I was disappointed that the Smart Cover doesn't affix magnetically to the back of the iPad 2; it only does so to the front. The TouchPad has no equivalent capability, and it's too early to see what kinds of cases third parties will come up with.
But be careful -- the induction area is small, so you have to place the TouchPad in horizontal orientation with speakers down for the tablet to charge. Each Touchstone charging dock also has a unique ID, so you can set different default Exhibition mode displays when the lock screen is engaged for each of your docks.
For example, you might have your dock at work display your calendar and your dock at home display your photo. A related capability enabled by Touchstone is what HP calls Touch-to-Share: Rest a compatible WebOS smartphone on the TouchPad to register its presence, and the devices use a Bluetooth connection to share the current meaning full-screen Web page, text message, or phone call automatically after they've been paired, which you do once.
HP has no smartphones available yet that support Touchstone syncing, though it did lend me a prototype to show that it works, which it does. I'm not convinced that this is more than a "oh, cool" feature that would quickly fall into disuse once the novelty wears off.
For example, touching a smartphone to the tablet to take a phone call or read a text message requires a lot more effort than just using the phone, which you need to have on you anyhow. For Web pages, it's hard to envision the meaningful utility in this sharing until Touch-to-Share is available in other shipping devices for testing in a more real-world context.
I suspect the sharing capabilities of Touch-to-Share would be more useful if you didn't have to make the physical connection -- a feature similar to Mac OS X Lion's AirDrop that allowed you to initiate syncing over the air would be welcome. Currently, the TouchPad has no video-out capabilities, due to lack of adapters. That means you can't use it for presentations -- a big deficit for sales, marketing, and other business users.
Apple's keyboard is the same one you use for a Mac, so it has no iPad-specific keys, whereas the HP model has keys for showing all active cards and hiding the keyboard. On an iPad, you can't access formatting shortcuts for text, such as to apply bold.
It's unclear whether the HP keyboard supports such formatting as there are no TouchPad apps that call on those capabilities. Both keyboards have a nice crisp feel, and they are equally slim, solid, and light, with well-sized keys. I found the iPad 2's screen a little easier to read -- both in sunlight and in office lighting -- than the TouchPad's screen, which suffers from excessive reflectivity.
I also found myself angling the TouchPad slightly to reduce the reflection, which made typing less accurate. The iPad 2 and the TouchPad both use the old-fashioned ratio, which is more comfortable for browsing and for most apps than the widescreen displays on Android tablets. Although the iPad 2 offers a front-facing camera for videoconferencing and a rear one for taking pictures and capturing video, the quality of still photos and movies are not that good: The camera seems to be the same, poorly regarded model used in the latest iPod Touch.
The iPad 2's camera also lacks a flash and support for high-definition range, both of which the iPhone 4's camera does support. Apple hasn't released the camera's megapixel rating, but my photo-editing software pinned it as a measly 0. The iPad 2's camera does perform better for motion video, taking decent p, 0. The TouchPad has only a front-facing, 1.
It too is adequate. The TouchPad and the iPad 2 are equivalent in quality when it comes to audio output, despite the fact the iPad 2 has a single speaker and the Galaxy Tab has two. To get stereo-quality audio, connect either tablet to a stereo using the audio jack or, in the case of the iPad 2, stream music wirelessly to an AirPlay-compatible device.
The winner: The iPad 2 is clearly a better piece of hardware than the TouchPad. Its design is more elegant, it's lighter, and above all it's faster. In terms of peripherals, the TouchPad's inductive charging is nice but not essential, whereas the lack of rear camera and options for video-out are clear disadvantages. The differences between the iPad 2 and the TouchPad matter, with the TouchPad offering several innovative WebOS capabilities such as Synergy, Just Type, and Touch-to-Share, but falling short in its workaday apps, which cover just the basic reqiurements in many cases.
The iPad 2 has more capabilities overall, and they're mostly well designed and well integrated into a strong ecosystem of product and services that is really hard to match. As a result, I can't imagine anyone choosing a TouchPad over an iPad. There is speculation that iPad 2 will add a camera, in part to support Apple's FaceTime video calling.
TouchPad: initially only Wi-Fi The dual-core Qualcomm chip may give TouchPad a performance edge, though Apple's custom A4 wowed reviewers with its speed when the iPad was unveiled. A year later, it's still not too shabby. The iPad 2 is expected to have an upgraded processor, though opinion is divided over whether it will be dual-core.
Apple rates the iPad's battery life at 10 hours; which accords with the experience of many users. HP hasn't yet released information about battery life for its tablet. HP acquired webOS when it bought Palm in , and accelerated development of a tablet device running the OS first introduced in the Palm Pre smartphone.
The UI was well reviewed on the Pre, although the phone failed to catch consumer interest or dollars. Early and necessarily sketchy assessments of the TouchPad are generally favorable about the smoothness of the webOS user interface, the way the battery of core applications fully exploit the touch interface, and the integration with an array of social networking and other Web-based services.
That question, HP says, is missing the point. Kerris said that HP's real mission was to target the enterprise space, not just the consumer sphere. That's a very different approach from other tablet competitors, who have across the board positioned their tablets as the devices that will dethrone the iPad. That, of course, hasn't happened. It's refreshing to see HP take a different approach to the tablet market.
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