Defunct HP TouchPad Go Receives a Review

December 29, 2011 0 Comments

There was so much about the 7-incher HP TouchPad Go when HP decided to stop making webOS devices a few months ago so they dismissed the device. Fortunately, there were a few people who managed to get their hands with TouchPad Go prototype devices. Derek Kessler from webOS Nation was able to make a full hands on review of the product.

Let’s see some of notable points in the review:

Hardware

One may think that this 7-incher doesn’t have any difference from it’s predecessor, the 10 inch HP touchPad, aside from it’s size. TouchPad Go makes its first marked improvement over the original TouchPad by swapping out the sealed fingerprint-magnet glossy black plastic back for a removable soft-touch panel.
Up in the top right corner is a new addition on the Go – a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera and LED flash.
The beating heart of the Go is a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm APQ8060 processor – the same used in the white 64GB TouchPad and the unreleased TouchPad 4G. It’s accompanied by a full gigabyte of RAM, 16GB of storage, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and AT&T-compatible cellular radio, and a GPS chip.
The device is 13 mm-thick, which means that it matches the other TouchPad models and the original iPad, but falls short of the svelte dimensions of the competition.

Display

HP TouchPad Go has a 4:3 ratio 1024×768 screen. The end result is a tablet that’s comfortable both in portrait or landscape mode.

Cameras

Just like the ten-inch TouchPad, the Go came with one camera: a disappointing 1.3 megapixel.
The TouchPad Go is the first webOS tablet to pack a rear-facing camera. This model has 5 megapixel sensor with an LED flash slapped onto the back.

Performance

TouchPad Go packs a 1.5GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. With the full gigabyte of RAM, the Go was unsurprisingly a capable multitasking machine, easily loading multiple apps, including very heavy PDK apps.
The Go is capable of running any app available for the ten-inch TouchPads.

Audio

Like its bigger brother TouchPads, the TouchPad Go also includes Beats Audio. And like the bigger TouchPads, the speakers are actually pretty decent.

As a conclusion:

The Good

Despite having a smaller screen, HP didn’t skimp on the internals. The TouchPad Go is just as powerful, if not more powerful, than every other webOS tablet and every other seven-inch tablet.

The Bad

The TouchPad Go is actually pretty thick for a modern tablet, the cameras both are quite poor, and application support is still lacking in comparison to the competition. Oh, and it never was and never will be released.

The Conclusion

webOS 3.0 actually works at this smaller size without compromise. Seven inches isn’t the perfect size for everything, but for somebody who is traveling around a lot, the size makes a lot more sense than the bigger ten-inch TouchPad. But the fact that this tablet will never see the light of day puts a rather large damper on the party.

“The TouchPad Go will not be the saving grace of webOS, and we doubt it could have been. It’s a fine tablet for what it is, but it would have had serious trouble competing with the likes of the Amazon Kindle, Nook Tablet, and Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus”.

For the full hands on/technical review on the HP TouchPad Go including video, please visit their website.

Sources: webOS Nation, Ubergizmo