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12 January 2011
Via Liliputing.com today I came across a story and video about an NEC mini-laptop prototype. Charbax of ARMDevices.net is the man behind the camera and during his short look at the Tegra 2 based 7” smartbook/mini-laptop/whatever it got me wondering… why I would want one?
Undoubtedly a keyboard is a good thing in some situations. I’ve really yet to meet anyone who outright proclaims they can type faster on their screen than they can on their old keyboard and composing longer docs and emails would definitelyl benefit from this speed improvement. But does an Android device and a keyboard make sense?
The NEC 7” touch screen device performance looks good and only weighs 600gs. So physical weight compared to other tablets is similar and certainly less than the bigger tablets. The device however would seem to be a bit thicker than typical touch only display tablets.
A lot of people tell me they carry their tablets around to far more places than they do their netbooks or notebooks because they feel more portable and simple to use. Maybe they’re doing simpler tasks on them as well. In fact I’m sure that’s the bigger part of the allure.
Some people are using tablet cases that include Bluetooth keyboards so they get the best of both worlds when they want. That makes slightly more sense to me.
The problem with an all out laptop implementation for me would be the way it can’t be removed while consuming content. It takes the balance out of holding the screen of a device centrally in front of your face, it makes eBooks look like they only come with a single page, and it discourages the use of the device in portrait mode.
Presently most of the software written for Android is actually written for phones. So its not optimized for a keyboard and designed for touch interaction. So all you really get at present is faster typing, not necessarily faster productivity with a physical keyboard.
Charbax queries in his video whether or not NEC will move the device to Android 3.0 as if that will improve it somehow. It won’t. Right now its probably a chicken and egg problem, where there are few Android devices with keyboards and even less apps written to take advantage of them.
