Always Innovating updates Touch Book, calls it Smart Book

Always Innovating has given its Touch Book device a hardware refresh, dubbing it the Smart Book this time around. While it does resemble the original at first glance, within the case lies a removable mobile device which doubles up as a handset for making VoIP phone calls. Of course, you can also use it for surfing the Internet or to run additional applications. To make things neater for the frequent traveler, the Smart Book will also feature compartments to stash away a USB-to-HDMI adapter as well as a slot to hold a USB dongle. An ARM Cortex-A8 based processor will power the device, where you can choose from Ubuntu Linux, Google Chrome or Google Android as the operating system of choice. Other hardware specifications are available in the extended post, but if you’re interested in picking up the Smart Book, it will retail for $549 for the whole works, while individual components start from $199 upwards.

• 8.9-inch touchscreen display at 1024 x 600 resolution
• 512MB RAM
• 256MB of NAND flash storage
• microSD memory card slot
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity
• Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity
• 720p HD video output
• Four USB 2.0 ports
• Built-in accelerometer