Personal Hands-On Review 06/27/2011

[Superjudge]

Originally Posted by IcerC

Great review that makes me fear the outcome of reviews in the near future.

Is there a music app?

Yes there is a music app. It looks like iTunes and it ran really well. It actually sounded decent through the speakers. The Best Buy guy with me was impressed.

[clevin]

Originally Posted by Superjudge

Yes there is a music app. It looks like iTunes and it ran really well. It actually sounded decent through the speakers. The Best Buy guy with me was impressed.

what do you mean "looks like itunes"?

[nappy]

Originally Posted by clevin

what do you mean "looks like itunes"?

It looks exactly like the iTunes app on iPad. The only difference is the color scheme is darker and the controls are at the bottom.

[clevin]

Originally Posted by nappy

It looks exactly like the iTunes app on iPad. The only difference is the color scheme is darker and the controls are at the bottom.

interesting, i never use iTunes on iPad, so I actually have no idea how it operates.

We will see, it may be good enough.

[nappy]

Originally Posted by clevin

interesting, i never use iTunes on iPad, so I actually have no idea how it operates.

We will see, it may be good enough.

Have you used the desktop version of iTunes? It's pretty much the same thing in terms of design.

The buttons and some of the UI elements are actually identical between the TouchPad's music player and iTunes.

[nethik]

Originally Posted by hk-usp45

What Best Buy did you go? Nordoff or Porter Ranch?

-- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums

Northridge

[nethik]

Originally Posted by SnotBoogie

I think it's a problem if the demo unit is a bad demo because that's the only thing the consumer is gonna actually use. Especially in a best buy where there are 10 other tablets right there for comparison. If i have a bad test drive i'm unlikely to buy the car.



My two questions:
1. What about the Music App and Beats Audio speakers?
People have made a big deal about it but nobody has commented on the player or the sound from Beats Audio speakers?

2. App Catalog? What's in the App catalog?


Side note regarding demos:
One glaring difference i noticed in the ipad 2 demo units and all the others at best buy like the Galaxy tab 10.1 was the ipad had stuff loaded up on it. all the others had some combination of the following, no music, no videos, no email set up, no documents, no apps. So like you'd click on email and it ask you to set up a google account. you open music and it says not music so you can't even see the app. It makes for a crappy demo. All the while the ipad 2 demos are full of music and trailers and dummy email accounts, photos, you can browse the app catalog and in many stores even install free apps. Most ipad 2 demo units are loaded with apps beyond the kinda core apps like a calender and stuff. I counted 52 apps and games on the demo unit i was using. So i noticed people using the ipad 2s much much longer then the other tablets on display like the htc, xooms, and tab 10.1. HP should take note. sounds like they have a dummy email set up so that's good. but they should have demo movies and audio and access to the app catalog as well to put the best foot forward in the small amount of time they have to grab a customer's attention.

App Catalog wasnt up and running. I played a game with audio and it sounded like any other tablet. The Beats audio would really only make a difference with a good set of earphones. My HP Envy 14's "Beats" speakers were ok, but the headphone clarity was noticeably better than on my work T510 Lenovo.

[nethik]

Originally Posted by clevin

I think its just a video. Doesn't looks interactive to me in those videos. We don't know its HD video, and its likely not, 720p is 1280x720, thats more pixel than touchpad can display.

The "Demo" played as a hybrid video with interactive buttons that loaded more videos. It was fairly high quality, but I wouldn't say it was 1080p quality.

[IcerC]

Originally Posted by Superjudge

I also noticed "lag" on the ipad 2 buts its disguised really well. You open something and it opens immediately but you can't do anything for a couple of seconds because you can't interact with a bitmap image.

That's the genius Palm should imitate! People always have to take a little time to get there bearings with an app. That bitmap image lets them do that while it's loading.

PALM/HP whatever you are, do this! < now!

[charles77k]

I played with a touchpad today at best buy. Overall its a really smooth experience. I did notice some lag here and there on certain parts of the UI. When I tapped on Just Type, it took a good 7-8 seconds for the keyboard to come up. It came up nearly instantly every time after so maybe it was because that was the first thing I did after closing the demo app. There was some jittery-ness to the email app as far as expanding the views by sliding from the bottom. I didn't experience the lag in the photos app that the op experienced when swiping from pic to pic regarding de-pixelization. Calender was good and fast. There was a wi-fi connection but I didn't get to use the browser because I by that time, I had to leave.

It had some games pre-loaded like glyder 2 hd, a childrens painting app, paratrooper hd and some others I can't really remember.

Overall impressions: Smooth iPad 2-like performance however with occasional UI lag and jittery-ness. It may sound like the lag is bad but in reality, you probably wouldn't really notice it if you've experienced any other touch only devices including android and ios.

[kkhanmd]

Originally Posted by IcerC

That's the genius Palm should imitate! People always have to take a little time to get there bearings with an app. That bitmap image lets them do that while it's loading.

PALM/HP whatever you are, do this! < now!

actually that is a pretty common knowledge among app developers almost like app developing 101.

[i2y4n]

I played around with the TouchPad for a bit. It was bittersweet.

Yes the TouchPad was laggy at times, and this was disappointing. However this was no worse than any other tablet. I was hoping it would be smoother than the iPad due to a faster processor and more ram but unfortunately that was not the case.

The plastic case did not bother me at all. It did not feel cheap. And I personally loved the feel of the smooth plastic back.

Everything else seemed pretty standard.

I paired my Pre 2 with the TP and made a call. The person on the other end could hear me fine but the TP was not loud enough to hear the person on the other line. The store was pretty quite at the time.

A lot of the features weren't available for me to test. No TTS, no facebook app, no facebook photo integration, no HP Store, no app catalog, no text message forwarding (I forgot that I could use the demo Veer to test that out).

-- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums

[IcerC]

Originally Posted by kkhanmd

actually that is a pretty common knowledge among app developers almost like app developing 101.

And yet they STILL don't implement this in WebOS??? Arrh!

Went to Walmart here in Kennesaw and the guys didn't know what the HP touchpad tablet was but were happy to say the ipad 2 is in STOCK! -_-

[hk-usp45]

Originally Posted by nethik

Northridge

What street? There's couple of BB in Northridge

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

[miles4000]

Also played with the Touchpad today and was glad to finally get my hands on it. Smooth plastic body all blacked out felt good to me. The weight wasn't that bad and I for one don't think the ipad 2 is light. It might be lighter than the Touchpad but it's not light in general. It was just booting up so it did have laggy issues at first. I'll wait to see if review units have similar issues first before passing judgement.

[mosdl]

Originally Posted by IcerC

And yet they STILL don't implement this in WebOS??? Arrh!
-_-

Actually it is possible, all you have to do is defer all the javascript loading to after the app starts.

[hrminer92]

Originally Posted by ariker01

I Although plastic can get scratched much easier and is not as strong,

That depends quite a bit on the plastic. It is easier to recycle metal and I think that's why Apple really went with it.

[nethik]

Originally Posted by hk-usp45

What street? There's couple of BB in Northridge

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

Only one Best Buy in Northridge, CA. On Tampa and Nordhoff. Other closest BB is in Porter Ranch on Rinaldi.

[Cyclingdaddy]

I guess we'll have to see it in the field to determine what the real performance is like. I think I will wait until the ability to edit Office documents is available. That piece of news was a big disappointment. I'm still waiting for that promised app on my original Pre. Hmmm...lets hope they actually deliver this time.