Laptop dock for Android smartphones to be launched in early 2017
A crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for a screen keyboard for Android phones reached 300 percent of its initial $50,000 goal in one hour. This clears the way for the introduction, which should take place in February 2017.
The Superbook is nothing more than a laptop-like keyboard with a multi-touch trackpad and display to which an Android device can be connected. Together with the Andromium OS app on the phone, the Superbook becomes a ‘normal’ desktop. The extension of a smartphone with Android 5.0 or higher should last more than eight hours on a battery charge.
The Superbook has an 11.6″ screen with 1366×768 pixels and both a USB type-c connection and a micro-USB connection. Connections to the outside are logically made via the telephone. The ‘Andromium OS’ supports, among other things, the possibility to display multiple applications side by side on the screen.
The whole measures 19.3×28.7×1.8cm and has special Android navigation keys, such as the home button, back, menu and recent applications. In addition to Android 5.0 or higher, a phone must have at least a dual-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, a micro-USB port or USB-C and at least 25MB of free storage space. The Superbook uses displaylink to link the display to the phone.
The team that designs the Superbook consists of a former Google employee and a Y Combinator alumnus. The crowdfunding campaign started on Thursday 21 July, but the entire project has been running since January 2015. The first prototype saw the light of day in March 2015. The Superbook will cost $99 and delivery is scheduled to begin in February 2017, now that the target has been met.
If the last stretch goal of 1 million dollars is achieved, an option to upgrade to a full-HD screen is also planned, but that will be at an additional cost. The penultimate stretch goal has not yet been achieved. That’s a better battery for everyone who supports the project, at no extra cost.
The system is somewhat similar to the NexDock, which uses the Continuum functionality of Windows 10 and the Convergence feature of tablets and smartphones with Ubuntu.