After raising close to $3 million dollars through Kickstarter, the folks behind the Superbook laptop dock for Android phones are offering folks who didn’t get in on the campaign a chance to pre-order.
The Superbook is now available for purchase through Backerkit.
What is a Superbook? It’s basically an inexpensive device that looks like a laptop, but which doesn’t have its own processor, memory, storage, or operating system. Instead it borrows all of those things from your phone.
Run a USB cable from your phone to the Superbook and you can run your Android apps on a bigger screen and interact with them using a keyboard and touchpad. The makers of the Superbook also offer an Android app called Andromium OS, which gives Google’s mobile operating system the look and feel of a desktop OS, complete with a taskbar and support for running apps in multiple windows.
Pre-order prices for the Superbook are $10 higher than they were during the campaign, so if you want a Superbook with a 1366 x 768 pixel display, it’ll cost $109. Upgrade to a 1080p IPS display and the price goes up to $139. Add a backlit keyboard and you’ll pay $164.
Since the first Superbook units will go out to Kickstarter backers, folks who place pre-orders now will also have to wait a little longer to get their hands on the laptop shell: Kickstarter units should begin shipping in late January/early February, but the Backerkit pre-orders won’t ship until March.
In related news, I interviewed Andromium CEO Andrew Jiang this week, for an upcoming episode of the LPX Show podcast, which I hope to put the finishing touches on once the onslaught of IFA-related news ends. Stay tuned for some insights about the utility of a laptop dock for phones, the challenges of building one, and what happens when you ask for $50,000 through a crowdfunding campaign and wind up collecting pledges worth more than $2.9 million.
Update: Now you can listen to the Superbook episode of the LPX Show podcast for more details.
Amazing that the difference between 1366 x 768 pixel TN and 1080p IPS is only $30! Gotta wonder about that.
Motorola did the same thing about 6-7 years ago… It flopped… but that might have been because it only worked with a few of their phones. I wonder if this could be used with a Rasberry Pi….
Superbook actually showed it working with a Raspberry Pi (& Windows PC’s/Tablets as a second screen) here – https://imgur.com/a/0dq5X
If if phone can connect, a EOMA68 card probably can too.
It reminds me of the Folio that Palm was going to make. I hop this not only works but get produced so I can buy one.
This looks too good to be true. Hope it is true.