Freescale Smartbook Tablet

[CES 2010] Freescale is grabbing the bull by the horns and has come up with its own tablet design that not only shows what Freescale’s technology is capable of, also serve as a reference design for computer makers around the world, like Inventec.

This tablet is powered by a system on a chip (SoC) based on a 1Ghz ARM Cortex A8 design and six other co-processors inside (FPU, DSP, img processing, 2D graphics, 3G graphics, HD video decode). The 7″ touch display can be resistive or capacitive ($30 more at manufacturing time for the capacitive) and has a 1024×600 resolution. It connects via WIFI-N or 3G (optional) and also packs a GPS.

It is estimated that the bill of material (components cost) for such a tablet would be between $130 and $200, which means that it could find its way to retail stores for $199 to $249 depending on the configuration. Freescale says that in their own tests, it can run for 12hrs with WiFi and the display on (80% brightness). Some variants will even run with Android, although at the moment, only smartphone will get Google’s support and blessing (Android logo, Android Market etc…).

For those who also want an efficient input method, Freescale has a Keyboard that also serves as a docking station. It looks sexy, and it seems that it won’t cost a bomb… what do you think?

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Computers, Top Stories
Tags: CES, mobile, smartbook, Tablet