HP TouchPad gets UK ship date, pricing
updated 11:00 am EDT, Thu June 30, 2011
Hits High Street retailers on July 15
HP has provided firm pricing and availability for its launch of its 9.7-inch TouchPad tablet in the UK. The price for the 16GB model is £399 ($640) and rises to £479 ($770) for the 32GB version. Both will be available online or from UK retailers on July 15.
THe TouchPad offers a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor, a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera, Beats audio processing, a 9.7-incvh 1024x768 screen, and Adobe Flash support. HP has packaged the tablet with some exclusive content for the UK from partners including The Guardian, Last.fm, Warner Bros. and Sky News.
The tablet's real differentiator could be that it runs webOS, the operating system that HP acquired when it bought Palm in April 2010. WebOS 3.0 is reported to provide true multitasking and an intuitive UI. However, recent reviews of the TouchPad indicate that the tablets's weight, short battery life and relative lack of apps will hinder its being able to compete with the iPad 2 and Android-based tablets.
