I just got some mitts-on time with Lenovo’s new notebook, the X1 Hybrid. What’s interesting about it is that it can boot into a battery-doubling, low-power mode that runs off a snapdragon processor and custom software based on a certain kernel we all know.
They’re calling it Instant Media Mode (IMM). They won’t say it’s running Android, because it’s not officially Android. But don’t kid a kidder, kid, I know Android when I see it. It’s based off the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) kernel. It’ll never have Android Market or official Gmail apps or anything, but if you’re the crafty type I’m sure you can find a way to download Android apps from the interwebs.
Does this thing make any sense? A laptop that turns into an outdated Android tablet? Uhh, not really. I guess one could argue that if you wanted your battery to last forever so you could just watch movies on a flight around the world, but I’m not buying it, and I’m betting you won’t either unless you’ve always wanted to run Gingerbread on a ThinkPad for some reason. It’ll be available later this year starting at $US1600.
Ozoneocean
Monday, January 9, 2012 at 8:22 PMThis is just exactly the same sort of thing that many noteboobks and netbooks have had for a few years now- a quic-kboot mode into a simplified Linxed based OS for e-mail, web browsing etc.
So I’m confused at the notability of this in this instance… you’re not too experienced with computers then? This sort of functionality has been on enough machines that SOMEone obviously finds a use for it.
Roger
Monday, January 9, 2012 at 9:14 PMI think it’s more to do with the fact that Lenovo are using an Android based OS to do it.
jackson
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 4:21 AMI think its more that the custom android os runs off a dedicated snapdragon processor