Android Netbooks

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Soldato
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Just thinking out loud here, but given that there are several Android based netbooks on the horizon (Acer's Aspire One D250, HP's AirLife 100 etc... even a fre tablets) you have to wonder what place they will take. On the one hand they could compete with smartphones, which would probably place them in the £300-£500 price bracket. But that begs the question, why wouldn't you just get a netbook for £50 less? It would be superior in almost every way. So if it's competing with netbooks it would have to be at most £200, perhaps a bit more considering they will have integrated 3G. But that begs the question that if they use smartphone hardware and a netbook screen how could they possibly come in cheaper than a conventional smartphone? Would it drive down the price?

Food for thought...
 
I can't see the point of a netbook (at all in fact) with android, a slate/tablet however...

The slates are going to be around £300 and designed as media devices (apple liked the idea so much they copied it), not netbooks. Some have got deals with comic makers and such, for example the Norton adam ink, which has a hybrid screen for proper LCD stuff and for e reading.

I can't see the android netbooks being any different in price to the ones out now, but the slates/tablets will probably be more.
 
The tablets actually look cheap, as little as '$100' for a 7" one. My point was if they can use smartphone hardware with a larger screen, that obviously costs more and sell it for this sort of price then how the hell are smartphones so expensive?
 
What is that one? I know there are a couple of small ones (Dell and Archos for example) but I don't think even they are that cheap. Most of the tablets are in the 9-11" range and come in at around £300-500(such as the Norton Ink, MSI and Apple iPad). Those run on essentially netbook hardware (Atom cpu's etc).

You have to remember that the smaller the tech the more expensive it is usually, also is the actual hardware the same as that in new smartphones, or just similar? Also those $100 you mention, are they average price or just the cheap end? I'm thinking the latter. In which case it's like looking at a £300 Acer laptop and saying it has the same specs (Dual core Intel CPU, 2GB ram and 250GB HDD for example) as a £1000 Dell, without realising the build quality of the Dell is far better and the hardware is actually totally different (say the Acer's intel CPU is actually a low spec celeron ahd has a cheap 5400 RPM HDD, whilst the Dell has a top spec mobile Core 2 Quad and a 250GB 7200RPM HDD).

I doubt you could compare a top spec £500 smartphone from the likes of HTC with a $100 thing from some no name brand. :)
 
Yes, so way below smartphones out at the moment, and also doesn't include GPS or a variety of other things and has a battery life of 6 hours. Totally different specs from what I can see.

However as you point out it is quite impressive for its price point, but it does make me wonder how well built it is. Remember a lot of the cost of a decent phone is R&D.. :)
 
wesley said:
i tried andriod OS live CD on my old laptop, it was rubbish, google chrome OS is far better tbh
Click to expand...

Because the android you ran wasn't designed to be run at those resolutions? Obviously it needs changing.

You running the Chrome OS Alpha? I heard it's incredibly buggy, and that sort of web centric OS is a very specific market. Not only that but i'd say it's done better by things like Moblin and Jolicloud. Slitaz 3.0 is due out any day now and should do everything but use a lot less resources, perfect for a netbook or old laptop.
 
The biggest complaint i have about the likes of the iPad (apart from apples evil ways) is that it runs a cut down OS. I would be willing to use an Android based netbook for simple things if it doesn't feel like i am getting a limited feel. Although i am contemplating chrome OS netbook...
 
I'd say Android is no more (perhaps even less so) limited than completely web centric operating systems such as Chrome OS, Moblin or Jolicloud as they can barely do anything off-line.
 
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