Fondling again: HP slates new tablet for April
Seven-inch Jelly Bean with Google goodies
HP has used Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as the stage to launch into the Android tablet market, with the new Slate7, a 7-inch unit based on Android Jelly Bean 4.1.
Shipping from the mobility unit headed by ex-Nokia executive Alberto Torres, who joined HP last year, the Slate7 will arrive in April (which previous experience hints means it’ll be cancelled in May and will cost $49 by June).
It’s HP’s first foray outside of the Windows tablet world since it created an accidental hit in the TouchPad, which became a cult classic after the company cancelled the product six weeks into its life and cut the price to $AUD99.
The middle-spec tablet ships at $US169, with a 1.6GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor, 1G RAM, a 1024x600 pixel display, Bluetooth and WiFi, 8GB of onboard storage plus a microSD slot, and front-and-back cameras (VGA on the front, 3.1 MP on the back).
The only particular differentiators the company highlighted – apart from price – are its Beats Audio speakers, and a native HP ePrint application that the company says supports native printing from “most applications”.
At 7” this device is keeping firmly at a distance from the 10” market dominated by Apple. In HP’s announcement, Torres provided a slim hint that other form factors are on the drawing board. ®
COMMENTS
Where is footnote 7?
And what happened to footnotes 1 to 6?
"a 10024x600 pixel display"
Surely a 10k horizontal pixel count is a record on a 7" device?
Re: Looks like a Nexus 7 clone...
Rubbish. The resolution is not everything. I reviewed an Acer A110 and Samsung GTab 2 7.0 on my website and the difference was remarkable. In fact, the Samsung edged the Nexus 7 overall despite a lower resolution
because the overall usability of the tablet.
Until you get the HP in your hands, you won't know if the screen is rubbish, but spec does not dictate everything.
The same goes for the processor. The GTab2 had a dual core 1GHz processor and it largely worked very well. HP has a 1.6 dual core which will not shed a tear running a screen at that resolution and screen size. If this is packaged in a solidly built device then it will sell.
Re: Looks like a Nexus 7 clone...
If that's all you want, get an Ainol-Novo for less than half the price!
