Razer has announced plans for a new mobile gaming device called the Switchblade which features two 7 inch multitouch displays. The bottom display is touch-sensitive, and can be used as a keyboard and trackpad — and the layout can change depending on the game you’re playing and the actions you’re performing. For instance, if you’re playing an RPG, you can have special keys appear for accessing your inventory, quest log, or other information.
The lower touchscreen actually has raised plastic keys to provide a tactile touch experience. There aren’t any working units yet, but I ran across a prototype running a demo video at the Intel booth today.
The concept actually looks pretty cool, but I’m a bit worried about the fact that it’s powered by an Atom processor. Even the highest performance Atom chip isn’t really up to snuff for playing bleeding edge games (although adding a graphics cards such as NVIDIA ION certainly helps). On the other hand, I’d hate to think of the battery life of a 7 inch dual display device with a more powerful CPU.
You can checkout a brief video from the show floor as well as Razer’s demo video after the break.
Oh Razer, you once loved fools – just what the fuck is this?
fusion would have been a better choice.
We still don’t know how small a system they can squeeze a Fusion solution into yet or how well it would go in a fan-less design. Most announced systems at CES were around 12″ for example.
While if I’m right about them using the upcoming Cedar Trail, it will still use less power, can go fan-less, and performance will still be greater than existing ATOM options.
not sure if I like the new keyboard layout..
7″ limits layout possibilities but it’s at least customizable. May have been better if they went with a 9″ or even 10″ design but 7″ is more pocket-able.
Chances are this will use Intel’s upcoming Cedar Trail ATOM, which is the next gen up from the present Pine Trail.
Cedar Trail will offer about twice the graphical performance and should run cool enough to allow most systems to go fan-less, with Die Shrink down to 32nm and overall CPU performance is also expected to be better than present Pine Trail offerings.
So while still not what you would want for a gaming system but at 7″ you don’t need as much performance, still more powerful than ARM tablets that are also being considered for gaming, and games like War of Warcraft can easily play on it.
Also remember with Intel’s AppUp that they have been pushing development of netbook compatible apps and games and by the time this device comes to market could be at the right time that there would be enough options around to make it useful to the average person.
So considering Razer’s reputation for coming out with good gaming peripherals that this might be a good product when it finally comes to market.
Last I’ve heard is that Cedar Trail ATOM will be focused on just saving power and that the only performance upgrade they will make is with 1080p playback.
I’ve kept up with all announcements and last mentions put it that the 3DMark will be about double what the Intel GMA 3150 can offer and the CPU will also offer improvements.
How much remains to be seen but overall package should be better than what we can get now with Pine Trail.
Didn’t microsoft demo such a keyboard for desktop computers a while back?
Optimus Maximus keyboard!
Not exactly, that keyboard had individual oled keys. This is a single touch screen with clear keys on top.
ah, here is what i had in mind: https://www.microsoft.com/appliedsciences/content/projects/uist.aspx
Same concept and Optimus Maximus came first and is what inspired the student created keyboard demonstration you just linked to.
The Razer keyboard may use a single display but you only see the individual keys. Nothing is shown between the keys!
So just a cheaper way to get the same effect…
eh cool toy, nothing serious