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Firstview of CE/Android tablets
Mar 7th
Doesn’t look too bad for a $95 Android tablet, huh? Well, there’s plenty more where that came from. Scattered along the main halls of CeBIT are dozens of Chinese and Taiwanese consumer electronics resellers looking to sell products to new customers, and this year they sure loaded up the suitcases with cheap Android / Windows CE tablets.
For the most part all these tablets (or small smartbooks) have ARM 9 or 11 processors and 5 to 7-inch resistive touch displays. While some like the FirstView PC607V tablet (pictured above) have attractive skins on top of Windows CE, others from companies like Forsa and Huawei have gone with stock versions of Android. In truth, all of the ones we played with felt chintzy, but it was easier to lower our standards when we learned they wouldn’t draw more than $150 from our wallets. We’ve got a hands-on video with FirstView’s Android tablet after the break, but if that doesn’t fill your cheap tablet needs hit the more coverage links for videos by some serious Android / ARM tablet lovers.
Coby $85 smartbook – good enough for some light Web browsing and e-mail writing
Mar 3rd
Funny how our tune on smartbooks totally changes when one’s got an $85 price tag. We happened upon Coby’s booth at CeBIT this morning and of all the fairly cheap feeling laptops the company had on display it was its 7-inch NBPC722 smartbook that cozied right up to us. Okay, so it isn’t as thin or attractive as the $499 Lenovo’s Skylight, but again let us remind you that it costs about as much as a couple of new printer ink cartridges. Inside the little guy packs a 624MHz Marvell PXA303 processor, 2GB of flash storage and runs Windows CE which all should be good enough for some light Web browsing and e-mail writing. There was actually a YouTube shortcut on the desktop, but the NBPC722 wasn’t connected to try it out. Apparently this inexpensive laptop should be making its way stateside this spring, but until the flowers start blooming you’ve got the video below.
New Lenovo Skylight with 1GHz processor and Qualcomm processor
Jan 5th
lenovo smartbook
Strange as it may sound, the Snapdragon fans among us aren’t too many. But we have something for the select few who do prowl the earth at this auspicious hour, for Lenovo’s Skylight notebook is all about power and that’s what it gains from the specs that it brags about. Powered by a Snapdragon Qualcomm processor, it manages to bring all the amazing connectivity prowess of the best smart phones into play with 3G and Wi-fi. It’s the industry’s first ARM-based, Qualcomm smartbook, and it’s powered by a 1GHz processor. Other specs include a 10.1-inch display (1,280 x 720), a customized version of Linux, 20GB (total) of flash storage, 2GB of cloud storage, an 8GB miniSD card, twin USB ports, 1.3 megapixel camera, WiFi and a battery capable of humming along for ten hours on a full charge.
It’s also apt to be a lot like the unorthodox IdeaPad U1 Hybrid on the software front. The clamshell enclosure weighs under two pounds, and the integrated AT&T WWAN module ensures that you can get connected wherever a tower is available. The unit will ship this April with 18 preloaded web gadgets (including portals to Amazon MP3, Facebook, Gmail and YouTube), and pricing is set for $499 (MSRP). We’re told that AT&T will offer it up as well, but it’s unclear whether or not it’ll subsidize the Skylight should you commit to a two-year DataConnect contract. Rest assured that we’ll be getting some face time with this bugger in short order, but till then, you can peek the press release and a promo /hands-on video just after the break. Oh, and we should mention that we snapped an extremely brief hands-on with the machine a small bit ago, and we’re still flabbergasted by how thin it was. Expect a more thorough look tomorrow!
Another global player Sony Ericsson priming smartbook?
Aug 11th
It seems like we have another global player reaching out for the smartbook market. A reliable Taiwanese source which is directly connected to a lot of smartphone- and upcoming smartbook-manufacturers told us today, that Sony-Ericsson is working on a new device, that will enter the market soon.
We can’t tell right now, if it will be based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform or any other “non x86? developments, but we can tell one thing for sure: Intel is getting quite some competition pretty soon!
Due to the information we gathered during the last Computex Show in Taipei, ARM, Freescale and Qualcomm will agressively enter this market of mobile and affordable devices by the end of this year. Sony-Ericsson will be (like Acer f.e.) another big brand to join them for this new product class. With their record of building mobile- and smartphones, this could be one of the most interesting and anticipated new devices.
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