Hewlett-Packard (HP) unveiled on Wednesday a new line of tablets that will allow the company to cater to a multitude of markets, the most remarkable of which is the HP Pro Slate 12, a 12.3-inch tablet designed to take on Apple's long-rumored iPad Pro.
The HP Pro Slate 12, undoubtedly one of HP's most powerful tablets running on Android, is one massive tablet targeted toward business customers. However, the business-ready claim is mostly due to HP's new ecosystem of business software that the company is pushing to its clients. As vice president and general manager of HP's commercial mobility and software business unit Michael Park says, the number of business-centric devices and the apps that go with them determine the success of any business-class mobile software.
"When we talk about mobility in the enterprise, if you just do the device, it's not enough; it's the apps and the device for the end user - how to deliver the apps out of the data center - and the scale of the sheer number of devices per user," Park said.
To push these apps out into the market, Park is hoping that HP's new line of products led by the Pro Slate 12 will be the answer.
The Pro Slate 12, which has a little brother, the Pro Slate 8, is the first tablet made by HP to go beyond the 12-inch mark. It is also the first tablet to come with Corning's Concore Glass screen, this particular screen is "durable and damage-resistant" but it doesn't protect against major drops.
However, the defining feature of the Pro Slate 12 is the Duet Pen, which automatically comes with the device. The Duet Pen is more than an ordinary stylus; users can use the Duet Pen to digitize their notes written on HP's Paper Folio and transfer it straight into the tablet's screen. HP has not said much about how Paper Folio works, though, so it's not clear if users will need to purchase a special kind of paper to use the technology.
Here's a Tech Times preview of the HP Pro Slate 12 and Pro Slate 8
At $569, the HP Pro Slate is expensive but it comes with impressive internals, although not as impressive as having all of the latest components available. Powered by an aging but still powerful 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 801 chipset and 2GB of RAM, this tablet features a 1,600 x 1,200 display screen, up to 32GB of expandable memory, an 8-megapixel back camera, and a 2-megapixel front camera and dual front-facing speakers for video conferencing.
The smaller Pro Slate 8 has a display resolution of 2,048 x 1,536, which matches the resolution of the iPad mini 3. The $449 Pro Slate 8 sports the same internals as the Pro Slate 12.
More Tech Times HP Exclusive Video about their new tablets and #Mobility :
