Palm tablet rumors– the future looks good

The good folks over at engadget.com got some info from an anonymous tipster, on Palm’s soon to be announced tablets. Supposedly, the tablets will be offered in two sizes. The Smaller of the two dubbed the Opal, will be roughly the size of the 7 inch android tablets currently available. It’s bigger sibling, the Topaz (I hope that’s not a production name, HTC would be happy to alert the lawyers,) will be around the size of the iPad. This is a wonderful strategy, now there will be no more arguing as to what size is best. Now you have a choice!

The tablets are always rumored to have some very innovative features, such as HP’s new Beat audio processors and some cloud implementation for data. Also mentioned is some sort of data transfer from the tablet to the phone by simply touching the devices together, wow!  Its hard to really comment on these features, as they haven’t been officially announced, but these are some killer features for sure!

And then there is rumors of the tablets having touchstone docks. For those of you who are not familiar, touchstone is pretty much wireless charging for the device. Simply placing the device on the dock does the job. Its been a really neat feature for the WebOS phones, and is great to see it on the tablets.

But what does this mean? Well, I’ve been a long time fan of palm. Up until Microsoft showed up and ushered them out the PDA business. When the WebOS was announce, I was as happy ever, but lack of decent hardware kept WebOS from the glory it deserved. I believe these tablets will give Palm (I refuse to say HP) the chance they need to get it right! The tablet game is a mess right now. Android tablets are sloppy but have the perfect specs and size. The iPad is too big at times, a little heavy but is designed beautifully and defined what a tablet should be to perfection! Windows 7 tablets are a disaster until proven different. If you take a look between each, you’ll find a lot of room to exist.

Palm should have no problem sliding in the tablet market and proving themselves. If you’ve ever used a WebOS device,  you would know Palm is in the best place to be a serious rival to Apple’s iPad. I would even argue, WebOS on a tablet would offer more ease of use than iOS4. I guess we’ll have to way and see, Palm is set to make their announcement on February 9th.

[ Engadget ]