Foxconn looking forward to develop cheap ARM-based Smartbooks

Foxcomm Technology, a popular Taiwanese based company that gets orders for manufacturing netbooks for big computer vendors is now planning to launch Smartbooks next year.

Smartbooks manufactured by Foxconn are expected to cost under $200. Foxconn is anticipating that there is going to be a lot of demand for a sub-$200 device. Foxconn is looking forward to try a few Linux-based distro’s on these machines including Moblin OS and one which they are themselves making. They are also looking forward to use Google’s Android OS in one of their smartbooks as well.

The size of Smartbooks is not going to pocket size. They are going to be as big as the netbooks we see these days (between 7-inch to 10-inch).

The only thing we don’t want to see is Android-driven netbooks/smartbooks. Let’s keep mobile phone OS restricted to mobile phones only!

Lenovo to enter the Smartbook market! – Runs Google Chrome OS

According to Commercial Times (China), Lenovo is planning to launch a smartbook by the end of September 2009. The smartbook is rumored to use the Nvidia’s Tegra chipset and will use Google’s Chrome OS.

It is nice to see Lenovo using Chrome OS for their smartbook and not Google’s mobile phone OS, Android. After all, it does not makes any sense of using a mobile phone OS on a netbook.

Qualcomm betting a lot on Smartbooks – says future is very bright for Smartbook

Qualcomm is giving its best endeavor to increase its sales and thinks that computers in the future will be just like Mobile Phones. By computers, they mean Smartbooks which are basically netbooks running Android, Google Chrome OS or Linux.

Most of the upcoming Smartbooks will be using ARM processors, precisely Qualcomm ARM-based CPUs.

Consumers want computers that will run all day on one battery charge, don’t need to be switched off and are always receiving data, said Jacobs, whose company is the world’s biggest maker of mobile-phone chips.

According to Qualcomm, people do not want to carry a bulky laptop and its charger all day with them. They want a device that can run all day and remain connected too. More than 12 companies have decided to use the Snapdragon’s chip, which runs at 1GHz clock speed. The future is surely very exciting and we are waiting for the Snapdragon-based netbooks AKA Smartbooks to hit the market

Windows Mobile MID Phone – W100 MID

This W100 MID is a Windows Mobile phone that comes with a 4.3-inch screen. It comes with WVGA resolution that is the maximum that is supported by Windows Mobile and a huge 2600mAh li-poly battery that is huge considering the fact that it is running Marvel processor that is much power-frugal than the Intel Atom processors.

Acer Android netbook will dual boot with Windows!

Talk about being playing safe. Acer has decided to bundle Windows XP along with their first few models of Android netbooks.

Acer knows very well that they are going to be first to launch a netbook with mobile phone OS. Obviously, a lot of risk is involved and bundling their Android netbook with Windows XP is a great way to know how well the consumers receive the Android netbooks. However, it may result in increase in overall cost by $20-$30 due to license fee of Windows XP.

Acer to be the first netbook manufacture to OFFICIALLY launch Google Android Netbooks!

Although myriad of netbook manufactures have announced that they will be making Google Android netbooks, but the Acer is going to be the one that will officially launching them in the year 2009 itself. At first, we thought that it was going to be the ASUS that would launch Android Netbooks at the end of this year, but then we heard about news that they have postponed the production to the next year, 2010.

Jim Wong, Acer’s global president of IT products and services said something which really captured my attention,

‘If we do not continue to change our mobile Internet devices, consumers may not choose then any more.”

But, why would one need to run a mobile phone OS on a netbook? True, it will help them to save few dollars, but then we can achieve (almost) desktop-class productivity when using an OS like Windows XP/Vista/7.

Good news is that Acer is not downgrading the processor to ARM and they have decided to stick with the powerful Intel Atom platform.

HTC TOUCH HD as a Mobile Internet Device (MID)- Review

This time we are going to review it from a different perspective – AS A MOBILE INTERNET DEVICE. If you have been following the windows mobile scene from the past couple of years, you must have observed that the display size of the mobile phones has decreased in size over the years. Whether we all like it or not, but it was the iPhone that brought the big screen to attention to the mobile phone manufactures.