A hidden gem?
We might be seeing a couple of important debuts if, as leaked, HP launches the Topaz tablet at the imminent Mobile World Congress show.
Precentral.net got hold of a slide deck that looks pretty convincingly like an internal HP briefing document on a tablet device called the Topaz. This launch will be a very big deal for HP as we're confident tablets are at least as important a use for its Palm unit as smartphones.
HP has wrestled with the tablet form factor for a while and, we suspect, the acquisition of Palm was catalysed by Microsoft's inability to produce an OS that would allow it to compete with Apple in the tablet space. While HP could have waited for Android, it just so happened a highly-regarded mobile OS was on the market at the time, so HP snapped it up.
According to the leak, the Topaz has a 9.7" XGA 1024 x 768 screen, webOS (of course), up to 64GB storage, a front-facing camera and compatibility with version 2 of Palm's Touchstone inductive charging system. Also, the spec list identified the SoC as Qualcomm's Snapdragon MSM 8660, which has dual 1.2GHz Scorpion CPU cores and Adreno 220 graphics.
This could well be the first device to openly acknowledge running the MSM 8x60 (the 8260 is essentially the same, but with different wireless connectivity technology), which Qualcomm has been talking up for some time. It's also rumoured that the ASUS EeePad MeMO runs this chip, although ASUS has been reluctant to confirm that to date.
