So I just came back from the webOS hands on in my office and I remain as big a fan of the products as ever. I got to touch and play with the HP Veer, Pre3 and Touchpad. My brief impressions of each:
HP Veer:
Build quality is very good, better than I was expecting. It feels slightly firmer than the Pre2 as a slider and there is almost no "wiggle" between the two parts of the phone. It is small. absurdly small. I have childlike tiny hands and I still found the thing to be tiny. The keyboard is surprisingly easy to type on given that it is so very tiny, I was just using thumb tips and it went quite ok. I can not imaging doing any long text entry on it, but for a couple of words/URLs it would be fine.
the screen is small enough that I found it difficult to navigate with touch gestures. I was trying out the maps application and I found pinching in and out to zoom to be a little awkward. Readability was fine for things like email and calendar and the tinyness of the phone really would make it great to carry around in pocket. I could even see applications like the GPS exercise mapping app jogstats being better on this device as its so easy to carry around. Using it as a mobile hotspot would also be pretty sweet.
Performance was fast and I found scrolling and navigation with the device to be very responsive, night and day compared with my Pixi Plus. Overall, I would say its an interesting phone for someone who values portability and is not a heavy user. Claudia would probably like it.
I did not take a photo of it myself, but here is an image from the web.
HP Pre3:
Next up I tried the Pre3.
I have to say I have been very interested in this phone since I first saw previews of it back in Feb and I remain frustrated that there have still been no announcements for availability or pricing. Even though I work at the company, no one could give me a hint of info.
The Pre3 is so much the phone for me.... it was awesome. It met all my expectations and I am convinced that I will be getting one of these as close to launch day as possible. Please HP, give me a good discount...
Build quality was amazing. Zero wiggle on the slider mechanism and it felt super tight through the whole range of motion. The phone is just a little larger than the Pre2, but it is exactly the right amount. It was comfortable to hold, both open and closed and felt great. It is fairly much the same size and shape as an iPhone, but more rounded. Here is a blurry photo of me holding it.
The keyboard is just enough bigger than the Pre2's to feel comfortable to type longer texts and I would have no problem composing a long email on this device. I was also very pleased that the sharp edged lip around the keyboard that was on the Pre and Pre2 was gone and there was no discomfort in holding the phone.
The operating system was super fast and responsive. There were not too many apps loaded on the phone, so I was only able to play around with the stock webOS ones. Not much different than the current crop of standard phone apps, but they all ran great.
Surfing on the browser was super fast and responsive and the screen size was great. Not the best website example below due to all the white space, but hey, there was a queue waiting to have a turn on the phone.
I can't stress enough how much I liked this phone and I fully intend to have one soon. Come on HP, release this.
HP Touchpad:
This one is the "big sexy" that HP is talking about these days. The Touchpad tablet device. I was a little nervous to try this out as I had read mostly lukewarm reviews for it so far. complaints about lagginess and slow response is a recurring theme in the write ups I have read from engadget, slashgear, BGR, etc... but I wanted to see for myself.
The tablet looks nice, very much like an iPhone 3Gs blown up to 10 inches. the black plastic curved back felt good in the hand and it was a lot heavier than I was expecting. The screen looked nice and I thought the responsiveness was good. If I have a complaint, it would be that the sensitivity on the sensor to change screen orientation was too high and I found that it changed from portrait to landscape with the slightest tilt. I locked the orientation so I could play around with it and I think that is something I would feel is needed to do in everyday use.
Tablets for me represent a sort of question mark as to where they would fit in my daily routine. I have a laptop and I have a smartphone, why would I need something in the middle? I have played around with the iPad and now the touchpad and I have to say I still feel this way. It was pretty neat and fun to use, but for me was essentially a more portable web browser and email checker. Given that the cost of them is around 500 euro, I still don't see the need for one in my life. It is a fun toy, but felt like a toy.
No comments:
Post a Comment