By: Simon Sage, IntoMobile Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 8:48 AM
The Computex show is all wrapped up in Taipei, but one juicy little nugget to emerge is this Android handset dubbed IAC from Inventec which is powered by Freescale’s 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 multimedia chip. Freescale calls the new hardware a “smartbook”, but whatever you call it, a 4″ screen and slide-out QWERTY keypad = sexy. The same chip enables 720p video on a Pegatron netbook, so you can get a sense of what kind of horsepower will be tucked away in the IAC. As cool as it is, we’ve seen other manufacturers squeeze up to 1080p on Android in the past, although only in a prototype format – nothing nearly this close to finished. Freescale has already shown some interest in Android, but this is by far their most solid push into the OS. No word on a release date, other than “later this year”.
Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement.
With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out.