During the same event where Acer unveiled a number of unnamed Android devices, they also rolled out the Iconia, which you can think of as either a dual-screened tablet, or a laptop that features a touchscreen with a virtual keyboard instead of a physical one keyboard. It’s basically similar to Toshiba’s 7-inch Libretto, but bigger. Twice bigger actually, at 14-inches per screen. The spec’s pretty heavy too: this thing runs on an Intel Core i5 processor and up to 4GBs of RAM, making it more like a Libretto on really powerful steroids.
The teaser video Dell released earlier this month was definitely eye-catching: it showed off a touchscreen tablet that flips into a notebook thanks to an unorthodox hinge that twists the screen in its frame. Of course, it could all well be just a gimmick, since convertible tablet/notebooks have been around for ages, but at least it’s what makes the Dell Inspiron Duo interesting enough to set it apart from hundreds of netbooks and the growing number of tablets popping up.
New developments on the Lenovo U1 Hybrid/LePad tablet we first saw way back in January: first, they also pushed back the China launch from December to early 2011. Now they’re saying that it’s also going to arrive in the US sometime next year, and that they’re putting a lot of money (to the tune of $15.1M) to get developers working on a separate app store for the LePad.
There’s been a lot of news about tablets taking away big chunks of the netbook/notebook market the past few months, and it’s starting to look like putting out notebooks that turn into tablet-type things are being eyed as a solution. The latest such device is the Booktop by Gigabyte, a hybrid tablet/notebook that can also be used as a desktop display when connected to the desktop dock it’s bundled with.
Dell just posted a teaser video of their upcoming Inspiron Duo, which is basically a Windows 7-based tablet that converts into a netbook. The screen features a unique hinge for transforming from tablet into its netbook though. Unlike the classic twisting joints typically used by tablet PCs, the Inspiron Duo’s screen rotates (or ‘flips’) vertically from the frame. It certainly looks like a pretty cool way to go about it (check out the video), but behind all the flash, you still get your typical Windows tablet/netbook’s spec and performance. Probably not a bad thing if that’s what you’re looking for, but it could come at a significantly higher price compared to your typical ultraportable.
