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Toshiba innovates with Android/Tegra and dual touchscreen notebooks

by Scott Bicheno on 21 June 2010, 12:07

Tags: Toshiba (TYO:6502)

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The rest of the technology industry has so far struggled to respond to the irresistible momentum of Apple in the mobile device market this year. The iPad and the iPhone 4 have both faced more demand than Apple can match, and left its competitors looking irrelevant.

Today, however, Toshiba unveiled some genuine innovation which, while unlikely to knock Apple off its pedestal, is the kind of thing all Apple competitors need to be working on if they want to reclaim some of the mobile device market.

For us, the most significant of the three devices launched today is the AC100, not because it's a ten inch notebook that weighs a mere 870g and gets as thin as 14mm, but because it's the first notebook we're aware of that runs an NVIDIA Tegra 2 SoC and Google's Android operating system.

Tosh is calling the AC100 a mobile Internet device, avoiding the term coined by Qualcomm so beloved of opportunistic German parasites, and for us this is the first ARM-based mini-notebook to be announced since the Lenovo Skylight half a year ago, which has yet to make an appearance in the real world. The fact that it runs NVIDIA's 1GHz, dual-core, Cortex A9 chip and puts Android on a notebook makes it even more note-worthy.

The point of moving mobile phone technology into a notebook is primarily to offer phone-like usability - in other words: instant on and long battery life. The AC100 claims eight hours battery life, seven days standby and a start-up time of less than a second. Eight hours isn't bad, but we were hoping for more - especially with users reporting more like ten hours from the iPad.

The AC100 runs Android 2.1, with all the functionality that entails. You can customise the UI for things like home, work, etc, and you can set the device up to automatically detect which environment you're in and select the UI accordingly. There are also some pre-installed applications, such Documents to Go for editing Microsoft Office file, Exchange support, Opera Mobile and Toshiba Media Player.

One slight negative, however, is the fact that 3G connectivity is going to be an optional extra - as it is with the iPad - and won't initially be offered when the AC100 becomes available in August. Here are the specs, image and a video. We'll look at the other two launches on the next page.

Specifications:

  • Android 2.1
  • NVIDIA Tegra 250 Mobile Processor (1GH, ARM)
  • RAM: 512 MB DDR2 (333 MHz)
  • 8GB flash storage (NAND)
  • 25.7cm (10.1'') TruBrite display with LED backlight, 1,024 x 600 pixels
  • Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, WLAN (802.11 b/g/n), Mobile Broadband
  • 1 x USB 2.0, 1x Mini USB, Card Reader (SD, MMC), Audio out/Mic in combo socket, HDMI
  • 1.3 MP webcam with integrated microphone
  • Location based switchable desktop
  • Toshiba Home Menu, a customisable desktop with widgets and shortcuts
  • Size: 262mm x 190mm x 14 / 21mm
  • Weight: starting at 870g