Tablet deathmatch: HP TouchPad vs. Apple iPad 2

And yet another competitor fails to mount a real challenge to the all-conquering iPad2

Deathmatch: Web and Internet

In compatibility tests based on the HTML5 Test site's scores, revised on June 21, the TouchPad scores 229 out of 450, whereas the iPad 2 scores 217, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 scores 218. By comparison, Internet Explorer 9 scores 143, desktop Safari 5.05 scores 253, desktop Chrome 12.0.742 scores 327, and Firefox 5.0 scores 286.

For HTML and JavaScript performance, based on the Futuremark Peacekeeper benchmarks, the iPad 2 scored 808 versus 508 for the iOS 4.3 iPad 1, and 430 for the iOS 4.2 iPad 1. By contrast, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 scored 985, and desktop Safari on my 2011-edition MacBook Proscored 2,812. Peacekeeper stresses media and JavaScript processing, so the indicated speed differences aren't apparent in more text-and-graphics-heavy sites. What did the TouchPad score? It didn't -- it could not run the test suite. I did find in subjective usage that the iPad 2's browser felt snappier than the TouchPad's browser.

Both browsers have persistent buttons or fields for Back, Forward, Bookmarks, and Refresh. When you have multiple Web pages in play, the iPad 2 displays an icon showing how many windows are open -- tapping it introduces a screen that previews all open windows. The TouchPad launches a separate instance of the browser, so you have to move to cards view and tap the window you want. It's a bit more work than on the iPad 2, which I can live with, but I prefer the iPad 2's approach because I can see previews of all open windows at once, whereas in the TouchPad I have to fool around with all those overlapping cards. (The Galaxy Tab 10.1 does it better than either the iPad 2 or TouchPad: Its tabs bar expands to show live tiles of all open windows, while keeping your current window visible.)

One of the TouchPad's claims to fame is that it comes with Adobe's (still beta) Flash Player 10.3, which the iPad does not and will not support. I found that the player did well with websites' videos and basic Flash animations, such as those that let you rotate views, open content via hotspots, and the like. Flash games worked sometimes.

The iPad 2's separate Search and URL boxes are less convenient than the TouchPad's unified URL and Search box; you have to be sure to tap the right box on the iPad. Both devices offer a .com button when entering URLs, which is a significant timesaver. Both devices pop up a list of alternative domains, such as .edu and .org, when you tap and hold the .com button.

Both browsers let you select and copy both text and graphics on Web pages, though only the iPad 2 can copy an image into its pasteboard; the TouchPad can copy an image only to its Photos library. On the other hand, only the TouchPad can open an email with the image already copied in for you from the contextual menu that appears when you tap and hold a website image, saving you a step compared to the iPad 2.

Neither the TouchPad nor iPad 2 handles AJAX-based Web forms well. Mobile Safari doesn't support attributes such as contenteditable (for editing within WYSIWYG forms) or the widely used TinyMCE AJAX editor, so you can't use many forms or must switch to their HTML modes if they have one. The TouchPad supports contenteditable, but not TinyMCE. The TouchPad also turns off its spell-checking in Web forms, unlike the iPad 2.

Google Docs is awkward to use on the iPad 2, though you can handle the basics. It's barely possible to edit a spreadsheet; the most you can do is select and add rows, as well as edit the contents of individual cells. You can edit a text document -- awkwardly. Partly, that's because Google hasn't figured out an effective mobile interface for these Web apps; the Safari browser is simply dealing with what Google presents, rather than working through a mobile-friendly front end. It's also because the mobile WebKit browsers don't support all the same capabilities as their desktop counterparts. I could not get Google Docs to work at all on the TouchPad. On both the iPad 2 and TouchPad, you can create, edit, and navigate appointments in Google Calendar in all four of its views (day, week, month, and agenda), pretty much as you can on a desktop browser. Most likely, you'd use the tablets' native calendar tools instead.

If you use a Web-based editor day in and day out, as I do, the iPad 2 is more able to cope, though it's hardly where it needs to be.

Both browsers offer settings to control pop-up windows, search engines, JavaScript, cookies, history, and cache, but only the iPad 2's Safari offers controls over form data, passwords, image loading, autofill, fraud warnings, and debugging. Note that many websites won't know about the TouchPad's unique identifier, so some may redirect the TouchPad browser to mobile-oriented sites rather than present their desktop- and tablet-friendly pages. I didn't experience this issue in my tests, but I've noted for other devices that they eventually get added to such redirect lists as website admins discover their existence. The iPad's browser ID (ipad) is better known to Web developers, so this redirect issue is less likely to occur for that device. (If you're developing mobile-savvy websites, you can use InfoWorld's User Agent Check tool to read the IDs of the various devices and, thus, optimize how your site works with them. Tip: hp-tablet in the user agent string means a tablet; hpwOS signifies any WebOS device.)

The winner: Although the TouchPad has a more HTML5-savvy browser and supports Flash, the iPad 2 beats it in almost every other respect.

Deathmatch: Location support

Both the iPad 2 and the TouchPad can triangulate your location based on Wi-Fi signals and GPS. Except for the different map backgrounds, the Bing Maps app on the TouchPad is nearly a pixel-perfect copy of the Google Maps app that comes with the iPad 2, with the same routing capabilities. Both are fine for looking up addresses and generating directions.

But for in-vehicle navigation, you'll want a real navigation app such as the $45 Navigon MobileNavigator for iOS, which stores its maps on the device, so you don't need a 3G signal for it to keep the map updated as you do with the built-in Maps apps. There is no equivalent app yet for the TouchPad.

Although both the iPad 2 and the TouchPad ask for permission to work with your location information, the TouchPad does not provide controls over location use by the device or individual applications, as the iPad 2 does.

The winner: The iPad 2 wins this round because it lets users manage their location privacy at a granular level.

Deathmatch: User interface

It's often a throwaway comment that Apple's UIs are better than everyone else's, though it's not always true. In many respects, the WebOS UI shows that Apple doesn't have the lock on good UI design. HP's card metaphor is a nice way to manage apps and windows, and the services integration makes it easier to focus on what you want to do rather than where you want to do it. iOS has a more disciplined UI, which keeps you from getting distracted but also creates a tunnel vision mentality. WebOS is designed for multitasking, letting you keep on top of multiple items simultaneously, but it requires more effort to navigate.

Operational UI. As I previously explained, the TouchPad's cards metaphor lets you see everything that is running, but it could potentially overwhelm you and obscure what you are seeking in its overlapping windows. But you can combine apps into stacks to reduce the clutter, and you can slide out a window to peek at its contents. If you have a few apps running all the time, the cards interface works well, but for more than that, it's too much. The iPad 2's approach of having you switch from app to app works well when you have lots of apps open, but its lack of live previews can make it more difficult to find what you want to switch to.

I dislike the TouchPad's separation of settings into separate apps. The unified app with multiple panes, as used in iOS and Android, is a much cleaner approach that makes it less likely you'll miss a setting and doesn't leave you with all those open settings app windows. The TouchPad suffers the same overkill issue of Windows Vista's gazillion control panels, though nothing is as impenetrable as Vista's approach. The setup apps themselves are straightforward to use on the TouchPad, though in several cases the Confirm and Delete buttons are skinny and cramped, making it easy to tap the wrong one. iOS's Settings app is well designed and largely easy to navigate, though its various network settings are oddly separated from one another.

The good news is that pinching and zooming, as well as autorotation as you turn the device, work equivalently on the TouchPad's WebOS and the iPad 2's iOS, though the TouchPad tends to hesitate before it rotates.

For text entry, I find the iPad 2's on-screen keyboard to be easier to work with than the TouchPad's, with better contextual use of extra keys, such as in the Mail application and in form fields. I do like the fact that the TouchPad by default displays the numeral keys, so you don't have to switch to them -- something Apple may want to copy. But it's annoying that some common punctuation, such as the colon (:), are not on the standard keyboard, forcing you to switch to a symbols keyboard. Using a capability that debuted in WebOS 2.1 for smartphones in February, the TouchPad also lets you set the size of your keys, which can free up screen real estate for your content. However, if you want to touch-tap, set it to the largest size (medium is the default).

It is easier to tap items on the iPad 2 than on the TouchPad. The TouchPad helpfully shows a pebble-in-a-pond type of dot where you tap, so you know whether you tapped the intended location. I found that buttons and objects often didn't respond if you tapped near but still inside their edges. iOS buttons don't have this issue.

Text selection and copying. The TouchPad handles text selection poorly. When you tap on text, the word is selected and sliders appear to change the text selection. But if your tap misses your intended mark, you can't just move the text cursor as you can on an iPad 2 or Galaxy Tab 10.1. Also, when you tap that second time, you're likely to select a wild word and have contextual menus such as Copy appear. All of this makes text selection difficult.

On the iPad 2, text selection also works via handles. To insert the text cursor in a precise location, you tap and hold where you want to insert the text cursor (sort of like using a mouse), and a magnifier appears to help you move exactly to where you want to go. That's how it should be.

The winner: Although I prefer the theory of WebOS's cards interface, I find it too messy in practice. If HP tweaked this UI approach to add a listlike selection mechanism and treat the cards more as a favorites pile, I think WebOS could really challenge iOS in usability. For now, the iPad's more simplistic UI gets my nod. For the day-in, day-out work of touch-based selection, the iPad 2 is much easier to use than the TouchPad. The iPad 2 wins here.

Deathmatch: Security and management

A long-standing strike against WebOS has been its poor security. Only in February did the smartphone WebOS (2.1) support on-device encryption, which the TouchPad's WebOS 3.0 does as well. As with the iPad, that encryption is enabled straight out of the box, and it can't be turned off.

The TouchPad's WebOS 3.0 does mark HP's belated support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) security policies, which Apple has led in adoption and which Google finally began supporting this spring in a meaningful way in Android OS 3. The TouchPad supports 7 EAS policies, versus the iPad 2's support for 14 EAS policies. On both, you can require passwords (using optionally a minimum length and/or containing letters) and on-device encryption, specify a maximum number of failed login attempts before locking the device, and set the device to autolock after a specified period of inactivity. The iPad 2's EAS policies also let you set more complex password rules (such as the use of special characters and limits of how often passwords can be reintroduced), disable the camera, and block app store access and Wi-Fi usage (though the last policy doesn't make sense for the Wi-Fi-only TouchPad, it could be useful for the planned 3G model).

Mobile device management (MDM) vendor MobileIron already has a client app in the HP App Catalog to manage TouchPads, and HP says several other MDM vendors plan to support WebOS devices as well. Most MDM vendors now support the iPad 2.

Both the TouchPad and the iPad 2 offer remote wipe, SSL message encryption, and timeout locks. If your TouchPad is lost or stolen, you can lock or wipe it via Exchange. Apple supports remote lock and wipe both through Exchange and via the free Find My iPad service that tracks your iPad 2's location from a Web browser, iPhone, iPod Touch, or other iPad.

Both devices also support VPN access. It's easier to set up VPN access on the iPad, due to the clearer presentation of options in its setup panes. The setup options for the TouchPad are more cryptic; plus, they adopt Cisco's more recent AnyConnect nomenclature for its VPN options, unlike other devices, so it's easy to get confused if you haven't kept up with Cicso's rebranding.

Syncing the iPad 2 to your computer's iTunes backs up -- and encrypts, if you desire -- the data on it. iTunes backs up nearly everything: your media, your apps, their settings, their data, and most of your preferences. (iTunes can be configured for use in the enterprise, though most companies don't know that.) The TouchPad has nothing like iTunes, though it does back up to HP's servers your accounts (but not their data or passwords), contacts and calendar entries associated to your local WebOS account, and some settings so that they can be restored or transferred if needed. Apps purchased through the HP App Catalog (but not their data) are also tracked at that store so that they can be restored or transferred to a new device.

The winner: The iPad 2 wins here, due to its ability to back up nearly all of its content and to remote-lock, remote-wipe, and find a lost or stolen iPad from any browser. But from a corporate security point of view, if you manage iPads with Exchange, you can manage TouchPads to the same level.

Deathmatch: Hardware

Although the real value of a tablet comes from its OS and apps, you can't get to them without the hardware they run on. The iPad comes in both Wi-Fi-only and Wi-Fi-plus-3G models (which supports 3G tethering), whereas the TouchPad comes only in Wi-Fi models. HP says AT&T 3G models are planned.

Performance. The iPad 2's 1GHz dual-core Apple A5 processor makes quick work of app loading and is generally responsive, such as when panning in Google Earth or parsing documents in iWork Pages. By contrast, despite its 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU, the TouchPad feels slow -- even for tasks like opening emails that are practically instantaneous on other tablets. That slowness is in evidence throughout the tablet; even network-based actions like downloading files takes longer on the TouchPad than on the iPad 2, Galaxy Tab 10.1, and Xoom -- including on the same network from the same location. The slowness is epecially noticeable at the first launch of an application or document. The TouchPad's speed also seems to vary, as if some invisible background process is executing. HP says some slowdown can occur after accounts are set up, as the TouchPad's Synergy API weaves them into services and applications that can support them. But these slowdowns have persisted for a week, so I doubt that answer. Whatever the cause, it's annoying.

In some instances, as when launching applications, the TouchPad gives you an indication that it's working, but in others, it seems to take a few seconds before it indicates that it received your input and is processing it. I frequently would tap a button again because I couldn't tell that anything was happening.

There are extremely few TouchPad apps available to see if this speed issue extends to them. But the TouchPad is definitely slow to start up from powered-off state: It takes 77 seconds -- more than a minute. By comparison, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 takes 25 seconds, the iPad 2 takes 35 seconds, and my 2011-edition MacBook Pro takes 127 seconds. If you're looking for instant-on, let the tablet go to sleep rather than powering it down.

For battery performance, I found that the iPad 2 lasted a little longer than the TouchPad -- 9 or 10 hours versus the TouchPad's 7 or 8 -- in regular use with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled. In light use, their work time stretched another hour. Likewise, the iPad 2 charges a little more quickly than the TouchPad.

Device hardware. The TouchPad's case has none of the svelte feel as the iPad or Galaxy Tab 10.1. It's a black slab that weighs a quarter pound more (25.8 ounces in total) than either the iPad 2 (21.5 ounces) or the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (19 ounces) -- and the iPad 2 with an optional Smart Cover attached weighs a half ounce less (26.3 ounces in total) than the naked TouchPad. The heavier, blockier design telegraphs all those stereotypes about artless PC makers. The TouchPad's case is also a magnet for fingerprints.

The TouchPad's bezel is simple and clean, like the iPad 2's, and assumes a portrait orientation for the positioning of most of its spare controls: power and audio jack at the top, front camera placed unobtrusively, volume rocker on the right side, small speaker notches on the left side (clearly assuming landscape orientation when set down to play music), and MicroUSB dock/charging connector at the bottom. I did find the power button required more force than on other tablets to register being pressed. The iPad's controls are in most cases in the same location; just the speaker (the iPad 2 has just one) is in a different location: at the bottom of the bezel. The iPad 2 also offers a physical switch that can be set to turn off alert sounds or lock the screen rotation; you can do the same at any time from the controls that appear when you double-press the Home Button. The TouchPad uses settings apps to control both behaviors, and you can lock rotation or mute sounds from a menu in the notification bar that's always available.

Neither the iPad 2 nor the TouchPad has a battery indication while it is powered down, unlike the Galaxy Tab 10.1. But the iPad 2 wakes itself automatically if its (optional) Smart Cover is opened -- nice.

The iPad 2's optional magnetic Smart Cover is smartly designed. It snaps into place quickly, folds out of the way easily, helps clean fingerprints on the screen, and remains snuggly attached, according to my backpack tests. The cover ($40 for polyurethane and $80 for leather) does not protect the iPad 2's aluminum back, which may concern some users fearful of scratches, but there are plenty of cases, skins, and portfolios for such folks. I was disappointed that the Smart Cover doesn't affix magnetically to the back of the iPad 2; it only does so to the front. The TouchPad has no equivalent capability, and it's too early to see what kinds of cases third parties will come up with. HP does offer a $50 case that can raise the TouchPad for typing, similar to Apple's case for its original iPad.

But the TouchPad does have an innovation the iPad 2 lacks: The optional charging dock ($80) not only props up the TouchPad at user-adjustable angles, it uses induction (which HP brands as Touchstone) to charge the TouchPad through its case. But be careful -- the induction area is small, so you have to place the TouchPad in horizontal orientation with speakers down for the tablet to charge. Each Touchstone charging dock also has a unique ID, so you can set different default Exhibition mode displays when the lock screen is engaged for each of your docks. For example, you might have your dock at work display your calendar and your dock at home display your photo.

A related capability enabled by Touchstone is what HP calls Touch-to-Share: Rest a compatible WebOS smartphone on the TouchPad to register its presence, and the devices use a Bluetooth connection to share the current (meaning full-screen) Web page, text message, or phone call automatically (after they've been paired, which you do once). HP has no smartphones available yet that support Touchstone syncing, though it did lend me a prototype to show that it works, which it does. I'm not convinced that this is more than a "oh, cool" feature that would quickly fall into disuse once the novelty wears off. For example, touching a smartphone to the tablet to take a phone call or read a text message requires a lot more effort than just using the phone, which you need to have on you anyhow. For Web pages, it's hard to envision the meaningful utility in this sharing until Touch-to-Share is available in other shipping devices for testing in a more real-world context. I suspect the sharing capabilities of Touch-to-Share would be more useful if you didn't have to make the physical connection -- a feature similar to Mac OS X Lion's AirDrop that allowed you to initiate syncing over the air would be welcome.

Both devices require USB adapters to connect to USB devices. The $29 iPad Camera Connection Kit's USB connectivity is limited to cameras and SD cards; HP has no adapters for the TouchPad as yet. The iPad 2 can mirror its display to VGA or HDMI using a $39 dock-to-HDMI cable or $29 VGA connector that other iOS devices also support. Currently, the TouchPad has no video-out capabilities, due to lack of adapters. That means you can't use it for presentations -- a big deficit for sales, marketing, and other business users.

If you do a lot of typing, you can use Apple's $70 Bluetooth keyboard with the iPad 2; HP sells a $70 Bluetooth keyboard for the identical purpose. Apple's keyboard is the same one you use for a Mac, so it has no iPad-specific keys, whereas the HP model has keys for showing all active cards and hiding the keyboard. On an iPad, you can't access formatting shortcuts for text, such as to apply bold. It's unclear whether the HP keyboard supports such formatting as there are no TouchPad apps that call on those capabilities. Both keyboards have a nice crisp feel, and they are equally slim, solid, and light, with well-sized keys.

I found the iPad 2's screen a little easier to read -- both in sunlight and in office lighting -- than the TouchPad's screen, which suffers from excessive reflectivity. I also found myself angling the TouchPad slightly to reduce the reflection, which made typing less accurate. The iPad 2 and the TouchPad both use the old-fashioned 4:3 ratio, which is more comfortable for browsing and for most apps than the 16:9 widescreen displays on Android tablets.

Although the iPad 2 offers a front-facing camera for videoconferencing and a rear one for taking pictures and capturing video, the quality of still photos and movies are not that good: The camera seems to be the same, poorly regarded model used in the latest iPod Touch. The iPad 2's camera also lacks a flash and support for high-definition range, both of which the iPhone 4's camera does support. Apple hasn't released the camera's megapixel rating, but my photo-editing software pinned it as a measly 0.7 megapixel; by contrast, the iPhone 4's camera is 5 megapixels. The iPad 2's camera does perform better for motion video, taking decent 720p, 0.9-megapixel video -- fine for casual videos but no more.

The TouchPad has only a front-facing, 1.3-megapixel camera for use for videoconferencing (via enabling Skype in the TouchPad's Phone & Video Calls app). It too is adequate.

The TouchPad and the iPad 2 are equivalent in quality when it comes to audio output, despite the fact the iPad 2 has a single speaker and the Galaxy Tab has two. To get stereo-quality audio, connect either tablet to a stereo using the audio jack or, in the case of the iPad 2, stream music wirelessly to an AirPlay-compatible device.

The winner: The iPad 2 is clearly a better piece of hardware than the TouchPad. Its design is more elegant, it's lighter, and above all it's faster. In terms of peripherals, the TouchPad's inductive charging is nice but not essential, whereas the lack of rear camera and options for video-out are clear disadvantages.

The overall winner is ...

The differences between the iPad 2 and the TouchPad matter, with the TouchPad offering several innovative WebOS capabilities such as Synergy, Just Type, and Touch-to-Share, but falling short in its workaday apps, which cover just the basic reqiurements in many cases. The iPad 2 has more capabilities overall, and they're mostly well designed and well integrated into a strong ecosystem of product and services that is really hard to match. As a result, I can't imagine anyone choosing a TouchPad over an iPad.

Overall, it appears that HP designed the TouchPad to compete not with the iPad 2 but for second place in the tablet market. In that competition for second, the TouchPad is a strong alternative to the two best Android tablets, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Motorola Xoom [42]. (The RIM BlackBerry PlayBook is a dead end that should be on no one's list.)

So how to choose?

Android has enjoyed strong momentum in the smartphone world, which tablet makers are hoping will translate to the tablet market (though it has not done so thus far). But HP is a strong brand that has acquired through Palm's WebOS a good platform on which to build a credible mobile business. My fear is that HP's bark is bigger than its bite. Although the TouchPad is a good product, it is not a leading product, and it shows little innovation beyond what the Palm team already had in progress before the HP acquisition closed a year ago today. Google's prowess is also questionable, given its uneven set of Android releases over the last four years that continue to trail Apple's iOS and a history of uneven execution by its hardware partners.

In terms of what you can actually do today, a Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Xoom is a better tablet than the TouchPad. In terms of longer-term potential, I have a tad more faith in HP's WebOS team than I do in Google's Android team, but I don't see either company as aiming to be the best. Neither has puts its money where its mouth is.

All this hand-wringing reminds me of a fundamental reality: There's a reason Apple is outselling everyone else by such lopsided margins. Simply, it has the best product available and demonstrates a clear commitment to making it even better every year. Why settle for second? The iPad 2 remains the clear choice.

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