HP TouchPad may not be in the news as often as it used to be when everyone learned that it has reached a price tag of $100, but at least there are some guys out there working tirelessly to bring Android to it. Lots of progress has happened and finally we can say that the touchscreeen works, that being the biggest problem faced by the TouchPad till now.
Up until now, the tablet ran Android 2.3.5 and the efforts have been attributed to Team TouchDroid, whose multitouch drivers work perfectly. The TouchPad now detects up to 10 input points at the same time, which is too much for most apps, but still good to see. There’s proof in the video below, if you want it and an Android TouchPad is as close to reality as it gets.
It’s nice to see that HP didn’t make any statement on this, neither pro or con as far as Android porting goes. Working WiFi and audio are not certain yet for this build, but the guys are still working on it, so worry not. The final result will be a dual boot TouchPad, most likely with webOS and Honeycomb.
After HP took the price of the TouchPad tablet down to $100, many saw this as an opportunity to get the cheapest Honeycomb tablet of the moment. How? By paying the price for the TouchPad and porting Android 3.x on it. Well, this has been taking place for days, with results being unstable builds so far.
An example of a pretty successful port is the dual boot into Android 2.3.5 and webOS from the video below. This shows the operating systems working on the TouchPad and there’s already a team fully dedicated to this purpose: Team Touch DROID. For the dual boot to take place, the device must be connected to a PC in order to receive the commands you enter manually.
Team Touch DROID wants to enable touchscreen and hardware acceleration for Android, to enhance the experience provided on this model. The development has been going smoothly, considering they started a week or so ago and a version for the general public is expected soon enough. The question is: do you prefer dual boot or straight Android 2.3.5? And what about Honeycomb?
HP has been going back on forth about the TouchPad tablet so much, that it’s getting confusing and even annoying for someone trying to make a purchase these days. After killing the entire project and then offering refunds for the buyers, the creators of the TouchPad are now preparing a fresh and limited batch of the product.
Is this a sign that Best Buy’s 200k units are sold? Or should we get that HP is accepting failure and the likely Android port that everyone will want on the $100 slate? What’s sure is that HP promised that within the current fiscal year, ending on October 31st we’ll see a fresh batch of products being delivered.
I’m curious if they’ll sell the product for $99 once more, considering recently I saw some units priced for a couple of hundred quid, available by mistake in the UK. One good way to make a buch these days is buy a cheap TouchPad and upgrade it with Android, then sell if for profit. What do you say? It appears that HP wants to make good with its component suppliers, that’s why it’s ordering more units, considering the leftover parts.
HP continues to follow a confuse path, so after offering refunds for the purchased HP TouchPad units at full price and selling the device all new for $99, now they offered the full priced units again. Not knowing what to make of this, we followed the story and learned from The Inquirer that actually new and bigger prices were put up by error.
Of course, this angered a lot of consumers, who were hoping to pay 89 quid for the slate, instead of the recent 399 quid price tag that popped up by mistake. While the shops in the UK list he TouchPad as sold out, there’s always the option of getting one from eBay, although you’ll pay a hefty amount for it. Look on the bright side: you might purchase a unit that already has Android ported on it, since the community is working on that as we speak.
And what’s the deal with HP announcing that they will most likely not sell any more TouchPads and Pre 3 units in Europe, or at least not with their cut prices? Is this for real? Why this discrimination against Europeans?
One must live under a rock if he isn’t aware of the fact that barely days ago HP cut the price of its beloved (and dead) TouchPad tablet to $99. Considering the 200k units left over at Best Buy and who knows how many more remaining on stock out there, HP stands to lose big money. $400 million is the real number here, caused entirely by the price cuts.
HP is not only losing money on the basic tablet version, but also on the 32GB one that retails for $149. Also, they’re offering refunds to the people who bought the devices with the original prices. Canada and Australia are also supposed to get price cuts, as does the UK, where the 16GB model is found at 89 quid at Currys and Dixons.
What’s really bad here is that a 16GB TouchPad costs $306 to make or $318 for the 32GB more, so HP is selling them for big losses. We remind you that last week HP announced that they will give up webOS devices, sell off the PC business and buy enterprise search company Autonomy. This news comes a year after HP bought Palm specifically for the webOS platform, that it has now killed… Such a pity, since this OS had great potential.
People can’t seem to get over the whole HP thing, so the killed webOS and TouchPad made the product more popular than its maker could have ever imagined. And what about those devices that HP also had in the making? Stuff like the 4G TouchPad and the 7 inch Opal tablet…
A 7 inch HP slate crafted following the feedback of the people who praised or hated the TouchPad would have been great. Just look at how well the BlackBerry PlayBook was received, well not that well, but still better than the TouchPad. One might argue that it lacks contacts and email, but imagine a unit without being crippled by these aspects… The Opal would have been really great.
What’s really interesting is that gdgt.com is reporting that HP’s QA team had a production-ready model of the Opal tablet available and ready for debugging. Also, this model popped up at the FCC not so long ago, ready for AT&T release in 16GB and 32GB flavors as the TouchPad Go. I guess we’ll never get to know how the 7 inch unit feels in the hands of the consumer… which is really a pity, especially considering the fact that the 7 inch segment doesn’t really have a catchy product yet.
It just so happened that I had a chance to review the HP TouchPad in these troubled times for its maker… You might already be aware of the fact that HP decided to quit working on webOS, the TouchPad and Pre models, putting an end to Palm’s initiatives. Well, this makes the TouchPad slate a museum piece and I’m here to review it for you.
The flaws are there, of course, but there are some points where the tablet wins and it’s certainly a pity that it got discarded like that. For starters, the measurements are identical to the ones on the iPad, albeit this device is a bit heavier, at 740 grams. TouchPad measures 14mm in thickness and comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core CPU at 1.2 GHz frequency.
Other specs include 16/32GB of internal memory and a 9.7 inch XGA capacitive multitouch display with 1024 x 768 pixel resolution, that greatly reminds me of the iPad’s screen. This is a very responsive display, that’s probably one of the main advantages of the product. As far as connectivity goes, you get WiFi, Bluetooth, A-GPS on some models and the unit I tested had a loose slot that was unable to close and I’m guessing it was the microSIM card slot or something, since I couldn’t fit my regular SIM inside.
The battery on the slate is a 6300mAh unit, that lasted for very reasonable amounts of time, even reaching 8-9 hours at some point. Too bad it takes a very long while to charge. What I didn’t like about the TouchPad is that it copies the volume button design from the iPad and that its Home button is very tough to find, since it’s too well incorporated into the tablet. One other drawback is the hugely glossy case at the back, a fingerprint magnet and this also applies to the display, that’s got huge glare. And did I mention that the TouchPad has no back camera?
And now we move on to webOS 3.0, the platform that was killed by HP last week… This OS relies on swipe gestures, from bottom to top of the window, in order to minimize windows. The whole concept of the operating system is a deck of cards, that are placed on top of each in the case of a single app. For example the email app gets new email on top of it, while the new tab in the browser does the same. To eliminate a “card” you simply swipe up. The problem h ere is the huge lag: the bootup of the TouchPad takes about a minute and a half, the app store takes a lot to start, each app takes a bunch of second to get going and so on…
If it weren’t for the lag and for the immense gap in useful apps in the HP’s app store, this product would stand. Now at $100 in most stores and with people getting refunds for purchasing a $600 unit, this model has absolutely no future. Maybe a collector or HP fan would find a use for it… This is just sad, since the biggest PC maker in the world doesn’t have its own successful tablet any more. One of things I really liked about this slate was its virtual keyboard, that was very easy to type on, although it remembered me of the one on the iPad quite a lot, just like its music player, a total iPod clone.
You must be aware of the fact that HP decided to give up on the future of the TouchPad tablet and all webOS devices for that matter. Well, this was bound to affect prices, so here we are with a 16GB TouchPad supposed to cost $99 or $149 for the 32GB one. Liquidation anyone?
The prices will apply from August 20th in Canada and the special offer will be reaching the US tomorrow. Best Buy and Future Shop are among the retailer with such cool offers, however they only list it up to August 22nd. What’s really strange and seems a nonsense is the apparition of the white 64GB edition TouchPad on HP’s US site, with a $600 price… what can you make of this?
In case you forgot, Best Buy recently found itself with at least 200k unsold TouchPad units and must get rid of them. I say… wait for it and get the device for a better price! Or maybe HP will decide to give its huge network of employees a tablet or two… Anyhow, there’s more bad news: AT&T wants to completely cancel the launch of the Pre 3.
Remember the story about the 250k HP TouchPad units, most of them left unsold? Well, that’s happening for a reason, that being the lack of quality of the product. HP figured that out and decided to end the life of webOS and quit making tablets for a while…
HP will discontinue operations for webOS devices, mostly for phones and the TouchPad tablet. We can’t help but wonder what will happen with the 4G TouchPad and the 7 inch model that the US company was preparing. Meanwhile, as CEO Leo Apotheker details the situation and confirmed lowered revenue estimates, it seems HP is in talks with Autonomy Corporation, for a potential buyout.
The future of the company is at stake these days and it seems that it will take HP 12 to 18 months to explore options, with the most likely future being in the software biz, rather than Personal Systems (PCs, mobile devices, storage). There’s still hope for the original platform that webOS was, among which there’s licensing, for companies interested to take over.
Well, HP is not doing so well and maybe getting into the tablet biz has been a bad idea… Especially since we’ve just heard that Best Buy had a total stock of 270,000 HP TouchPad units and it only sold…. 25,000. And we thought that the BlackBerry PlayBook was in trouble!!
Also, Best Buy seems to be asking for a refund, since it’s left with so many units. What will HP do with the hundreds of thousands of tablets left? Maybe they’ll give them to employees, since they have so many… Walmart, Micro Center and Fry’s are experiencing the same problem. Experts say that people who learned about the recent $50 and $100 discounts are probably waiting for further price reductions.
Yeah, I’m sure that’s the problem… That and the lag, 1.15 minutes of boot time, the uninspired OS and the lack of applications in the store offered by HP. Add to that the dead OS and the lack of originality in design. Would YOU buy a TouchPad?
HP TouchPad may not be in the news as often as it used to be when everyone learned that it has reached a price tag of $100, but at least there are some guys out there working tirelessly to bring Android to it. Lots of progress has happened and finally we can say that the touchscreeen works, that being the biggest problem faced by the TouchPad till now.
