In other words, it’s small and basic. It makes up for that by being cheap — it starts at $99 through Kickstarter, and the company expects it to start in the $129 range if and when it hits retailers. (If the campaign hits $1 million, the company plans to offer a slightly more expensive 1080p display option as well.)To power it, you activate the Andromium OS app — which is available in beta form in the Google Play Store — on your phone, then plug it into the shell over microUSB or USB-C. You’re not limited to any particular model, but the company says the phone should have at least 1.5GB of RAM, a dual-core chip, and Android 5.0 or higher. (It also has to support the USB-OTG standard, but that shouldn't be an issue for the vast majority of devices.)
The idea, as it’s always been, is to leverage your phone’s power with a laptop’s form factor. In Andromium’s eyes, buying a new phone then becomes akin to buying a new laptop.
Now, that probably won't hold true for everyone. A cheaper phone won’t be as smooth as a pricier one. Plenty of Chromebooks are affordable and perfectly capable. And while your phone is a tiny computer, it’s not a tiny laptop — much of the Superbook’s success will come down to how well Andromium OS turns Android into competent desktop software.That said, it does seem to have the basics down — a browser, a file manager, a taskbar, a launcher, some level of multitasking, etc. — and as we’ve seen on Chrome OS, Android itself has plenty of apps that translate well enough to desktops. You can watch videos on YouTube, write documents with Microsoft Word, and play a bunch of games. The Superbook's display isn't a touchscreen, though, which could make using those a little less natural.
Andromium says it’ll open its SDK so developers can tailor their apps for Andromium, too, though how much support that gets remains to be seen.In any case, the campaign has raised more than $400,000 in a couple days of funding, way past its initial target. While the usual risk with crowdfunding projects remain, Andromium says its prototypes are finished, and that it hopes to ship the Superbook to backers by February 2017.Either way, given how strong today’s smartphones have become, the time might finally be right to make this nerd fantasy a reality. Again.Stop me if you've heard this idea before: Imagine turning your smartphone into a laptop just by plugging it into a laptop "shell."Yeah... it's not a new idea and yet Superbook, a product that promises to turn your Android phone into a laptop, has already smashed its Kickstarter campaign goal of $50,000 with more than $398,000 pledged as of this writing and 28 days left to go.
On paper the Superbook sounds great, but having tried many other "turn your phone into a laptop or PC" gadgets like the Motorola Atrix and the Laptop Dock that kickstarted this concept way back in 2011, I can't say any of them blew me away.The largest company in denial is Microsoft. It made a big deal out of Continuum, a feature that lets you plug your Windows 10 Mobile phone into any screen and turn it into a near desktop PC experience.It's a sound idea, but one that nobody really cares for it seems. People are perfectly fine owning different devices that run different operating systems.The selling point of "all your data is synced" to your phone is a moot one in my opinion. With cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox and Microsoft's OneDrive, most of us already have access to our data from any device.
At $99, the Superbook costs a lot less than most Chromebooks, but you could easily find a $150 or $200 Chromebook that'll have better specs and doesn't require your phone.Still, I'm not saying the Superbook won't deliver on its promises. I'm just not sure if it's really a solution to any real problem that exists, since you'll still end up carrying two devices (a phone and a laptop). So why not carry a laptop that is a real laptop instead of just an empty shell waiting to be unlocked with your smartphone?Smaller tablets face a strong headwind from the rise of large phones, but the Asus ZenPad Z8 is one solid slate. The speedy, 7.9-inch tablet is not only lighter than similarly sized competitors, but its vivid screen and strong speakers also make it great for watching video and listening to music. This $249 Verizon exclusive also offers 4G connectivity. If it weren't for slight pauses while opening apps and some branded bloatware, we'd have only positive things to say about the ZenPad Z8.
The 0.3-inch thick Asus ZenPad Z8 is quite slender. Its front features a simple, 7.9-inch display, with thin left and right display bezels, and its back panel offers an elegant, textile-patterned, soft-touch finish that is comfortable to hold.Asus ZenPad Z8The ZenPad Z8's 8-megapixel rear camera protrudes slightly from the top left corner of the back panel, and its 2-MP selfie shooter sits off-center to the right in the display's top bezel.Power and volume buttons live on the right side, while a flap on the top left side covers slots for the micro SIM card and microSD card (it supports up to 128GB). The ZenPad Z8's headphone jack sits on the device's topside, and its Type-C USB 2.0 port lives on the bottom. While I wish the tablet offered the speedier, USB 3.0 connectivity, I appreciate the reversible port.
The ZenPad Z8 weighs 10.9 ounces, which makes it lighter than the Acer Predator 8 (12.4 ounces; 0.3 inches) and the LG G Pad F 8.0 (12.31 ounces; 0.35 inches). The Asus ZenPad's 7.9-inch, 2048 x 1536-pixel display is a stunner, offering tons of detail, brightness and color. When I watched a Suicide Squad trailer on this screen, I was impressed by the vivid oranges of El Diablo's flaming hands, the electric green of Joker's hair and the dark, inky shadows of Gotham at night. The panel also showed off the myriad dents on the head of Harley Quinn's mallet.Asus ZenPad Z8The tablet offers a Blue-Free Motion setting that Asus claims will smooth video play quality, but in my testing, it just adjusted movement to that soap-opera-fast speed you see on improperly configured TVs. The Splendid display color adjustment utility allows you adjust hue and saturation balances and offers Bluelight Filter and Vivid presets. The former may help some people go to sleep, while the latter ramps up the color saturation to unnatural levels.
According to our colorimeter, the ZenPad Z8 is colorful, bright and accurate. It produces 104 percent of the sRGB gamut, which is more than the G Pad F 8.0 (79 percent) or average tablet (89 percent) can. The Predator 8 (174 percent) shows even more colors.The ZenPad Z8 earned a 0.88 on the Delta-E (closer to zero is best) test. That beats the scores of the Predator 8 (5), G Pad F 8.0 (1.84) and the average tablet (2.24).The back panel sports an elegant, textile-patterned, soft-touch finish that's comfortable to hold.
Plus, the Asus emitted up to 362 nits (a measure of brightness). That beats showings by the Predator 8 (296 nits), the G Pad F 8.0 (331 nits) and the average tablet (280 nits). The Asus tablet also offers impressively wide viewing angles; I saw its colors stay strong at 70 degrees to the left and right.
The ZenPad Z8's top and bottom speakers filled a medium-size conference room with great sound. The slate provided an excellent rendition of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Run Away with Me," blasting strong synths, clear vocals and sturdy bass.Asus includes a DTS-powered Audio Wizard utility that offers four sound settings: Movies, Music, Gaming, Vocal and Smart. I recommend sticking with Music, as it allows for the clearest sound in trailers, songs, games and podcasts.The ZenPad Z8 offers a nifty Asus ZenUI launcher but also some annoying Verizon junkware. The launcher places navigation animations on top of Android Marshmallow 6.0.1, so icons visually rotate 90 degrees when you flip through screens. ZenUI also makes slight graphical changes over Marshmallow (different buttons for the bottom-row navigation that perform the same functions), and you can disable all of the launcher's twists for a pretty close-to-stock experience.
Asus automatically enables its ZenMotion gestures, which allow you to wake the tablet from sleep mode by double tapping the panel. You can also open apps from sleep mode by tracing one of six letters (specifically C, e, S, V, W and Z) on the screen. You can assign those letters to the apps of your choice, and by default 'C' opens the Camera in rear-shooting mode, 'e' opens email, 'S' opens the Camera in selfie mode, 'V' opens Contacts, 'W' opens Weather and Z opens Chrome.The 7.9-inch, 2048 x 1536-pixel display is a stunner, offering tons of detail, brightness and color.
Ignore the preloaded apps, including Verizon junk like texting app Message+ and glorified account-info app My Verizon Mobile.
Asus' stock email app is good for those who need to connect to all of their email accounts, as it supports accounts on Outlook, Yahoo, AOL, Verizon and Microsoft Exchange, as well as those that run on the POP3 and IMAP standards. You may find Asus' to-do list app Do It Later useful if you use other Asus devices. However, the stock Asus keyboard may prove difficult to use, as its keys are on the small end.The ZenPad Z8's 1.8-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 processor and 2GB of RAM offer speedy performance. This tablet narrowly edges out the more expensive Predator 8, which is powered by a 1.6-Ghz Intel Atom x7-Z8700 CPU and 2GB of RAM. The less expensive LG G Pad F 8.0, which packs a 1.2-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 4000 CPU and 1GB of RAM, fails in all speed comparisons.