HP TouchPad makes an awesome tablet

A year after Hewlett-Packard Co. purchased flailing Palm, the technology behemoth is rolling out the first tablet that uses Palm's webOS operating system.

The July 1 release should be a triumph for HP, showcasing its ability to compete in the increasingly crowded tablet market. Yet while the TouchPad's software is beautiful and intuitive, overall the tablet is more of a "meh-sterpiece" than a masterpiece.

The TouchPad looks a lot like its peers: It's black and shiny with just a few buttons dotting its frame. The screen, 9.7 inches at the diagonal, is the same size and resolution as Apple's iPad.

At $500 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage or $600 for one with 32 GB, the price is essentially the same, too. The device I tested used Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet; HP says a version will work on AT&T Inc.'s wireless network later this summer.

At 0.54 inches thick, the TouchPad is fatter than the iPad. It's heavier, too, at 1.6 pounds. With its rounded edges and smooth plastic, it's also more slippery than other tablets I've tested.

Turn it on, and the TouchPad looks like webOS smartphones. Thesoftware makes perfect sense on a tablet. For example: Applications appear onscreen as little "cards" that you can scroll through sideways, tap on to enlarge or flick to close. Each window you open within an application - numerous Web pages or in-progress emails, for example - shows up as its owncard in a small stack for that app, and you can rearrange them as you please.

The TouchPad has the latest version of webOS, which adds features like the ability to pull your photos from Facebook and online photo sites into the device's photo library, and "Touch to Share," which will let you share content with certain webOS smartphones.

Generally, webOS made navigating a breeze. Its layout keeps the TouchPad's home screen uncluttered, with the "Just type..." universal search function taking up a small amount of space in the center of the display and a strip of applications on the bottom of the screen.

I figured that the TouchPad's screen would be great for watching videos. I wasn't disappointed. Whether I was streaming Lady Gaga's latest video oeuvre from YouTube or checking out the old Mike Myers comedy "So I Married an Axe Murderer" on Crackle, colors popped and images were crystal-clear.

The TouchPad was also good for surfing the Web, in part because it supports Flash video content, which the iPad does not. It couldn't do everything. Here and there, a website didn't look quite right, and TV and movie streaming site Hulu would not work on it. Overall, however, websites loaded and functioned as they would on a standard computer.

The device includes a fine on-screen keyboard. I wouldn't havewritten up this review on it, but it was fine for sending emails and instant messages.

The TouchPad's battery life was decent. After streaming videos, viewing photos and surfing the Web, the tablet lasted six and a half hours with Wi-Fi on. HP said it is rated for up to 8 hours of Internet use over WiFi, or 9 hours of video playback.

One of the TouchPad features HP touts is its ability to connect with a Pre 3 smartphone to share content like webpages and videos and receive texts sent to the phone on the tablet and reply to them from the TouchPad. Though the Pre 3 is not yet for sale (it's slated for release this summer), HP lent me one to test this feature. The sharing was easy to set up via Bluetooth, and to pull up a website on the Pre all you have to do is touch its back near the bottom of the TouchPad's screen.

Sure, it's a cool idea, but I'm skeptical the feature would really get much use.

Of course, there were plenty of fumbles. Several times, I was in the middle of an IM conversation when the virtual keyboard mysteriously stopped allowing me to send text. I could type, but whenever I pressed "enter," nothing happened. I had to restart the device to fix it.

The TouchPad also seemed to stutter sometimes, like when I flipped through on-screen album covers while running other apps. And when I streamed TV shows from network websites, they would sometimes freeze. Once an incoming message notification somehow turned off the sound and I couldn't turn it back on.

The video chat feature, which I'd hoped would contend with theiPad's FaceTime, was dismal. The TouchPad has a video camera on its front and uses Skype for video calls, so I asked my colleague Peter to help me give it a whirl. But when we tried to connect, he looked pixelated and sounded OK on my end and he said I looked "like a Monet painting" and sounded crackly on his.

I tried video chatting with a high school buddy but every time we got the video to work the audio was muted. I also attempted to talk with mylittle brother, and after four or five misfires we got the video chat working but the picture and sound were awful.

Like any other tablet that wants a chance of survival, the TouchPad includes access to an application store. HP said its App Catalog will have at least 300 TouchPad apps at launch, and 70 percent of its 6,200 webOS phone apps will work on the device. Still, this is slim pickings compared to the 90,000 iPad apps in Apple's App Store (there are hundreds of thousands of apps total). And tablets running Google Inc.'s Android software can run any of the more than 200,000 apps in the Android Market.

Sadly, the TouchPad is more blah than brilliant. The software is great, though, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that HP can come up with a stronger tablet next time around.

It's finally here - LG Optimus 2X

Introduction

When a phone makes the Guinness Book of World Records, people are bound to sit up and take notice. The LG Optimus 2x holds the record for the world's first dual core smart phone. It's also the first twin core powered device to arrive on Indian shores. Powered by the NVidia Tegra 2 the Optimus 2x boasts of a formidable feature set. Naturally, expectations are sky high. Does it live up?

Packaging and Content

LG has really stepped up their packaging and the device is very neatly presented. It includes an USB based wall charger, which also doubles as the USB cable. It also includes a nice case made of felt-like material that cleans the device as it is taken out of the case.

Hardware and Styling

At 139 grams and 10.9mm, the LG Optimus is not the most slender smartphone on the market, when compared to lightweights such as the Sony Ericsson Arc and the Samsung Galaxy S II. But in no way is it a large device like the HTC Desire HD.

The build quality of device feels very premium with its construction predominated by high quality plastics.

The back of the device houses the 1500mAh battery and the 8-megapixel-image sensor. The back is covered with a rubberized plastic which gives the device a premium feel.

The front of the device welcomes the user with a glossy 4.1 -inch IPS screen (800x480) with four touch based Android keys.

The top of the device holds the HDMI port, which is covered with a neat flip-out mechanism. On the bottom end of the device is placed the USB port, which also doubles as a charging port.

On the whole, the build quality of the device is first class and matches the iPhone top to toe, but design wise it feels quite mundane and boring. It feels somewhat like a large shiny brick but is pretty comfortable to hold.


Interface

The Optimus 2x is powered by Android, just like its sibling the Optimus, but unfortunately it is running the dated 2.2 Froyo build. LG also opted to jazz up things with their custom UI which, in our opinion, does not add very much besides visual pizazz. The interface is laced with a neat looking weather widget, a calendar widget and the icons are redesigned.

We have noticed a disturbing trend in the field of Android skinning, as most manufacturers opt to redesign Android in the mold of the iOS, in an attempt to mimic the icons found on the iPhone. LG is no different and the icons look very much like those found on the iOS.

The main problem with the LG UI is that in its attempt to spruce up things it ends up as a major resource hog, making the interface slow. While swiping between the home screens we faced constant lags and the Optimus 2x did not feel like a dual-core processor powered device. Undoubtedly the UI is to blame, as the US variant, which ships without the LG UI, has received accolades for its speed.


Multimedia

The Optimus 2x is billed as a multimedia beast and luckily, in-spite of the laggy UI, it performs splendidly.

It comes loaded with a host of features such as 8-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording capabilities, an extremely vibrant 4.1inch display, Dolby audio support, 8GB of internal memory and a HDMI port.

In our testing, the camera shot sharp images but the flash had a tendency to overcook the images.  In comparison to the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, the images contained many artifacts and a lot of noise.

As far as the 1080p recording went, the device performed decently and for the most part matched up to the Xperia Arc camera, which shot at 720p. But under low light situations, the Xperia's Exmor-R technology showed its worth and though the videos of the Optimus 2x were of a higher resolution, the color saturation and overall stability of the videos were better on the Xperia Arc.

As far as audio went the built in audio player blasted tunes enhanced by the Dolby technology.

The in-built Android player also came with equalizer settings, which is an enhancement over the stock Android audio experience. For once, the LG enhancements worked in favor of the device. There was no noticeable difference in the sound quality with the bundled headphones, but the moment we engaged our Bose puppies the channel shifts were apparent.

Even the loudspeakers were pretty loud and clear - coupled with two speakers, it gave a neat stereophonic effect to the sound.

LG has also bumped up the screen for the Optimus 2x, which provides an enhanced contrast ratio and is very bright. Interestingly LG manufactures the 'Retina Display' for Apple but have not managed to catch up on the pixel density battle. The iPhone is still sharper and has slightly better contrast ratios, but all that happens in a smaller 3.5inch display.

LG recently announced the Optimus Black which has their latest 'NOVA Display' but for some odd reason they did not include it in their current flagship device.

The device is DLNA enabled, which meant we could stream our content to DLNA, powered HDTVs. This trend is catching on and the incoming Samsung Galaxy S 2 will also feature similar functionality.

HDMI mirroring was seamless and we could play games easily.

PHONE & MESSAGING

The phone aspect of the device is brilliant and there were  no issues in that, the network was strong and sound from both the earpiece and mic was excellent coming in and going out. This fact is also unlikely of an LG phone, where people often complain of network issues. The bars were strong, even while in transit, and we can safely say the device delivered more than we expected.

Messaging is simple for those with a knack of touch screens, the touch keyboard is reminiscent of design hues from the Apple iPhone keyboard, so is fairly fast and efficient, the touchscreen is responsive so you wont find yourself struggling. Whats more you can always install the various keyboards from the marketplace : Read Swype.

PC Sync and Market

As with all Android Phones, PC sync is quite painless thanks to Google's clever cloud computing strategy. All that one has to do is insert one's sim card in the Optimus 2x and sync it with one's Google account. Even the built in social networking app syncs all Twitter, Facebook and MySpace feeds but unfortunately we don't get a social aggregator which would integrate phone contacts, email and social networks all in one.

The onboard email application does a brilliant job of syncing email although this is true of all Android devices.

We also get dedicated Facebook, Twitter and MySpace apps for the Optimus 2x. However, these are not very different from the standard Android apps.

Essential Apps

Unlike the Vanilla Android experience found on the Samsung Nexus S, the LG Optimus 2x is loaded to the teeth. The sheer number of apps borders on bloat-ware.

LG has graciously included a Car Mode, which offers a 'Windows phone' like tile interface providing quick access to all major functions of the device such as phone, messaging, email and handsfree mode. This is a neat touch as many people use their devices while driving (we advise against this!) and touch screens are notorious for being difficult to use with a single hand. The large screen provides quick access to all functions. We have seen this feature before in the Google Nexus devices and, ideally, it's meant to be used in conjunction with a car dock but we are guessing many people are going to use it anyway.

LG has included the F-secure antivirus and it's a pretty good thing to have as the Android malware situation is slowly exploding into a Windows like situation. One should note that the anti-virus is a massive resource hog while it scans.

Besides Android Market, LG has provided its own app Advisor which basically helps users in selecting applications. But in no way does this app offer different content from the Android market.

Polaris Office provides brilliant document editing capabilities and it also doubles as a file manager. It handles all the Microsoft Office formats easily.

The Video player supports various video codecs such as DivX, XviD, and Mpeg-4. But unfortunately some .Avi files don't work properly. The mirror app facilitates HDMI mirroring.

Web Browsing (very good)

Browsing: Web browsing is very good, and that’s no surprise given that the operating system is provided by one of the largest web companies in the world. Pages display properly, and it’s easy to zoom in and out: just use a double-tap to quickly auto-zoom to an area of text that you would like to read. Double-tap again to zoom out. If you need to look at a small icon, use the pinch and zoom gesture to get closer as double-tap has been designed for text blocks. Even pages with Adobe Flash content work well.
Web page loading is fast too. I noticed right away, but it was even more obvious when I compared it with the Nexus S, side by side. Pages load faster than either the Nexus S or the iPhone 4 (all using WIFI). And it’s not just what you see, it’s also all the javascript that gets executed faster.
That said, once the page is loaded, the iPhone 4 tends to be more responsive to zoom and scrolling. This is something that Google definitely needs to improve upon.
Adobe Flash support: talking about Flash support,  the Optimus 2X provides a very good support for Adobe Flash. You can now go on sites that rely heavily on Flash. Although companies try to accommodate mobile phones, the reality is that all the cool stuff is on the desktop version on their website, and the simplest way to address this is to have the ability to display the desktop site on your phone. I’m not saying that mobile sites aren’t better or better suited – I’m merely describing today’s reality. Overall, it’s definitely possible to do without having Flash support as most popular services will cater to a mobile audience. But it’s nice to have Flash working when you need it. That’s simply the way it should be.


Performance

The hype around the Optimus 2x mainly involves its lightning fast NVidia Tegra 2 processor. But all is not good as currently most of the software available on Android Market is not optimized for the dual core processor.

In daily use, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc felt snappier in comparison to the Optimus 2x. The much heralded dual-core 2x performance was mysteriously missing. This is not to say the phone was slow - in-fact it was quite fast: just not twice as fast as a single core Android phone and in the case of the Xperia Arc it was struggling to keep up.

In the Quadrant test the device scored a blistering 2479 which eclipsed the Xperia Arc's score by more than 1000 points. More interestingly, in comparison to the Acer Iconia Tab it scored poorly as the Iconia smashed the Optimus 2x by more than an 1100 points. Currently all these benchmarks are subjective as they are not optimized for dual core processors.

In the Linpack test, the device scored in 35.73 MFLOPs in 1.3 seconds which was pretty impressive considering the next best Xperia Arc scored 37.93 MFLOPs in 2.21 seconds.

In the BrowserMark test, the Optimus 2x disappointed as it only managed to score 42436 while the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc was not far behind at 41076.

In the Benchmark Pi test, the device calculated Pi in 700 milliseconds which beat the Xperia Arc by a good 400 milliseconds.

Overall call quality was extremely impressive. Calls were loud and clear. Battery life was, sadly, fairly average as the phone struggled to last a day. Our usage involved constant Wi-Fi use, a few calls; web browsing, and a bit of the Wi-Fi hotspot functionality. We can hope for a Gingerbread upgrade, which might elevate the performance and battery issues.


Verdict

Lets be clear, it's not the Formula 1 car everyone thought it would be. Having said that, it's still one of the fastest smart-phones currently available. It also is running an older build of Android with a laggy LG UI running over it, which is not a good thing. Aside from that there is not much to complain about, as it is quite reasonably priced.

In a nutshell the Optimus 2x is a jack of all trades but master of none. So if you are looking for a phone which can do it all, then this is the one, but you are looking for some extra oomph then we say hold out for the Samsung Galaxy S 2.

Pros:

Fabulous Build Quality
Reasonably Priced
Feature Set


Cons:

Underwhelming Performance
Android 2.2 Froyo
LG UI
Spartan Design
Average Battery Life

Ratings:
           Performance:  3.5
          Price: 4
          Ease of Setup: 4
          Ergonomics: 3.5
          Wow Factor: 3