All manner of details about Palm's upcoming webOS updates and one of HP's imminent tablets came flooding out today. PreCentral got its hands on documents describing everything from the internal hardware to various aspects of the touch interface, and while they're not all current (the touch interface one is from sometime last year), they give more hints about where HP and Palm are planning on taking their new tablet line and revamped operating system.
The hardware plans for the 9.7-inch Topaz tablet, as described in documents from last fall, include a 1.2GHz Qualcomm MSM8660 processor, an Adreno 220 GPU, and 512MB of RAM. The screen's resolution will be 1024x768, and the Topaz will come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB sizes. The battery is rated at 8 hours, though the documents don't specify what the Topaz is doing during that time. The only camera mentioned is front-facing and sized at 1.3 megapixels, and the tablet has only three buttons: power, volume up, and volume down.
The Topaz will be available either in WiFi-only flavors or with HSPA and LTE network support, with CDMA support planned for later. HP also plans on including support for something it refers to as "Touchstone v2," which will not only allow for inductive charging but also wireless printing, audio streaming, video streaming, and wireless video game-playing via the Touchstone video dock.
The biggest news about the webOS interface is its planned addition of new multitouch gestures, which include tap and drag, tap and hold, and a two-finger tap and drag. The virtual keyboard, like that of the iPad and iPhone, will have buttons to jump between fields and to hide the keyboard. Palm is also planning a paned interface for e-mail, similar to the iPad's Twitter interface. WebOS will come with cut, copy, and paste functions as well as tabbed browsing.
As nabove, some of the documents are a bit old, so the shipping hardware and software may see some evolution. Engadget got its hands on some images of HP's other tablet, codenamed Opal, and the few details it could glean match up with the Topaz.
HP and Palm have an event scheduled for February 9, where they've said directly they will make announcements regarding their tablet line and about the future of webOS in general. Ars will be on the scene.
