An article from Silicon.com talks about the future of smartbooks, whilst divulging good photos of Lenovo’s new smartbook along with a few other details.

Android?!
First and foremost, Silicon.com confirms that the smartbook will run Google’s Android operating system. This is not a new thing, but due to the limitations of Android most netbook manufacturers have avoided it. Lenovo will be embracing it for their first generation smartbook, which makes sense considering an Android-powered smartphone serves the same general purpose as a smartbook.

The use of Android is a very good sign. This means that the relationship with Google has been there from the start and I can pretty much guarantee we will see Chrome OS on it later in 2010 or early 2011.

Battery life
They also note that battery life will exceed 8 hours, although it’s not entirely clear if they were referring to smartbooks in general or Lenovo’s device. 8 hours seems reasonable though, considering the low power nature and the previous details that called for a “large battery.”

Let’s talk about the pictures here. In short: color me unimpressed.

While the device’s profile isn’t revealed, we do know it is supposed to be very thin and you get that impression looking at the edges of the device. I do like the angled corners, rather than a regular rectangle or a soft, rounded shape like you usually find in notebooks.

The keyboard is a standard 6-row design and the layout looks reasonably sane. With the recent debacle over Ctrl-Fn key placement, I’m a bit surprised to see the Ctrl key on the outer corner. This is likely an early sample and may not be final, but every other Lenovo product has the Fn key on that corner. Is Lenovo trying to cave and cater to the general public, which is undoubtedly their audience as this will be sold through AT&T with a subsidy.

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Source: [Silicon.com]