ET Review: HP Slate 6 VoiceTab

NEW DELHI: A long time back, HP iPAQ business phones were all the rage. They also had smartphones running WebOS (the Veer & Pre) which never reached our shores. With the Slate 6 VoiceTab, HP is making a re-entry into the competitive smartphone market.

The Slate 6 VoiceTab has a gorgeous, 6-inch HD display that offers great viewing angles & rich colour. It has a slim designs and a sparkly checkered pattern on the removable rear panel that makes the device stand out from the crowd. The overall build quality is impressive: you can clearly tell that this is a high quality device from a global brand. At 160 grams, the phone is even lighter than many of the competing 5-inch devices around.

We liked that HP has done minimal customisation to the user interface. The 1.2Ghz quad core processor and 1GB RAM proved good enough for most uses, but we were surprised to see some sluggishness in the interface.

The issue was fixed once we installed Nova launcher. Most games and full HD videos ran without any issues on the device. While the 2MP front camera had visible noise, the rear 5MP camera was impressive. It took great shots in daylight, although noise was visible in darker areas of the image. The external speaker output impressed with loud and clear sound.

As expected from the 3,000mAh battery, the phone lasted close to a day and a half. As a first device, HP's Slate 6 is impressive. If you like large phones, you can also consider Nokia's Lumia 1320 (Rs 22,500) on the Windows Phone platform. For a lower price, you can get the Xolo Q3000 that offers better specifications and a 5.7-inch full HD display.