Market is flooded keyboard-less “tablet” and small laptop-like things known as “smartbooks”.
Hewlett-Packard Co. showed its archetypical smartbook in Barcelona at Mobile Class Congress. HP’s Compaq AirLife 100 looks righteous suchlike a netbook – a littlest laptop – but the inmost mechanism is quite dissimilar.
Rather than using Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software, the smartbook runs Android, which Google Inc. created for mobile devices and gives away for free. Rather than using a computer processor from Intel Corp. or Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the AirLife uses a chip from Qualcomm Inc. that has cell phone heritage.
The AirLife is ready to use as soon as you flip the lid open just like a cellphone. It receives your e-mail even when it’s in standby mode with the lid closed. Because the Qualcomm chip uses a lot less power than a PC chip, HP says the AirLife can be used for 12 hours between charging.
Spain’s Telefonica is going to sell the AirLife in Europe and Latin America. It is not set for a US launch. Lenovo Group has revealed a very similar device, the Skylight, which AT&T Inc. will sell in the US.
Smartbooks have built-in modems for Internet access on cellular networks. That means they’ll usually come with a monthly service fee, in exchange for which carriers will subsidize the purchase prices, perhaps in the $200 to $400 range.
Dell Inc is using the same technology to male a smartphone set to be released in the U.S. later this year.
