This holiday season, HP will have not one single new Android tablet available. That’s because it will actually have four of them. On Thursday, the company announced the new slates, which vary in size, reminding me of Samsung’s approach of creating a range of devices. The four tablets all sound more compelling than HP’s Slate 7, a relatively meager attempt at joining the Android market earlier this year.
HP hasn’t offered much in the way of details or specifications, but here’s what the tablet lineup looks like at this point:
- HP Slate 7 Extreme. This looks like an upgrade of the original model and should pack more punch with an Nvidia Tegra 4 chip. The device will use Nvidia’s PureAudio technology with front-facing speakers and a rear bass-reflex speaker. A stylus is included but there’s no digitizer in the 1280 x 800 tablet so this sounds like a capacitive pen.
- HP Slate Pro. At 7.98-inches, this Android tablet is a step up from the Slate 7. It keeps the Tegra 4 chip but ups the resolution to 1600 x 1200 in a 4:3 aspect ratio. Engadget says a pair of cameras are integrated: 8 megapixels on the back and 2 megapixels on the front.
- HP Slate 7 and Slate 10 HD. These are 1280 x 800 tablets in 7- and 10-inch sizes. Both will come in an LTE option with up to 200 MB of free service per month through T-Mobile and the option to add more broadband capacity as needed. Beats Audio is included. HP hasn’t specified the chipmaker in these, so I suspect it’s not Nvidia.
HP didn’t share pricing for any of these tablets, saying only that it would be announced close to the November launch of all four.
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