Android Netbook Coming Early Next Year?

Android Netbook Coming Early Next Year?
01-Dec-2008

An Android OS isn’t an entirely new or novel concept. After all, I, myself even mooted such a possibility.

What’s awesome, aside from how logical an Android OS for Netbook would be, is the fact that it is most likely already being worked on.

Why would an Android Netbook make sense?

Netbooks have a USP of increased power and portability over large laptops. The hardware their support is relative to their needs. As such, the ‘essentials’ of a Netbook user are already ‘in place’ : Browser, Office Apps, portable Music and Media needs, IM, Skype… etc.

The new crop of so called ‘smart phones’ also pack in a lot of these features: Browsing – albeit at the expense of an inhibited experience due to the lack of power or support for web ‘common’ software such as flash, java. Also, wouldn’t an adblocker for your mobile browser be nice to help you save on any excess data charges? Skype, IM and e-mail are more common mobile applications than they were, however, they do still ‘lack’ compared to their related fully fledged applications.

The current ‘smartphone’ way of adding extra functionality is akin to the Linux ‘package management’ system in that you browse applications, find what you like, and click install. An Android OS would be able to not only use Android Applications, as well as applications and software suited to a netbook’s power.

The Power Of Brand

A lot of Microsoft’s success in most markets, whether that be phone, Netbook or desktop, is because of brand and familiarity. A user used to Android on their Mobile would feel at ease choosing an Android powered Netbook as their would be little perceived learning curve.

Lets not also forget that Netbooks aren’t processor power houses, and a lot of Linux’s advantage over Windows is the fact that Linux not only requires less ‘power’ to run as functionally as Windows, but can easily be tweaked and trimmed to suit netbooks more. This is something Windows hasn’t been able to do hence XP being the preferred choice of Windows OS for Netbooks, but even XP is still somewhat sluggish and bloated compared to Linux and to a possible Android OS.

Android’s lower power requirements, slick UI, awesome ‘suited’ applications and hardware integration would make it appear the OS X to the Vista of other OS’s. It would literally blow other OS’s out of the Netbook game. Imagine a fully featured, advanced OS with a modern touch interface that flies on a comparatively underpowered machine. It’d be incredible!

Google in the ‘OS’ market would likely lead to more companies providing Linux drivers for their hardware knowing that an Android OS would sell, sell, sell! This would benefit Android, the end user and the Linux Community as a whole.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Xandros EEEasy Mode and others

None of my ‘ANDROID NETBOOJ WUD BE SO COOLZ’ sentiment is aimed against the current performance of Linux on netbooks – as I've already mentioned, they wipe the floor in productivity and performance compared to Windows.

The tweaked ‘Easy Mode’ interfaces of Xandros, Linspire Lite and others are noble efforts and certainly help suit the machines. In some respects they merely call out to android and tell it that it’s suited for netbooks – after all Android is a small OS – not a trimmed OS. It already has a small screen friendly yet modern interface. It already has an application base. Netbooks are a few months away from gaining what they should’ve had all along – a NATIVE OS.

Android currently runs on ARM processors in the G1. ARM make relatively powerful yet battery friendly processors and are found in some netbooks already. An Android port to an Arm Netbook wouldn’t be difficult…

A x86 version of Android is rumored to be publicly available by the first quarter of 2009, so its theoretically possible we could see Android netbooks by next year.