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INTO A LAPTOP FOR ONLY
$100 THANKS TO
SUPERBOOK
Our smartphones are pretty amazing little
devices. Not only are they at the heart of
our communications, but they’re far more
powerful than most of the computers of a
decade ago. So why do we need both a
smartphone and a computer? Many of us
don’t.
A Kickstarter campaign has been started
for a laptop shell that actually uses your
smartphone’s brains to operate. Basically,
your phone becomes your computer,
simply by plugging it into the device,
called the Superbook.
The Superbook is basically a laptop dock
that turns any Android smartphone into a
computer. It looks exactly like a laptop,
but instead of having all of its components
inside the shell, it uses your phone’s
components. This seriously cuts down on
costs.
At the heart of the computer is
Andromium, an app that turns data from
your phone into data that can be more
easily interfaced with on a computer
screen. Because its based on Android, it
will be a little limited for some people,
but as a basic daily driver, considering
there are plenty of great apps for
Android, it could certainly be plenty in
many cases.
The Superbook itself offers eight hours of
battery life, as well as a full keyboard and
a multitouch trackpad. The device
measures 7.6 x 11.3 x 0.7 inches and
weighs just 2 pounds, so it’s a very
portable option indeed.
Once you plug in your smartphone, the
Superbook will basically be an extension
of your phone with a desktop-type
interface. All of the files on the
smartphone will be accessible, and the
computer will use your phone’s Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth connection to connect to the
internet and other peripherals.
Perhaps the best thing about it is the fact
that it only costs $100 — that’s right, for a
tiny fraction of the price of other
computers, you can access your email,
social media, Office apps, and so on —
which is what most people need from
their computer anyway.
To use the Superbook, you’ll need an
Android device that has Android 5.0 or
later, a dual core processor, 1.5GB of
RAM, and at least 25MB of free storage.
Of course, it remains to be seen just how
well the device functions, and while the
early bird specials are all gone, you can
back the project for as little as $100, after
which you’ll get one for yourself in
February 2017.