The HP TouchPad’s is the epitome of tablets in 2011. It has the design, the guts and the user interface of a true champ. It’s even better than the Apple iPad because it beats it at its own game — blending elegance and emotion with functionality. The TouchPad takes functionality to a whole new level.
Design
The TouchPad is slim and it has a glossy finish. It’s got a gorgeous 9.7-inch XGA capacitive, multitouch screen with a vibrant 18-bit color and a 1024×768 resolution. It also has a 1.3MP front facing camera and internal stereo speakers with Beats Audio™. A well thought out design.
Guts
The TouchPad performance is awesome. Way better than anything we’ve seen on Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets — that’s the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy 10.1. It has a snappy Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-CPU APQ8060 clocked at 1.2GHz. Each core is faster than the processor on any tablet released in 2010 and there are two of them! It is the best performing tablet yet.
User Interface
The UI is what sets this tablet apart more than anything. It’s beautifully done and very well thought out. The ‘cards’ and ‘stacks’ and especially the notifications all make for an unparalleled experience. The integration of services like Twitter and Facebook is deep — the experience feels more complete than anything. I’ve embedded a video demo posted by HP to show you what I’m talking about after the break.
WebOS Think Beyond Event
UPDATE 2019. I’ve inserted AnandTech’s review from back in the day by Anand himself no less. The tablet was ahead of it’s time. A lot of the features in there are what we see in design now — No physical home button, gestures etc. Oh well.
Since the beginning of time I’ve been searching for a device to
replace paper. The problem with paper is that I use a lot of it. A whole
lot of it. For performing a quick calculation, jotting down some notes,
making a quick sketch etc., paper is the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to get that done. But there are several problems with paper.
Paper occupies physical space. I have so much paper lying around
everywhere in the form of notebooks and refills and random scraps of
paper it’s crazy.
That brings me to another problem. Managing all of this paper. One
can form only so many stacks and each stack can only be so high. The
result is that I can never find anything and I just have to dispose of
the older stuff. It’s all quite depressing.
A few years back, I got the HP iPaq 211 PDA. That was my first serious paper replacement contender. With a 4″ resistive touch screen that has a 640×480 resolution and Windows Mobile 6.0 , I thought it was perfect. I got the ultimate writing app too – PhatPad (shown below).
HP iPaq 211 – PhatPad
Soon I realised it wasn’t quite what I thought it would be. While it is very responsive, the screen size, 4 inches, is just too small for writing stuff. You will notice also that the edges of the screen are raised creating a barrier around it that shrinks the writing space even more. The app is also pretty slow when it comes to flipping pages and awkward when changing colors or undoing something. The same goes for other apps too. It does have character recognition software that can turn written notes into text but that’s not the point. So the iPaq didn’t deliver what I was looking for.
The Apple iPad – Penultimate
Then Apple announced the iPad. As soon as I heard the iPad was coming, I knew I had to get one. I thought the iPad combined with a stylus would be the combo I’ve been waiting for. I have most of the popular and not so popular notes apps on the market. From Penultimate to Noterize to Note Taker HD to Note Hub to Use Your Handwriting Gold (UYH Gold). I got ’em all. Of the 500+ apps that I have installed on my iPad, a good number of them have something to do with notes. I also got a capacitive stylus early on. Unfortunately, although the apps are top notch, the accuracy of a capacitive screen/stylus is really low. These devices are designed for finger use and not for pen input. I use the Apple wireless keyboard more than I do the stylus now.
The NoteSlate
I believe the solution is finally upon us. The NoteSlate is it. Here’s a break down of the features:
Basic Characteristics
– REAL PAPER look design (pictured at the top of the page)
– ONE COLOR display (Optional multi-color display?)
– ONE TOUCH ability just with pen / eraser
– 210x310x6mm thin body
– 13 inch matte monochrome eInk display
– 190x270mm active display, 750x1080pixels
– 180 hours battery life (almost 3 weeks of daily work !)
– 280 g weight !
– basic inputs: pen with eraser, USB mini, SD Card, Jack 3.5 mm, AC/DC 12V
– Wi-Fi module on request with order (no added charge (!))
– no web browsing !
– end price $99
– ONE POINT OF SALE – NoteSlate online e-store
The highlights are 3 weeks battery life and the 13″ e-ink display.
It’s flat like a paper notebook with no raised edges. It runs custom
software so it’s probably not going to have performance issues. If
you’ve seen e-ink eBook readers like the Kindle or the Kobo reader, you
can appreciate the quality that e-ink technology offers. It’s very close
to paper quality clarity. That, together with a stylus and high screen
sensitivity and accuracy can make for the ultimate paper replacement.
This thing is not like the feature rich tablets that we have today.
It’s bare-bones simple yet powerful. The perfect paper replacement. Lets
just hope it doesn’t remain vapourware. It’s set for release in June
2011.
The Symbian OS is powerful. Extremely powerful. There’s nothing that
you can’t do on Symbian that you can do on the other platforms. The same
can’t be said about the other platforms. Allow me to illustrate.
iOS is not open, there’s no secret about that. Although Apple is becoming more flexible on the kind of apps you can use on the iPhone, there are still a lot of things they don’t allow. That is why the jail-breaking scene is so huge – it allows you to do some simple to complex things that Apple won’t allow. From turning the phone into a WiFi hotspot (coming soon in iOS 4.3 maybe?) to displaying more info on the lock screen or transferring files via Bluetooth – features that have been available on Symbian devices either out-of-box or through apps for ages. We often take these features for granted. It’s when you don’t have them that you realise the central role they play in your mobile experience.
On to Android, the new kid on the block. Just after I got my
Android phone, my first after a series of Symbian devices, I noticed
something quite disturbing. The APN settings were not copied from the
SIM card/carrier or where ever they come from! This NEVER happened with
any of my previous Symbian devices from both Nokia and Samsung. Even the
ones I imported from around Asia and Europe. I had to go through many
hours of searching and trying deferent combinations until I got it
right. So much for first impressions. So, you just got an Android phone
with a front facing camera. You should be able to make regular video
calls over 3G right? Wrong. Android doesn’t support the standard
protocol. The same protocol that’s on many feature phones from
many manufactures! You have to get apps like Skype or something – major
bummer because if like me, you had a deal with your carrier for
free/subsidised 3G video calls, you’re out of luck.
On both Android and iOS, data can be used without warning. For the
first time I’ve had to get a data plan for my phone. With Symbian,
there’s a pop-up with options to choose the network to connect to when a
connection is needed. There are no services that use data in the
background unless you allow them to, i.e, you have more control.
The connectivity on Symbian is unrivaled. From Bluetooth connectivity
(v3.0 on the N8) for headsets, keyboards(Android lacks this) and file
transfer(iOS anyone?), to the FM radio(iPhone again) and FM
transmitter(both lack it), there is no competition. Some older Symbian
devices even have Infrared ports(like the legendary n95).
The Symbian touch UI is probably one of the most complex on the
market. People who hate it probably don’t know how to use it. There’s
also an advantage to it – if you can use a Symbian touchscreen phone
then you can probably use any touchscreen device that has and will ever come out without reading the manual!
There are some major kinks that Nokia/Symbian need to work out on the UI front though. If they are able to sort that out in a huge way, Symbian will become/remain the top smartphone OS of them all.
Maybe 60 years ago the headline was Colour TVs? Come On, Really? And a few years before that it was Sound In Movies? Come On, Really? But seriously, come on, really? My point is, 3D at the movies and especially 3D in the home, hasn’t really taken off. What gives them the impression that it will work on mobile phones? Google certainly doesn’t support 3D in Android yet and there aren’t many apps(if any) that have anything to do with 3D in the Android Market.
LG Optimus 3D
LG is going to unveil the worlds first full 3D smartphone capable of 3D photography and video recording at Mobile World Congress(MWC) 2011. The phone also features a glasses-free LCD 3D display. The thing about 3D is that it’s not everywhere. Where are you going to view these movies and photos? On your phone’s ~4″ screen only? On the 3D TV that you probably don’t have yet? Granted, there are some 3D TVs, photo-frames and laptops on the way and already on the market, but they cost a lot. This 3D phone is like an invitation for an expensive ride that’s going to crash.
It’s future proof though, right? Not even close. First, there’s
no guarantee that this 3D phone thing will take off. We might remember
it as one of the great flops of 2011. Second, 3D hasn’t really been
standardised. So the kind of 3D that this phone produces and displays
may not be the one used by everyone else, making it redundant.
The ultimate questions are, does a 3D user interface have advantages
over 2D interfaces to justify the price? Are videos or pictures that much better? Like the difference between black/white and colour, SD and HD, day and night?
Phone screens are small and you interact with them; tap, flick,
swipe, long press etc – effectively obscuring your view of the display
partially. They are also flat; 2D with a width and a height. Introducing
depth in the UI without extra screen real-estate is a formula for
disaster. Unless it’s just a cosmetic change and that makes whole thing
pretty pointless.
3D phones are a gimmick not worth paying for. I wonder when coffee
making holography phones are going to be announced? It’s about time!
