Lenovo are still yet to give a definitive launch date for the Lenovo Skylight smartbook, but at least one pre-production model has managed to find its way out into the wild. Over at DK.sg they've been playing with the Snapdragon-based ultraportable, and the judgement is mixed. Design, portability and keyboard all receive praise, as does the Flash support, but actual YouTube performance turns out to be a disappointment.
Interestingly, that doesn't look to be a limitation of Qualcomm's 1GHz chipset - it apparently takes nine concurrent apps running before the smartbook begins to slow down. It's possible to pull out the 4GB USB flash drive that's the Skylight's primary storage while the machine is running with no ill effects, which makes for easier cross-machine transfers.
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‘Smartbook’ Stories
Lenovo Skylight smartbook spotted in wild: poor YouTube performance
PC tablet concept has matching smartphone used as QWERTY keyboard
Lots of geeks and gadget hounds out there are counting the minutes until pre-orders for the iPad are being accepted. There are also many people out there that are looking forward to other tablets and smartbooks. One of the coolest concepts for a smartbook I have seen has turned up that was designed by In-oh Yoo and Sun-woong Oh.
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163m Smartbooks shipped by 2015 says ABI Research
We've already seen ambitious smartbook predictions from ARM CEO Warren East, who suggested his company's processors would grow to occupy 90-percent of the netbook segment, but now analysts ABI Research are throwing some extravagant figures around too. They've predicted 163 million smartbooks shipping by 2015, though they're not limiting their scope to just the QWERTY netbook-style hardware most commonly associated with the term.
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BYD Snaptop tablet hands-on
You might recognize BYD’s Snaptop prototype from back in November 2009, when we grabbed some hands-on time at a Qualcomm press event. The difference at MWC 2010 this week was that the Snaptop is now functional, rather than a mockup; you still get a touchscreen, flip-out kick-stand and a wireless Bluetooth keyboard which docks into the back of the tablet for storage and portability, but now the whole thing actually works.
Video demo after the cut
HP Compaq Airlife 100 smartbook video demo
First thing we headed for at MobileFocus 2010 today was HP’s first smartbook, the Compaq Airlife 100. In the plastic it resembles little more than a particularly slim netbook, though of course there are some significant differences; the OS is Android 1.6 Cupcake, complete with a resistive touchscreen, and the keyboard has been reworked to suit Google’s platform. Keeping the whole thing moving is Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor.
Nokia and Intel launch MeeGo: Moblin and Maemo merge
Nokia and Intel have announced a partnership to combine their mobile software platforms into one, MeeGo, which will be suitable for smartphones, MIDs, netbooks, smartbooks and other mobile devices. The platform will be based on the best of the Moblin core OS, together with the best of Maemo, with the Qt app development platform on top, and offer access both to the Nokia Ovi Store and the Intel AppUp Center; applications downloaded will be compatible across mobile devices, whether a MeeGo smartphone or tablet.
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HP Compaq Airlife 100 3G smartbook announced
HP Spain have announced a new smartbook, the Compaq Airlife 100, with a netbook-style form factor, 10.1-inch touchscreen and integrated 3G. While HP aren't spilling the beans on the Airlife 100's chipset, last we heard they were playing with Qualcomm's 1GHz Snapdragon, so it seems a reasonable assumption.
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Symbian tablets & netbooks “very likely” in next 1-2 years
Symbian has gone open-source, and talk is now of what sort of devices we could see the OS turn up on. According to Symbian Foundation chief executive Lee Williams, particularly likely are Symbian-based tablets; speaking with ZDNet UK, Williams revealed that the Foundation has had several inquiries from companies looking into tablet-style devices running ARM chipsets.
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ARM CEO predicts netbooks 90% of PC market in coming years
If you're the figurehead for a company then you have to be pretty confident about your products, but even with that in mind ARM chief executive Warren East is aiming high. The outspoken CEO reckons ARM processors will take a big chunk out of the netbook market, a market which he predicts will eventually come to represent 90-percent of the PC industry. In fact the one thing holding ARM chips back, East reckons, is the lack of Windows support for them.
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Smartbook legal nonsense: Qualcomm reply
Remember our odd partial-fax from the legal beagles of Germany firm Smartbook AG earlier this month? The company had made a name for itself by attempting to dissuade bloggers and news sources - sometimes with threats of legal action - from using the term "smartbook", claiming it holds the trademark and would aggressively protect it from misuse. We asked Qualcomm if they had anything to say on the matter, and their legal team has given us a statement. Apparently, Smartbook AG haven't been quite as upfront as they might have been, and in fact the German courts have given them a spanking of their own over misrepresentation of their restraining order.
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Smartbook trademark oddness rears its head again
It's not too often the SlashGear fax machine creaks into life and starts churning through the thermal paper*, so imagine our delight when lawyers Wilde Rechtsanwalte got in touch earlier today. Apparently they're the legal beavers of choice of Smartbook AG, the German firm who you may remember from November 2009's legal kerfuffle over the smartbook trademark; they wanted to point out to us that their client still holds the term in most of Western Europe, Australia, Singapore, South Korea and elsewhere.
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Lenovo Skylight design process arguably more interesting than smartbook itself
With the onslaught of gadgets, concept designs and prototypes at CES 2010, it's easy to forget that behind each is a design team slaving away to get things ready in time for the show. Over at Lenovo's Design Matters blog they're unsurprisingly pretty keen on the Lenovo Skylight; however even if you're not a fan of the smartbook itself you'll probably be interested by the tale of how Richard Sapper - designer of the original ThinkPad - came up with the prototype (including a beautiful olive wood mockup) in just a few weeks time.
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