AT&T wasted no time trotting out its newly-announced TouchPad 4G for an early hands-on opportunity today at a New York event. Of course, there's not much here that's outwardly different from the Wi-Fi TouchPad we're already familiar with — instead, the money is in the guts: on top of the 21Mbps HSPA+ radio, there's an unexpected processor bump from 1.2GHz up to 1.5GHz of dual-core Snapdragon power. No change to RAM (still 1GB) or battery (still around 6300 mAh) — the battery life drain is "slightly more," but there's no specifically quoted times. The current unit here is using a special build of webOS 3.0, with so far none of the promised changes in the upcoming OTA update — not to worry, though, the upcoming firmware fix is coming to the 4G model, as well. The Kindle and HP MovieStore apps are both still stubs promising that the actual apps are "coming very soon." We're told the weight is about a few grams more than the Wi-Fi model — not enough that we'd call really noticeable at first pass.

HP sees this as a separate tier from the Wi-Fi Touchpad, processor boost and all. In other words, don't expect that 1.5GHz processor to trickle down to a Wi-Fi-only variant. There's no AT&T branding, and so far the plan is to keep it that way; additionally, you'll be able to purchase the tablet without a contract. As for when and for how much, well, HP still isn't saying. More pictures after the break!

Ross Miller and Joanna Stern contributed to this report.