Lenovo unveils first ‘smartbook’ device

As the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) prepares to kick off in Las Vegas, electronics manufacturer Lenovo is making a further foray into the mobile space with the first ARM-based ‘smartbook’ device powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform.

In keeping with Qualcomm’s ‘smartbook’ form factor, which still seems a little bizarre, falling somewhere between the high-end smartphone and the netbook, the Lenovo Skylight proffers a 10” screen, ten hours of battery life, built in wifi and 3G, and a Linux-based, web-optimised interface that focuses on web services like Google, Facebook and YouTube.

The Skylight will be available from April in the US, followed by China and Europe later this year. It will be sold by US carrier AT&T for $499 alongside a two year AT&T DataConnect service plan, which will provide 3G connectivity.

Speaking at Qualcomm’s recent Innovation Day in London, Andrew Gilbert, executive vice president and president of Qualcomm Internet Services (QIS) and Qualcomm Europe, said the smartbook space is really taking shape in the mobile computing market “and that experience is getting smarter all the time. We firmly believe there is an opportunity to combine the form factor of a notebook with the experience of a smartphone. And this notion of a smartbook that allows you to have gigahertz processing combined with pervasive and persistent connectivity and an always on experience, in a cloud computing friendly environment allows for the creation of a new sector, new segment and new experience.”