Right, here we go, with another bit of news that’s only tangentially related to mobile phones, ‘cos it’s about tablets. However, since the tablet seems to be turning into an important device in the mobile stable, then it’d be remiss of me not to talk about them. Plus I want one, and this is sot of me also going, “Ooh, let’s compare them in public and see what everyone else reckons, before I inevitably end up getting one.”
Today’s is the HP PalmPad, the first tablet to run on WebOS, because it’s appeared on Engadget, and quite frankly, I reckon it looks mint. Er, actually, it’s not one, but two tablets, the Opal (a Samsung Galaxy Tab-sized device) and the Topaz (the one in the pic, aka/ the iPad-sized one).
And I’ll be honest, I likes the look of it. I’ve always had a soft spot for WebOS, and I reckon it fits perfectly in a tablet device. Apparently, if you also got a linked up smartphone, then you can answer calls either on the phone itself, or on the connected PalmPad, which is pretty cool. Oh and it’ll use the same Touchstone inductive charging tech as the Palm Pre 2 and its predecessor used, to charge the device without plugging a charger into the device.
Which is something straight out of old school sci-fi, so I love it.
But can it beat my current choice for “Tablet I really, really want, really rather badly”, the Xoom, ie/ the awesome tablet recently unveiled by Motorola? Well, I reckon it’s going to be a pretty evenly matched fight, since Android’s Head of User Experience was the one in charge of designing the user experience for WebOS. So, in terms of usability, it’s going to be a proper close-run race. I’m going to have to stick with the Motorola Xoom, though, for the time being.
When a device has an interface that (when it eventually reaches mobile phones) has already convinced me my next phone will be Android, not Windows Mobile, then I pretty much have to favour that OS on tablets…
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