On Thursday Lenovo was forced to acknowledge that it's working on an Android hybrid notebook after the manual (pdf) was discovered on the company's website. A representative said Lenovo had originally planned to officially announce the IdeaPad A10 this week, but the leak spoiled the surprise. Currently, pricing and actual availability are unknown.
The specs reportedly include a notebook form factor with a rotating 10.1 inch touch screen (1366 x 768) that can open up to 300 degrees, allowing the device to become a makeshift all-in-one device with the screen up front and the keyboard laying face-down in the back. This keyboard also has buttons dedicated to familiar Android functions such as "Home," "Back," "Multitask," "Settings" and a few others.
The unannounced Android notebook will also supposedly feature a quad-core Rockchip RK3188 Cortex-A9 SoC, 1 GB or 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB or 32 GB of internal storage, and a microSD card slot for up to 64 GB of extra storage. Connectivity will consist of a USB port and combo audio jack on the left side, and another USB port, microUSB port, and microHDMI port on the right.
The manual also reveals that the Android notebook will have a SIM card slot, an integrated webcam, a built-in touch pad, a built-in microphone located on the right side, and what appears to be two speakers mounted on the bottom. The home screen looks exactly as one would expect from an Android tablet, displaying the status bar and Google Search bar along the top. Another toolbar resides along the bottom with the Apps Launcher button sitting on the far left.
Over the summer there was talk that a wave of Android-based notebooks and desktops would arrive during the last quarter of 2013, as many OEMs like Dell and HP are now taking a multi-OS approach due to a declining demand for Windows-based PCs. The Slate 21 is one of HP's current Android offerings, an AIO PC with Android 4.2 "Jelly Bean" and a Nvidia Tegra 4 chip. There's also the Acer DA220HQL, a 21 inch AIO PC with a 1 GHz dual-core SoC and Android 4.0.
A Lenovo rep said that the company will announce the launch dates and pricing information for the Android-based IdeaPad A10 notebook at a later date.
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