Earlier this week the HTC Leo was tipped to become the second smartphone to sport Qualcomm’s 1-GHz Snapdragon platform. While exciting in its own right, it left us craving the first true commercial smartbooks. Now our wishes look set to be answered.
UK site ITProPortal has been given an exclusive preview of a currently unnamed smartbook prototype made by Asus subsidiary Pegatron. The choice of CPU was not revealed, despite the presentation being given by ARM segment marketing VP Ian Drew, but with a little digging we find it to be the Freescale iMX515. This processor emphasizes the sector’s ties to smartphones, since it uses the same ARM Cortex-A8 platform as the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS.
The Pegatron smartbook also features an 8.9-in. 1024 x 600 widescreen display with integrated webcam in the bezel, 512MB of DDR2 RAM, Wi-Fi b/g and Bluetooth 2.0. Connectors include one USB, one micro USB, a VGA port and a card reader. “So what about the hard drive?” I hear you cry. Simple answer: there isn’t one.
Given the flexible nature of smartbooks, the machine is able to run entirely from an SD card – something that makes it remarkably versatile. The option of more storage would be nice, but with SD cards now hitting 64GB (128GB cards are already in the works) you might not be caught as short as you would imagine. Consequentially the smartbook is described as extremely slim (the photo shows it in comparison to an Asus Eee PC). Its cool operation means no fans are necessary, so it runs silently.
On the downside, Drew failed to mention a release date for the smartbook, but he did claim “tens of” this kind of device are “roaming the earth as we speak” and that they may appear on the market “in waves.” Let’s hope he’s right.
Gordon
