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Would You Buy a Sony Ericsson Smartbook?


August 10th, 2009 by Todd Haselton  

sony_ericsson_logoThe closest we’ve ever seen to Sony Ericsson entering the personal computing market was its XPERIA X1 smart phone, a Windows Mobile phone with a full QWERTY keyboard that the company launched in 2008. But Netbooknews.com has word that the global cell phone manufacturer is working on a smartbook.

Smartbooks are ARM-powered devices that are slightly smaller than netbooks that offer longer battery life and mobile broadband connectivity all in a thin form factor. However, these devices aren’t as powerful as your typical netbook and don’t run full Windows.

Rumors have it that Sony Ericsson’s device could sport either Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset or NVIDIA’s Tegra processor, although there isn’t any news on specs at this time. The inclusion of either would likely allow give the smartbook enough power to output full HD video to a TV and enable light gaming, though the latter solution should have better graphics muscle.

Given that Sony’s Mike Abary was pretty down on smartbooks in a recent interview–arguing that if consumers see a clamshell design, they expect laptop-grade performance–we doubt Sony proper is working on such a device. But Sony Ericsson could very well be kicking the tires of the smartbook category.

We just wonder what OS Sony might be tinkering with under the hood. Android? Windows CE? The bigger question is: Would you buy a Sony Ericsson smartbook? And if so what would it need to have?

 Comments (5 Responses) 

5 Responses to “Would You Buy a Sony Ericsson Smartbook?”

  1. five one five Says:

    personally i wanna wait till the market gets a little bit more competition in it and a few models on the shelves before i make my decision. i like specs, but the specs gotta be worth the price, i don’t wanna pay x amount of dollars for something thats shiny. came across your post from http://www.smartbook.asia

  2. Toby Says:

    Yes. If it is light and runs cool for at least the whole day (working, not standby) on one charge, has provisions for a high resolution external screen when needed, 3G, potential for WiMax, Wifi, Bluetooth for voice calls etc, external keyboard/mouse when needed, the power saving solid state disk drive does not need to be more that some 16 gigabytes since I store things in the cloud or on an external drive.
    If so I believe I could do most of my job via VPN and remote desktop from this thing.
    I do have a netbook but it dissipates too much battery energy as heat from electronics and hard drive, would need a 16 cell battery or something like this to last the day.

  3. Raymond Says:

    I want to buy one. I want to buy a smartbook instead of a netbook and instead of a laptop (later I will consider a high powered laptop to replace the desktop).

    Main reasons:

    Linux, Linux, Linux!!!
    Does not support Windows too well, and let’s keep it that way. Windows sucks, enough said!
    All day battery, Yahoo!

  4. Lovesmartbook Says:

    I’d really love to by one of those smartbooks, but not with windows on it and NEVER with windows mobile. What should I do with junk like that?

  5. Wonderbird Says:

    Definitely! I am disgusted by the games Intel/Microsoft have been playing with the netbook segment. I have a 10″ Acer Aspire and LOVE the 7 1/2 hr battery life running Fedora. I am REALLY looking forward to ARM-based offerings. But to get me to buy it has to have 8+ hr battery life, a high-res display (hopefully better than the 1024×600 that they are currently crippling netbooks with), and a keyboard you can touch type on….
    Having Android/Chrome/Linux would be a PLUS for me… (The farther away from Windows the better…)
    I also want it to meet or beat the price-point of $350 of the device that I’m currently using…

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