We’ve been seeing the Mobinnova Beam smartbook show up at trade shows for months. Now it looks like you’re finally going to get a chance to purchase one soon. Mobinnova has teamed up with AT&T to offer the 3G-enabled smartbook powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 platform.
Tegra 2 combines a low power 1GHz ARM Cortex A9-based processor with high performance graphics capable of playing 1080p HD video. The smartbook can handle local and internet video thanks to Flash 10.1 hardware acceleration.
The Mobinnova Beam has an 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and weighs just 1.84 pounds. it measures 9.2″ a x 7.3″ x 0.8″. The device supports 802.11b/g WiFi and has a 3G modem for connecting to AT&T’s mobile broadband service when you sign up for a contract.
The smartbook has 512MB of RAM and 512MB of flash storage for the operating system plus a solid state disk with 8GB to 64GB of storage space. You can also use the SD card to add up to 64GB of storage.
While the demo unit I saw at CES was running Windows CE, Mobinnova will support both Windows CE and Google Android. AT&T is expected to launch an Android version by the end of Q2, 2010. There’s no word on pricing yet.
You can check out my hands-on video with the Mobinnova Beam from CES after the break.
Mobinnova press release (PDF Link)
[…] Se você quer um laptop/smartbook barato e com Android, veja esse da Hivision. Se você quer um ereader com jeitão de Kindle e Android, veja o DELYCS S600K. Se você quer ir ao Google I/O, as inscrições começaram. E se você se interessa por smartbooks em operadoras, o Mobinnova Beam na AT&T vem aí, com Android. […]
Brad can you tell us how much this would cost without any subsidy?
Then at least, we can drop the pricey Lenovo Skylight from uour dreams
Nope, nobody’s talking about the price yet… and it’s note entirely clear
if the Beam will ever be available without the subsidy.
But it’s worth keeping in mind that the $499 price tag on the Skylight is
for the unlocked version. It’ll probably be much cheaper (up front, anyway),
with an AT&T contract.
Dang. I neither need nor want a unit tied to a 3G contract, but it’s looking like carrier subsidy is the only way a device like this will ever come to market.