ASUS Announces Smartbook for 2010 Running Android OS

With all the excitement over the last week about Android 2.0 and the Motorola Droid, it sounds like the perfect time for ASUS to announce their intentions to put Android in a netbook. So they did. Jerry Shen, CEO of ASUS, said the company would release a netbook-style computer running the Android operating system sometime in the first quarter of 2010.

This Smartbook won’t be a standard netbook as we have come to understand them. That’s the reason it’s called a Smartbook actually. That name is used by the processor manufacturer Qualcomm to describe mini notebooks that use ARM-based processors instead of the Intel Atom chips commonly used in netbooks. It’s all a bit complicated, but all you need know is that netbooks run miniaturized laptop processors while Smartbooks run processors more commonly found in smartphones.

ASUS’ Smartbook will be running the latest from Qualcomm, the 1GHz Snapdragon processor. Of course, even though that’s the leading edge in cellphone technology, it raises a few concerns for laptop computing. Is the Android OS really robust enough to warrant anything bigger than a smartphone? While Snapdragon is blazing fast for smartphones, 1GHz isn’t impressive at all for netbooks or mini-notebooks.

While Android has thousands of apps and features to add functionality, you won’t be doing heavy processing on the Smartbook. In fact, you won’t be doing anything more than you do on a smartphone, begging the question: Do we really even need a Smartbook?
Despite the problems when comparing it to a netbook, the Smartbook will have one significant advantage over any netbook. ASUS plans to sell the device for less than $200. Even though netbooks are known for being cheap, any manufacturer will be hard pressed to meet that price point.

ASUS seems to think that smartphone functionality in a netbook body will be attractive enough that people will buy it instead of a similarly priced phone. They’re so confident, in fact, that they are referring to the Smartbook as their secret weapon. I don’t know if it warrants that much confidence, but it will be interesting to see if it even attracts consumer attention.

For more tech news, see the blog home page or these related posts:

Verizon to Continue Droid Line of Phones with Droid Eris

Rumor Confirms Netflix Streaming Coming to Wii

Google Releases Free Turn-by-Turn Navigation App

T-Mobile Announces New Phone Plans Without Contracts

Google Releases Android 2.0 SDK, Shows Off New Features