping our Slate finally ships out before the end of the month or, you know, at least before HP starts announcing new ones in early February.

HP Slate orders still delayed, still blaming ‘high volume of orders’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 08:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look, let’s be real: our Palm tablet scoop today was awesome. For its part, though, HP wants to remind us all that it’s got other news in the pipe for its event early next month, going so far as to tease invitees that they haven’t seen the latest on Engadget.

Not to say that we won’t be trying very, very hard to ensure that our readers do see the latest right here… but point taken, HP. See you in a couple weeks.

HP calls us out, implies it’s got even better scoops at February webOS event originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 18:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh, hello. A trusted tipster just sent in these internal renders of HP / Palm’s “Topaz” webOS tablet, which is one of two tablets currently being developed in Sunnyvale. That’s right, two tablets: the 9-inch Topaz and a 7-inch model codnamed Opal — a lineup that fits nicely into Palm’s “Something big, Something small, Something beyond” tagline for its upcoming February 9th event. Looking at the render, we’re seeing the no-button design we’d previously heard about (we’re assuming the gesture area rotates with the display), a front-facing camera, a micro USB port on the bottom, and what appears to be a Vizio Tablet-style three speaker arrangement for stereo audio in both landscape and portrait modes — that’s two speakers along the left side and a third on the right. (That’s just a guess, though.) We’d also note the back appears to be a glossy material, which might rule out a giant Touchstone for charging — Touchstone backs have heretofore been soft-touch, but anything can change, we suppose.

We’re told that units will start to arrive at Palm HQ in June as production ramps up for launch later this year — a timeline backed up by an internal marketing slide we received that lists WiFi-only, AT&T 3G, and Verizon LTE versions of the Opal arriving in September 2011, and on AT&T LTE in July 2012. The slide also indicates the Opal will have a particular e-reading focus, which makes sense for a 7-inch device, and there’s a mention of “premium audio,” which nicely reinforces our speaker hypothesis. Unfortunately, we don’t have any word on specs or pricing yet, but these things had better be packing some serious heat for cheap if Palm is really planning to wait until September to launch them — they’ll be going head-to-head with the Xoom, the PlayBook, and presumably the iPad 2. We’re still digging for more, so keep an eye out — things are going to get crazy leading up to February 9th.

Update: We’re told that they both have unspecified 1.2GHz processors, and that Topaz may arrive before Opal. We’ll let you know if we learn anything else.

Exclusive: HP / Palm’s webOS tablets — pictures, plans, and more originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 13:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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