Mobinova's Beam Tegra Smartbook Runs Android

There has been a lot of talk of the ARM architecture and NVIDIA's Tegra platform over the past few months, mostly because of the rise of smartbooks and, especially, tablets. One of the devices that have been in development for a longer time than most others is Mobinova's Beam smartbook. Despite the long period since it was revealed, however, there has been little word on the actual availability of the device, but the company has at least come out to give an update on the product's status. It seems that Mobinova has finally decided which operating system to implement.

The Beam has been designed with components that enable support for both Windows CE and the Android OS, but most demonstrations of the device had it running the former. Now, the 836-gram electronic is set on switching to the latter, which may turn out to be in its favor, considering that the OS can run more apps and has been growing in popularity quite rapidly over the past months. The only disadvantage will be the Beam's lack of access to the Android Market, but the manufacturer promises to launch its own app store to make up for it.

As far as the actual specifications of the product are concerned, the configuration is based on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 system-on-chip (SoC) and has 512MB DDR3 memory, as well as 512MB NAND OS storage. There is also an 8GB to 64GB solid state drive, an SD card slot, Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi, 10/100 Ethernet and even EDGE and HSPA 7.2Mbps. Finally, the display measures 8.9 inches and has a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels.

Unfortunately, there are still no details on the pricing and release date of the smartbook. What is known, however, is that Mobinova plans to sell its mobile device through AT&T, most likely with a mobile broadband plan.