PhoneTalk

After much speculation about what HP would do with Palm, we saw today that the company has been busy as it unveiled two new webOS phones and the webOS TouchPad tablet. Perhaps the most innovative feature shown at the press conference today was the new level of synching and sharing demo'd between the TouchPad and the webOS smartphone. But first, here's a run down of the products announced:

First up is the Pre 3. It's similar in style to the Palm Pre, but is a bit more robust. The Pre 3 sports a 5-megapixel camera with flash and the ability to record 720p HD video and a front facing VGA camera for video calls, it also has a bright 24-bit display, a Qualcomm 1.4GHz processor, improved web surfing experience with HTML5 features and Adobe Flash Player 10.1 support, and even supports industry standard VPN to connect to corporate networks. There's no word on if it will be for CDMA or GSM networks. Like its predecessor it also maintains many noteworthy features such as Mobile HotSpot (share the data connection with up to 5 WiFi-enabled devices), and the phone will be available in 8GB or 16GB configurations.

Next, is the HP Veer the smallest Palm WebOS smartphone to date: it's about the size of a credit card, which makes it extremely pocket friendly. It measures 54.5 mm x 84.0 mm x 15.1 mm and weighs 103 grams. The smartphone sports a Snapdragon 800Mhz processor, 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of onboard storage, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a 2.57-inch glass display. Like the Pre 3, it has an improved web surfing experience with HTML5 and Adobe Flash Player 10.1 support, and you can share the data connection with up to 5 other WiFi-enabled devices via the Mobile HotSpot feature. It's a quadband GSM phone. Finally, the HP Veer supports HP Synergy, a way to bring together information from multiple sources across the web automatically, so the information you need is in one place.

Finally, we have the TouchPad, the webOS tablet. It's a pretty slick looking device with a nice bit of innovation included. It sports a 9.7-inch capacitive multitouch display, virtual keyboard, instant-on access, support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Snapdragon 1.2GHz dual-core processor, front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video calling, and it will be available in 16GB or 32GB configurations. Now for the smart part: Whenever you launch new activities the webOS will automatically group related cards - this makes for an extremely organized desktop. Additionally, with the Touchstone you can easily share data between the webOS phone and the TouchPad. For example, you can share a URL with the Pre3 simply by tapping the two devices together (almost like magic) or you can start reading a website or blog on a TouchPad and then tap your smartphone to take it to go.

Topics: In The Know Palm Camera Smart phones Business Use WiFi Video Apps Tablets HP News