More Details Of HP's Tablet PC Leaked

HP is holding a webOS event in San Francisco on February 9 entitled, "Think Big. Think Small. Think Beyond." Industry speculation about the event is centered on expectations that HP will use the conference to officially unveil its long-expected tablet PCs, based on the company's webOS operating system it got last year with its $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm.

Fox News Wednesday reported that it had updated information about HP's new Tablet PCs beyond a more complete list of specifications earlier leaked via such outlets as online Palm Pre community Web site, PreCentral.

For instance, Fox reported, the Topaz battery life has been cut to eight hours from the original 12 to 14 hours in order to keep the weight at around 1.5 pounds, which is similar to the weight of the Apple iPad and Motorola Xoom.

Furthermore, despite previous conjecture that the Topaz would come with two cameras, HP has dropped the rear camera and now offers only a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera, Fox reported.

Otherwise, Fox reported, specifications are supposedly similar to those reported by the PreCentral Palm Pre community site.

PreCentral earlier published what appears to be an internal HP specification sheet showing the tablet to feature a 1.2-GHz Qualcomm MSM8660 processor running the webOS operating system. Other features include a 9.7-inch VGA capacitive multi-touch display; 512 MBs of DDR2 memory; 16, 32, or 64 GBs of flash memory for storage; and 802.11 and Bluetooth wireless. The Topaz reportedly measures 7.5 x 9.4 x 0.5 inches.

Fox also reported that HP's development teams on Tuesday held a meeting to remind employees that anyone who leaked details on upcoming projects would be subject to being fired.

However, it may be too late to stop the leaks, assuming HP really wanted to do so.

Last month it was widely reported that HP's new tablet PCs will likely include a cloud storage offering which could be used for consumer as well as business files, as well as the ability to transmit files between a webOS tablet and smartphone simply by tapping the two devices together.

Engadget last week first showed what it called internal HP renderings of that vendor's "Topaz" 9-inch tablet PC.

HP is expected to have its tablet PCs later this year, including WiFi-only, AT&T 3G, and Verizon LTE versions of the Opal this Fall, and that the Topaz is expected to arrive earlier, Engadget reported.

HP declined to provide more information about its tablet PCs.