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HP Back In Tablet Game With Android-Based 'Slate7'
theodp writes "You know the old adage, 'Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me?' Still, even if you got bit by the HP TouchPad debacle, HP's newly-announced $169 Slate7 tablet could prove hard to resist. Specs-wise, the Slate7 sports an ARM Dual Core Cortex-A9 1.6 GHz processor, 7-inch 1024x600 HFFS screen, Android 4.1 (Jellybean), three-megapixel camera on the back, front-facing VGA camera, 8GB of on-board storage, HP ePrint, Beats Audio, and a micro SD expandable card slot. It measures 197mm x 116mm x 10.7mm thick, and weighs in at 13 ounces. It will be available in the U.S. in April. Engadget has some pics and their initial hands-on take."
Well, so far I haven't found something that beats the sound of the Kindle HD, but it is tempting to buy this thing just because it runs stock Android.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This represents the innovation we've come to expect from HP -- none at all.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Good thing it runs Android, the resolution is too low for the Windows 8 start screen.
slate 7? come on.. seriously?
i get it.. it's the size of the screen, but how many returns from clueless people expecting windows 7 on it?
that this device is always presented rear first (on both HP and Engadget). Is there something the matter with the screen?
For $99 I got a pretty decent spec tablet that runs Cyanogenmod 10 perfectly. I wish I could get bit like that more often.
Is it just me or does everyone agree with me that HP is in what one would call "a confused state of mind?"
I am afraid I am inclined to believe that this is the case especially when one closely listens to what the company's direction has been in the last few years.
Intentionally omitting question mark...
Yes, that was a debacle. Initially overpriced so that it couldn't sell then underpriced so that you got one only if you were lucky enough. HP was onto something with the Touchpad, but not everyone was enamored with WebOS. If they were smart they would have ported Android to it and sold it at a reasonable price, maybe $250-$325 range. Those of us smart enough to get one for the hardware specs knowing Android would soon be ported got a great tablet, I use mine all of the time. As far as their latest venture, due to their lack of market penetration up to this point, I doubt consumers will take their offerings seriously and further reviews may doom the device before it has a chance. Who knows, it does seem snappy enough for a budget priced tablet even if the aspect ratio sucks.
Why are the dimensions in metric and the weight given imperial units? Surely if you have some sense of what those dimensions mean you could interpret the mass of the thing in g/Kg.
Part of the problem with HP is they make an entry into a market, and its not perfect and they turn and run immediately. WebOS was a case in point, overpriced, not perfect, immediately dumped. No attempt to refine it and retry.
Here Android tablets have moved on from this, they'll need to have a few stabs at this to get it right. But they won't, they'll turn and run.
Seriously. I've tried to google, and the most informative things I find are other people asking the same question. Nowhere on the HP site does it actually say what this technology is, though they do seem to insist on putting a (tm) after every use of the term. There's a lot of marketing rubbish like "With Beats Audio(tm) on board, the richest, most dynamic sound on a laptop is at your fingertips." But nothing that actually says what Beats Audio is or does. The best I've come up with is http://tunelab.com/2012/01/09/what-exactly-is-beats-audio-update-an-answer/ - which suggests that it's just a trademarked name for a few changes as trivial as changing the headphone jack surround from metal to plastic (which most have anyway) and installing common-sense things like putting the headphone amp away from any noisy digital traces.
>even if you got bit by the HP TouchPad debacle
Do you mean HP shareholders, or the 5 people who paid full price for a Touchpad? The rest of us got a pretty good tablet at a really great price when they dumped them.
...doing the same thing and expecting a different result. To the stockholders: what could possibly go wrong?
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
What I wish from that 3Mpix rear camera is that has a autofocus in it.
I own a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7" and it has 3MPix rear camera what is very handy for many situations when you make notes or you want just to quickly record something and you don't need quality what you only get from DSLR or digital video cameras but it is terrible in situations where you would need to get closer than 30-40cm because missing autofocus. And that means as well you can not scan all 2D barcodes well.
Just give good 3Mpix camera with autofocus and it will be great for taking pictures to notes.
Burned by HP's Touchpad? Not hardly. My TouchPad dual boots WebOS and CyanogenMod 10.
It was well worth the moeny. The graphics are tremendous and the audio is soooo sweet.
Nexus 7 specs look better, but it costs a little more. Annoying they didn't put a microSD card reader in the Nexus 7. The price and the MicroSD slot make this appealing to me.
The two cameras are welcome (yea, I already have a digital camera, but there are many uses for a camera on a tablet that a stand-alone camera will not address). And the expansion slot is very important to me (important enough that I was ready to buy the Nexus on day 1 but declined when I was told to just "use the cloud"). But if there is no GPS then this is really in the class of cheap sub $100 tablets. I would live without NFC (although it is a short sighted choice to cut out this low cost feature), but not GPS. Looks like another HP tablet failure.
Also, although less important to me than the GPS, there is no talk of graphic acceleration, at least in what I read. Even some low end tablets have decent graphic power. Makes me wonder if parts of HP want this to fail.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The problem for HP, as for RIM, is that being technically right does not help to sell what for many people is a fashion item.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The press release specifically mentions Google Drive.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I'd have to get my hands on one to try it out but for $169 it's not a bad deal. Yes, the video resolution is a bit weak but it's got Android 4.1 and expandable SD storage and Beats Audio. I snagged one of the 32GB Touchpads and the audio on that is terrific. The expandable storage option alone makes it worthy of consideration.
I've tried those cheap Chinese made tablets and the touch screens on them are universally horrible. You're having to hit the same icon 3 or 4 times before it works right. On an iPad or good Android tablet you can see the difference immediately. That will be the test for the HP tablet. If it has a good touchscreen, with the proper level of sensitivity, then I think it will sell well.
If you compare it to the Nexus 7 it's got a chance. The Nexus 7 comes with 16GB for $199. You can upgrade to 32GB for $249. For about $200 (the HP tablet plus a $30 SD card) you'll have a tablet with 40GB of storage.
The downside for the Slate may prove to be the (relatively) crappy screen. The screen on the Nexus 7 is nothing short of phenomenal.
The touchpad was (and still is) a pretty nice tablet. I got three at firesale prices (one for me, two for family members) and they're all still going strong. Mine dual-boots webOS and CyanogenMod 9.
The audio quality on the touchpad was the best of any tablet I've heard and it far exceeds the audio on either of my laptops. The built-in inductive charging is awesome, all new equipment should be doing that out-of-the-box.
Don't see the point of saving a little money for some crappy customised machine. There's no problem looking at pdfs, movies etc on any Android device
I thought only Kindle Fire devices could get Amazon Prime video and Kindle Owners Lending Library in countries where available.
If the headline had ended with a question mark -- "HP Back In Tablet Game With Android-Based 'Slate7'?" -- we could simply answer "no".
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Maybe some day Android will be useable and I'll take a look at it.
Of course Slashdot is infested with people who have golden eyes
I thought GameFAQs would have a higher concentration of the best-loved James Bond game on the Nintendo 64 and Wii consoles, but whatever.
But seriously, I can clearly see the difference in text quality between a PDF in Aldiko on a friend's Kindle Fire (600p) and the same PDF in Aldiko on my Nexus 7 (800p), and I'm already 32.
The lack of a SD memory slot on the Nexus 7 isn't about saving five cents on parts
Perhaps it's about saving dollars on Microsoft patent royalties. Microsoft owns essential patents that cover FAT32 and ExFAT, the file systems used on SDHC and SDXC respectively.
Everyone know that the even-numberd Leonard movies suck.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
HP bought WebOS as part of Palm in 2010; if the Pre phone and all that had stayed under Palm's control I think it would have have done well in the market. The only thing I trust HP to do is shoot themselves in the foot and then say setting a few billion dollars on fire was somehow "strategic".
I'll be quite surprised to see HP actively supporting this tablet thing in 2015. HP doesn't blink when deciding to flush a technology or an acquisition. "Oops we did it again!" would be a fine HP corporate motto.
After owning an orphaned phone and a orphaned color laser printer (yeah, why would I ever want a 64 bit windows driver, you bastards!) I would need a pretty amazing reason to buy anything from HP.
Not sure why people feel the need to speculate to "apologize" for Google's mistakes. But the tablet uses Android and the Andriod file system for its internal flash memory. That is also a FAT system, so there is no excuse to not use an external connector. Also, Microsoft doesn't own the patent on the SDHC pinout or connector, so just adding one would incur no extra cost from Microsoft. Microsoft might get a licensing fee from some SDHC makers, but that is irrelevant. And if Google were using some different format internally then they could obviously reformat an external card to avoid the "problem" and make it a non-issue. This would have some side effects, since you couldn't easily just move a reformatted card between the tablet and your PC or your digital camera, but it would still be vastly better than no memory card slot at all.
Also note that Google came up with a $50 more expensive version that had $5 or less of extra memory. If it were a cost issue then the more expensive unit certainly could have had an expansion slot, or they could have offered a third expensive option.
No, this poor choice on the part of Google for the Nexus 7 was done to try to force users to use Google's on-line storage. Even though that may cut into Internet providers "caps" every time you watch a movie or even play music. Google is putting a lot of effort into their vision of "the cloud" and wants every way they can get to steer people to it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Sure, if my 7" tablet had GPS and I had a clean way to mount it in the car, I certainly would use it for navigation. Don't want a cell phone solution, want GPS that works when I'm out of range of my cell provider. So an Android solution that I can download the maps for wherever I expect to be would be great. Next best solution is a stand-alone GPS. I actually already have one but the maps are getting somewhat dated, and it is insanely expensive to update the maps. Better to just buy a new GPS, but that seems foolish when a good tablet could do that and so much more.
But there are plenty of things beyond just navigation that a tablet can do when it has GPS. GeoTagging pictures. Logging locations and mileage. Even reporting back its location when it has been stolen. And I doubt if all of the GPS related apps have even been written yet. Sure, if I'm buying a tablet well over $100 in price I want GPS, the current flavor of Android, Google Play access (not some crappy third party imitation that never works right) good screen resolution and decent graphics performance. A rear facing camera that can focus on things like bar codes and QR codes, as well as NFC would be nice too. If you don't care about any of these, you can buy plenty of low end Android tablets around the $50 price point. They will work OK as e-readers. I just can't see getting the HP Slate at its announced price and doing without the GPS. Even a few months later when it is closed out and sold at prices that compete with the $50 Chinese tablets I'll find myself asking if I should waste my money on one or just get a good tablet with the features that are important.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This would have some side effects, since you couldn't easily just move a reformatted card between the tablet and your PC or your digital camera
Side effects like the prospect of Windows "helpfully" recommending irreversible data loss whenever the user ends up inserting the card. In addition, it'd be capped at 32 GB, as the specification for larger cards (SDXC) appears to require the use of ExFAT.