Somewhere the webOS experience falls well short, however, is in third-party apps. There are four sizes to choose from, each with a dedicated number row above the QWERTY, which means less tapping between layouts as on the iPad's keyboard. Text entry is via the on-screen keyboard, and HP has made the 'board resizable to suit those who prefer bigger buttons and those that like to have more of the desktop visible at any one time. Otherwise, it's an app Facebook itself could learn from. The only key things missing are Facebook Chat support and the ability to log in as the admin of a group or fan page you manage. The company – not the social network – cooked up a new Facebook app specifically for the TouchPad, with a two/three pane design that supports your wall, friends walls, messages, Places – with support for checking in and finding nearby contacts, with mapping provided by Microsoft's Bing Maps – and galleries, including the ability to upload shots directly to a new or existing album. In contrast, HP's Facebook implementation is perhaps the best we've seen on a tablet to-date. Third-party developers will be able to hook their apps and services into this Just Type system, and hopefully among the first will be Twitter, since the short message service is conspicuous by its absence. Finally, if you've logged into your Facebook account, you can set the text as your latest status. Start typing, and you see search results from email headers, contacts, browser bookmarks and history, search history and local apps, along with Google results however, you also get the option to use what text you've entered as the start of an email, appointment, memo or IM (webOS 3.0 supports Google Talk, Yahoo! IM, Skype IM, AIM and SMS, the latter requiring a webOS 3.0 phone like the Pre3 be paired via Bluetooth). There's also the Just Type bar, which looks like a regular search field but in fact opens up a range of local and online search, together with shortcuts to posting new messages to Facebook or in emails or IM conversations. It works well, but the TouchPad does look somewhat barren when there are no apps open, with its empty expanse of desktop. Rather than provide widgets or homescreen icons, webOS uses a launcher at the bottom of the screen – with space for five user-customizable apps – together with a full applications page. Closing an app involves flicking it up, off the display. HP pushes the deck idea as a way of collecting together related tasks and projects, so you could have a draft email and a few webpages in a deck as you research for a new message. This last element is far more useful when you're dealing with the 1024 x 768 resolution of a tablet panel: you can see when a new email arrives in your inbox in the card view, and even preview the sender and subject without having to tap into the app itself.Ĭards can be reordered by long-pressing and dragging them elsewhere in the horizontally-scrolling list, or they can be dropped on top of each other whereupon they convert into decks: groups of clustered cards. As on webOS phones, the TouchPad uses a series of cards to represent open apps: hit the home button and you see all of the cards arranged across the screen, each providing a live view of the app in its current state. We'd recommend reading our full webOS 3.0 review for all the details, but the highlights are the multitasking system, Just Type and the messaging and Facebook integration. The promise is more "sonic integrity" for your music, though in reality we found it generally meant somewhat louder audio, not necessarily a bad thing but hardly groundbreaking. There are stereo speakers, too, and HP has turned to Beats Audio to polish its output just as the specialists have done for certain models in the company's laptop range. Most people we know use their phone for photography, finding the act of holding up a 10-inch slate pretty counterintuitive. While that may leave it with a gap on the spec sheet in comparison to most other high-profile tablets of today, it's arguable quite how much a rear camera would actually be used on a tablet. Still, it's a bright and usable display.Ībove the screen is a 1.3-megapixel camera paired with a digital microphone HP has resisted the urge to put a camera on the back. As you'd expect from an IPS panel, the viewing angles are broad no matter whether you have the TouchPad in portrait or landscape orientation, though we did find the colors were a little more yellow than the purer whites on the iPad 2. The capacitive touch recognizes multitouch gestures and apparently has a toughened coating for easier cleaning, though it's not a Gorilla Glass panel as Samsung uses on its tablets. The display itself is a 9.7-inch LCD IPS panel with LED backlighting, matching the iPad's 4:3 aspect ratio and 1024 x 768 resolution.
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