Voltron Of Computers Combines Phone, Tablet, Keyboard

Always Innovating’s Smart Book breaks the traditional netbook into pieces. A touchscreen VoIP phone, a tablet and a keyboard. Use them apart or combine them into a full-powered device when you have to. Buy one device, carry what you need.

As if hardware transformation on the fly weren’t clever enough, the Smart Book includes a switch they say will instantly swap OSes. That’s right – click between Android, Chrome, Ubuntu or their own AIOS. And underneath all this design sophistication is some decent hardware muscle – an ARM Cortex-A8 processor (speed unspecified), 512MB of RAM and 256MB of built-in flash storage, along with the usual 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi.

The whole scheme is a bit extravagant and probably not a dream device for someone seeking simplicity – and the whole “dude on a couch” aesthetic doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the train out of vapourwareville. But Always Innovating is taking pre-orders for the whole system at $US549, so if the novelty (and potential functionality) appeals to you, maybe take a wait-and-see stance here. [Always Innovating via CrunchGear]