HP Palm Topaz tablet specs leak: 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon, and 8 hours of battery life

HP will very soon be unveiling its first webOS tablets since it bought Palm last year, and some renders were already leaked. The HP Palm Topaz is one of them, and is expected for announcement on February 9th. Its specs have leaked from HP, and are actually very 2011, beating a lot of slates still waiting to happen.

First off, the screen - a 9.7" IPS-LCD affair, with 768x1024 pixels of resolution, and something called "EZ-clean" coating - oleophobic we guess. While the display is what we have on the first generation iPad, down to the last pixel of resolution, the chipset is dual-core. A 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8660 will be powering the HP Palm Topaz, and we can't say we are not grinning with delight here - this silicon should be blazing fast.

It allows for 1080p Full HD video recording, but the Topaz is lacking a rear camera, just 1MP front-facing one, which kind of defeats the dual-core purpose, but we are not fond of carrying around a 10-incher for shooting video anyway. For multimedia the slate also carries Beats stereo audio speakers, and a standard 3.5mm jack. The lack of HDMI port is a relative disappointment.

The connectivity options seem to come in two versions - one with just Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, while the other is adding a SIM card slot for 3G, and a GPS radio as well. LTE version is coming further down the road. Another restriction is the lack of memory card slot, but the slate comes with options for 16, 32, and 64GB of flash memory.

The 512MB RAM is desktop-grade DDR2, and, considering it is running the light and efficient webOS, HP claims 8 hours or more of battery life from the 24WHr juice pack. The inductive charging magic will be available for the HP Palm Topaz, as well as something called tap-to-share, which will allow you to sync the slate, share and stream multimedia through the Touchstone v2 dock. The feature includes streaming video to your TV, with the Topaz acting as a remote when you take it out.


The estimated weight is the decent 1.5 pounds (700g), and the slate measures just 0.55" (14mm) thick. It doesn't look bad at all, and, considering HP's world-class supply chain, the company might have even been able to negotiate great component and logistics deals to pass onto us consumers as powerful, but affordable tablets. We should know very soon. The specs sheet is from the fall, so there could be more surprises in store for us in the final version. What do all Palm fans think, does that already sound like a noble comeback to you?

source: PreCentral