Always Innovating Touch Book In March 2009 the Always Innovating company announced the
Touch Book. It was based on the
Texas Instruments OMAP 3530 which implemented the
ARM Cortex-A8 architecture. It was originally developed from the Texas Instruments
Beagle Board. It had a touchscreen and a detachable keyboard which contained a second battery. The device came with a Linux operating system and the company offered to license their hardware designs.
Sharp Netwalker 2009
Sharp Electronics, introduced their PC-Z1 "Netwalker" device in August 2009 with a promised ship date of October 2009. It featured a 5.5" touchscreen, runs Ubuntu on an
ARM Cortex-A8 based
Freescale i.MX515 and was packaged in a small clamshell design. Sharp reported the device weighs less than 500 grams and will run 10 hours on one battery charge. The device is said to run 720p video, and have both 2D and 3D graphics acceleration. It comes with
Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 installed.
Pegatron prototype Pegatron, an
Asus company, showed a working prototype of a smartbook in August 2009. It consisted of an ARM Cortex-A8 based
Freescale i.MX515 supports 2D/3D graphics as well as
720p HD video, 512 MB DDR2
RAM, 1024x600 8.9" LCD screen, Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11g and run off a
SD card. It also featured one USB and one micro USB port, a VGA port as well as a card reader. The smartbook ran
Ubuntu Netbook 9.04 and contained a version of
Adobe Flash Player which was out of date. The
bill of materials for the Pegatron smartbook prototype was $120. In November 2009 Pegatron said it had received a large number of orders for smartbooks that would launch in early 2010. The devices were rumored to sell for about $200 when subsidized.
Asus announced plans to release their own smartbook in the first quarter of 2010.
Lenovo Skylight Qualcomm was expected to announce a smartbook on November 12, 2009, at an analyst meeting. A
Lenovo device concept was shown, and announced in January 2010. In May 2010 the Skylight was cancelled.
Compaq Airlife 100 In late January 2010 a U.S.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) listing featured a device from
HP that was referred as
smartbook, while a prototype of the same device was already shown earlier. In beginning February on Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, HP announced it will bring this device to market. The specifications will most likely be following: •
CPU: 1 GHz Qualcomm
Snapdragon processor •
Operating system:
Android • Display: 10.1 inch
touchscreen • Storage: 16 GB
SSD • Networking:
3G and
Wi-Fi • Battery: up to 12 hours, 10 days in
standby mode In the end of March 2010 the smartbook made an appearance at FCC again, this time listing its
3G capabilities. According to FCC, the device will support GSM 850 and 1900, as well as WCDMA II and V bands. These WCDMA bands may indicate the usage in AT&T network in the United States. Details of the product is now available on the HP website.
Toshiba AC100 In June 2010, a smartbook device from
Toshiba was announced. It features
Nvidia Tegra processor and is able to remain in
stand-by mode for up to 7 days. The device was officially available at the Toshiba
United Kingdom site. Originally delivered with Android v2.1 (upgradable to v2.2 since 2011 ) it can also be modified to run a customized
Linux distribution. In Japan, was sold as "Dynabook AZ".
Genesi Efika MX The
Genesi company announced an MX Smartbook as part of their
Efika line in August 2010. It was originally priced at
US$349, and some reviewers questioned if it was small enough to fit this definition. It is ostensibly a derivative of the above-mentioned Pegatron design.
Others In September 2009,
Foxconn announced it is working on smartbook development. In November 2009, a
Quanta Computer pre-production Snapdragon powered sample smartbook device that ran
Android was unveiled. Companies like
Acer Inc. planned to release a smartbook, but due to the popularity of tablets,
MacBook Air and
Ultrabooks, plans were scrapped. ==See also==