14 DAY TRIAL // Just a few days ago, we drew your attention towards a seemingly new version of the HP Slate 8 Pro tablet which was spotted at the FCC with Android 4.4. KitKat onboard. HP appears to have already quietly launched the device.
Compared to its predecessor, the new Slate8 Pro obviously bears a few differences. The most important one is that the new slate ships with Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box, instead of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. On top of that, the slate is bundled with the NFC wireless communication functionality.
The slate can be purchased from the HP Business website for $349 / €253, as opposed to the $330 / €240 you would have to pay for the older 2013 version (via Mike Cane).
Anyway, a few days ago, on April 4 to be more specific, we spotted the slate going through the FCC, but other specifications except the presence of Android 4.4 KitKat weren't revealed by the filing.
We speculated that HP might be looking to overhaul the slate in the vein we have recently seen other brand vendors do. Multiple tablets offerings have been enhanced with the LTE functionality, including the NVIDIA Tegra Note 7 and ASUS Fonepad 7. These models have been put on display at MWC 2014 in Barcelona back in February.
Yet, it appears the only addition, except the latest Android OS version, is the NFC function. This is quite odd, as there’s no reason HP couldn't have pushed an OTA update instead for its Slate 8 Pro model, unless the company has taken the opportunity to fix some other underlying issues in the process.
Anyway, like its predecessor the new tablet has a 8-inch screen with a 1600 x 1200 resolution with 4:3 aspect ratio and draws power from an NVIDIA Tegra 4 ARM Cortex-A15 quad-core CPU combined with 1GB of RAM.
This made the original Slate8 Pro one of the most powerful tablets available on the market, but it would have been nice to see more GB of RAM onboard, so we were hoping the new version would bring more in terms of that. Sadly, this is not the case.
Other highlights of the slate include 16GB of storage, microSD card to extend, micro HDMI port, micro USB cable, two cameras (8MP on the back and 720p frontal camera), 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Miracast support. The tablet is kept alive by a 21Whr battery which promises up to 11.5 hours of life.