Google has patented a very interesting hybrid, a laptop with built in smartphone, that sounds very interesting and very ASUS-ish I have to say. Now, this patent has been granted in February this year and it describes a notebook with detachable cellphone.
The two can work in tandem without a problem and while Chromebooks and Android are not mentioned in the documents, they may well be part of the project. The laptop will rely on the handset’s wireless connection to access the Internet and also rely on the phone for speaker and microphone functions, like VOIP calls. The phone could use the laptop’s speaker as an amplifier when docked and also to juice up for more battery life.
This idea goes back to the Motorola Lapdock thing, that worked in tandem with the Moto Atrix phone and a few other models. The difference between this one and the PadFone, is that the laptop actually works fine without the phone, while the ASUS products have the smartphone as the brain. Is this the perfectly balanced Chromebook we’ve been waiting for? A new type of Nexus? A Silver?
