The flood of tablets appearing can leave one jaded at the sameness of them all, with the exception of the HP TouchPad that is not shipping yet. I spent a couple of hours with the TouchPad in February, and it left me wanting more. The interface is perfectly designed for the tablet screen, while intuitively complementing the task at hand. This is one tablet I am pretty sure I’ll be buying, and until that is possible I’ll have to make do with this demonstration of WebOS 3.0 that was made using the developer emulator by preCentral. Take a look and you’ll understand why I am getting impatient to see the TouchPad released.
The interface areas of particular interest to me are demonstrated in this video. The superb webOS notification system has been updated for the bigger tablet screen and is useful without getting in the way of whatever you might be doing at the time. The onscreen keyboard looks as good as anything on tablets currently on the market, even better when you notice you can select from three sizes of the keyboard to fit your personal preference.
This is only an emulator so it doesn’t do justice to what we will see on real devices like the HP TouchPad, but it’s a good look at the sheer usability of the OS. Throw in the special functions that HP demonstrated with the hardware, and this is the upcoming tablet to beat.
