The NEC LifeTouch Note netbook was unveiled this morning and looks to be a very interesting product. Straying away from the norm, somewhat, this netbook runs on Android 2.2 and is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, so it's not lacking for juice for its OS. It's got a 7-inch (800 x 480) resistive touchscreen display and looks to be a pretty versatile netbook with tablet functionality. With a WiFi-only model as well as a WiFi/3G model to be available, it could be a viable replacement for those who are not happy with x86 netbooks (hot, heavy) but aren't happy typing on a touchscreen on tablets. The WiFi-only model will come with 4GB internal memory while the WiFi/3G model will come with 8GB. A GPS, accelerometer, SD card slot and 2-megapixel camera round out the feature list. While the
You would be forgiven for mistaking the above image for a small netbook, but its infact a hybrid device, its both a phone and netbook. The 5.0" touch screen swivels 180 degrees to turn into a type of tablet that can be used like a phone.
The bPhone runs on a linux 2.6 OS, 800X480 screen resolution, a Marvell PXA310 624MHz processor, 256MB NAND Flash, 128MB SDRAM, and has GPS, WiFi, FM, Bluetooth and java. To me the bPhone is a strange device, although the concept is intriguing, the 5.0" screen make it a bit too small for me to be used as a netbook and the 5.0" screen makes it a bit bulky to be used as a phone. I guess this maybe something more targeted to the frequent traveler who needs to save on space.
The bPhone isn't cheap, it will retail for just under USD$600 and there is no in
Skytone looks to be developing a few interesting netbooks and even MIDs, their Alpha 680 looks to run Google Android OS, the netbook, based on an ARM 533mHz processor, looks to run the OS pretty well. It running smoothly and everything loading very fast is all nice, but the current Android OS is primarily for mobile phones and as such, many of the apps are limited to what they can do and even the OS is limited in overall functionality. I'll leave it upto you to decide if Android would make a good OS for a netbook.
Second part of the video after the break.
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Via Engadget
