HP Plans webOS Tablet, to Launch in Q3

Not too long ago, after a series of unfortunate developments that put Palm in a very delicate position, the company announced that it was being acquired by HP. This came to pass even though Palm was originally bent on growing independently. Just days after the news, rumors that HP had decided to scrap its Windows 7 HP Slate project started circulating. Whether true or not, it seems that, at least, the PC maker isn't backing out of the race completely, if the report recently published by Examiner is to be believed.

According to rumors, Hewlett-Packard is considering the invention of a slate running Palm's webOS. This operating systems was, when first invented, meant to drive the adoption of Palm smartphones. Unfortunately for the mobile electronics maker, this did not come to pass. On the other hand, HP has enough resources to make the platform popular, resources that Palm didn't exactly have access to.

Per the report, HP will unveil a webOS platform, known as Hurricane, sometime during the third quarter of 2010. The device's specs are unknown, but it should come without the disadvantages that the HP Slate was found to possess in early reviews. While it was an interesting device, and had the wide functionality of Windows 7, the tablet was very slow. Such a flaw, of course, could have been solved with a faster CPU, but this would have dramatically affected the already short battery life. WebOS, on the other hand, does not consume so many resources and should prove quite formidable in such a mobile application.

"[The HP slate] is a really interesting device, but runs as slow as a turtle," Los Angeles industry analyst Paul Mueller says. "I think they could have had something with a faster processor, but that would have led to less battery life than the Slate already had.[...] If rumors of this tablet are true, this can be a killer device--webOS is an outstanding operating system for a tablet."