Smartbooks Not Dead, Sony Wants One with Chrome

It would look like a certain device type that had all but failed to even start selling before it was drowned by tablets hasn't yet been totally given up on, as Sony actually seems to want to make one.

The smartbook is one of those device concepts that didn't even have the opportunity to start selling before they were shut down.

While the idea was that consumers would want a product with netbook capabilities but smartphone always-on features, things never evolved beyond the concept stage.

The main reason for this was no doubt the quick surge in popularity that tablets benefited from, not to mention the timing of their arrival.

Still, it would seem that some IT players aren't willing to surrender all plans of doing something with the concept of a handheld laptop.

As Sony Insider has it, Sony is the one that wants to add a gadget of this nature to its collection of Vaio electronic products.

The main hardware piece will be, unsurprisingly, the NVIDIA Tegra 2 250 System-on-Chip,, while the display will be much larger than one would expect, with a diagonal of 11.6 inches.

Said panel should end up with a native resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels, meaning that the multimedia capabilities of the platform will be put to good use.

Speaking of multimedia, two ARM cortex-A9 cores give the Tegra its processing power, while an integrated GeForce GPU handles the rest.

Other features expected to show up in the device are 16 GB of Flash storage, 1 GB of DRAM and WiFi, all in a package weighing 1 kilogram. The OS will be Google Chrome.

Knowing how Sony failed to become a significant presence on the netbook market, it is hard to tell whether it will have any luck with this new project. Either way, the price and battery life will most assuredly play a big part in this endeavor.