Covering the netbook space, I read a lot about Intel, VIA, and AMD, and ARM processors. But another company, Qualcomm is building a platform, that it says will be ideal for netbooks and other low power devices. A few weeks ago we got a glimpse of a few prototype netbooks based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform. But a CNET article explains the status of the Snapdragon platform in much more detail.
The Snapdragon devices will have a dual core 1.5GHz CPU, integrated HSPA, WiFi, and GPS capabilities, as well as support for 1080p HD video. And the ARM-based processors will draw less power than the single core 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU that seems so ubiquitous in today’s netbooks.
Perhaps the most interesting bit of information in the article comes at the very end, where we find out that Acer, Asus, and Toshiba are all planning to build devices around the platform. All three companies currently produce netbooks, although it’s not clear if their Snapdragon machines are intended to replace the current Intel-based devices. For one thing, as jkkmobile points out, Windows doesn’t run on ARM devices, which means these machines will likely run Linux or Windows CE.
For a much more detailed analysis of the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform, check out an article Chippy wrote at UMPC Portal.
Good googa mooga, that this is ugly! I understand not every netbook can be as suave as the HP Mini 1000 or the MSI Wind, but sheesh.
It looks like they attached a digital picture frame to a box with a keyboard placed at random. Is there even a trackpad?