HP’s first foray into the tablet market, the TouchPad, will be hitting Canadian retail on July 15. Running on webOS, the mobile operating system HP took over when they acquired Palm, the TouchPad is expected to be a solid competitor to the iPad, PlayBook and Android-based tablets flooding the market.
U.S. consumers will be getting the TouchPad on July 1, so we’ll be two weeks behind here. Pricing is actually on the same line as the iPad at $519 for a 16GB Wi-Fi-only version, and $619 for the 32GB one.
I was on hand when HP unveiled the TouchPad in San Francisco back in February, and I wrote about webOS at the time. I could see that the device had plenty of upside, more so because with webOS, HP has something that is as intuitive as Apple’s iOS but with some extra clever features that people will probably like.
I’m going on record here and suggesting that multitasking on webOS is better than anything out there in the mobile space right now. Stacking relevant open pages from different apps on top of each other is a great to keep things organized. And if you’ve used a PlayBook and liked the way you could flick up an open app or page to close it, you should know that webOS was doing that over two years ago.
HP is also saying that including Beats Audio (of Dr. Dre fame) technology into the tablet should also make it sound better. We’ll see soon enough.
The Touch to Share feature will also be cool for those who will have a webOS phone, like the upcoming Pre3, because you just lay the phone on top of the TouchPad, and they can share information between each other. Might not be so bad for Apple, Google and RIM to consider doing something like that.
Canadian retailers haven’t been announced yet, but don’t be surprised if you see this one for preorder at Future Shop soon.
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