This $99 gadget can turn your Android phone into a laptop — here's how it works

Andromium Superbook
The Andromium Superbook. Andromium

A few weeks back we told you about the Andromium Superbook, an 11.6-inch laptop shell that’s designed to work with a companion app and turn an Android phone into a makeshift notebook.

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At the time, we noted that Andromium would beef up the Superbook’s spec sheet with a bigger battery and 1080p display if it hit its Kickstarter’s stretch goals. Now, it’s done just that — the campaign has raised nearly $1.3 million as of this writing, with 19 days still left to go.

In other words, even after all these years, there’s still plenty of people who want to mash their phone and laptop together.

To help you understand just what this enthusiasm is all about, here’s a quick rundown of what exactly the Superbook promises to do.

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As noted above, the Superbook itself is just a “dumb” 11.6-inch laptop shell, with a keyboard, trackpad, display, battery, and the like. Andromium says it’s made of a soft plastic material.

Andromium Superbook
Andromium

Now, since it starts at $99, you can’t expect the most premium-looking thing in the world, but it appears straightforward enough.

On the base model, that display is set to a basic 1366x768 resolution. Now that the campaign has surpassed $1 million in funding, though, there’ll be a sharper 1080p model available.

Andromium Superbook
Andromium

Andromium says that model will cost about $30 extra, and that it’ll reduce the device’s battery life by an hour or so. A display needs much more than resolution to be good, but that jump in sharpness is noticeable. You'll see more onscreen at once, and it'll be crisper.

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After hitting $500,000 earlier the campaign, Andromium also promised to upgrade the Superbook’s battery. What was originally rated at 8 hours is now said to last around 10 hours.

Andromium Superbook
Andromium

Here’s your regular reminder to take any device manufacturer’s battery claims with a grain of salt. They have a habit of being optimistic.

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The juice behind the Superbook comes from your Android phone. The idea is to launch the Andromium OS app there, plug it into the shell, and let it provide the software, connectivity, and processing power.

Andromium recommends that phone have at least 1.5GB of RAM and, vaguely, a “dual-core processor” to work smoothly. It also needs to be on Android 5.0 or higher, and support the USB-OTG standard, which most non-ancient phones already do.

Either way, those with stronger phones will likely see stronger performance.

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For other things, you can use Play Store apps. If you need to write, for instance, you can fire up Microsoft Word.

We’ve seen this kind of thing start to be implemented on Chromebooks before. So far, it’s awkward, but you can see how it'd make those Web-heavy machines much more functional.

That’s Chromebooks, though. Andromium says it’s opening its development kit to help companies tailor their apps for Andromium OS, but it’s unclear exactly how much traction this sort of smaller-scale machine can gain.

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So, why would you want this again? Aside from simply being a cool tech thing, Andromium thinks an affordable, mobile-friendly device like this could be particularly helpful for those in developing nations.

 

The appeal is a little less obvious here in the States, given that Chromebooks are already fairly capable laptops on the cheap.

Still, for people who only do the basics on their laptop anyway, but still want that bigger screen, being able to simply use your phone has its conveniences.

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The Superbook starts at $99 through Kickstarter now, but Andromium expects to be closer to $130 if it hits retailers. The company plans to start manufacturing in September, and start shipping to backers sometime around February 2017.

Andromium Superbook
Andromium

If you’ve followed tech for the last decade, you’ve seen this concept before. Everyone from Ubuntu to Microsoft has tried to sell phones that work as laptops in the past, and none of them have ever taken off.

Whether or not the Superbook gets out the door smoothly remains to be seen, but its approach seems simpler and more open than the others. Instead of forcing you into one ecosystem, it’s meant to work around the devices you already have. Maybe, maybe, that'll be the key to making this "convergence" idea work.

Android Smartphones Tech
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