HP announced three new WebOS devices last week, the Veer, Pre3, and the TouchPad. All three devices are stunningly sleek and enlegant while maintaining all of the features that WebOS users have grown to love.
The HP Veer appears to be positioned as the replacement for the Pixi. It’s basically a Pre that has been shrunk to the size of a credit card at 3.25″ tall. It retains the vertical slide-out keyboard and is compatible with the touchstone dock. Instead of the standard headphone jack, it has an apple-esque magnetic dock connector and comes with an attachment headphone jack and usb cable. Some of the other notable features are the inclusion of a 5 megapixel camera, Qualcomm 800mhz CPU, and 8GB of internal storage.
The Pre3 is the sucessor to the Pre2 and has been significantly upgraded. It has a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash, Qualcomm 1.4Ghz CPU, dual microphone noise cancellation for the speakerphone, 480×800 WVGA Display which is 3.58″. It also retains the vertical slide-out keyboard but is larger than that on the Pre2.
Now, on to the TouchPad. This is the device that I’ve been waiting for. I think that the table form factor is what WebOS was designed for and it’s what will make it shine. WebOS pulls off multi-tasking in an elegant, intuitive way by letting you use touch gestures to switch and close applications. It was the first mobile OS to do so and has been copied many times since. Anyhow, I digress… The TouchPad will have a 9.7″ display and a dual core Qualcomm snapdragon 1.2Ghz processor. Some other features include a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, upt to 32GB of storage, touchstone compatible, WiFi and 3G, as well as all of the usual sensors you’d find on a high-end smartphone.
All-in-all it could shape up to be an exiting year for WebOS fans out there. Though I would also have to say that HP only has one shot to get these products in the lime-light. I’ll hold off final judgement until I can get one of these devices in my hands.