Smartbook Resurrected, NEC 'Mobile Notebook' Features Tegra 2

Some product concepts sometimes die before they have a chance to truly take off, like the Smartbook, but they may still get a sort of homage when a company or another shows off an experimental device that has similar features, like in NEC's case.

Smarbtooks once were a sort of hybrid product, which was supposed to have the functionality of a netbook and the battery life of smartphones.

They didn't exactly take off and were outright killed when tablets came out into the light, although they didn't seem particularly popular even before then.

Still, their form factor, at least, has not been completely forgotten, as NEC proved during the recently ended 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show.

What the company demonstrated, among many other things of course, was a certain item dubbed 'Mobile Notebook.'

Since notebooks are, in themselves, mobile computers, the doubled enforcing of the mobile aspect, obviously, points towards a smaller form factor.

Sure enough, Mobile Notebook is a 7-inch creation made of two parts, the screen being one, while the other bears the keyboard and whatever other hardware NEC saw fit to integrate.

That said, the central part of the device is the Tegra 2 SoC (system-on-chip), meaning that the performance and feature set should be on par with those of most tablets.

Granted, since it is smaller, the display has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, while a SD card slot allows significant amounts of storage space to be added.

There was no clear description of the insides, not a complete one at least, but mentions were made of USB connectivity and a camera placed at the back of the screen.

Finally, the keyboard is of the QWERTY variety and the full weight of the not-smartbook is 600 grams.

Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing if NEC will ever have the 'Mobile Notebook' grow beyond this prototype stage.