We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

I have a bunch of possibly naive questions.

I have an Android tablet (Samsung Tab Pro - the 12" beast). An experiment at replacing a laptop on some outings. I bought the A$140 Logitech keyboard / cover, which is good but not great, with some keys being a bit recalcitrant.

Some UI features are frustrating (example: alt-tab brings up the alt-tab switcher - you need to alt-tab twice to move to the most recent process, and toggling between two or three apps on the top of the stack is a common use case for me if I'm trying to do Real Work). An Android problem, I concede.

Given that context - how good is the keyboard, and how are you shipping keyboard + screen at less than a Logitech keyboard - I know, retail, scale, brand mark-up, two years later, etc ... but nonetheless?

Does the app smooth out some of the frustrations (f.e. the alt-tab problem) of working with Android with a keyboard & mouse as though it's a real grown-up DE? Is the app going to offer an increasingly customisable experience, or does it defer to the phone's native Android (and skins) features?

How does it feel - I know you're biased, but have you tried some phones that it just doesn't work on, and/or have some benchmarks or recommendations? I'm on an original Nexus 5 - which still performs adequately, but with low expectations on a phone interface - how well would it drive the Superbook?

Yea totally - trust me when I first started on this, I had a lot of the same question.

Keyboard: Think of the keyboard of your standard Chromebook. That's the keyboard. We have to use off the shelf, component parts that are fairly common in order to keep costs low.

Screen: Basic screen is a TN 768p. It's not fantastic, but at a 11.6" screen size, it's fine. For an extra $30, you can get the IPS 1080p upgrade. They're pretty solid.

Keyboard / Mouse / Alt-Tab frustration: Yep. Our software mainly spends a lot of time making the experience of using keyboard and mouse decent. We do take on a number of the phone's native features, but desktop experience optimization is why we built our app - it's the missing software link. For those of you with tablets and usb mouse / keyboard that want to give it a try, test out the beta: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andromium.os&hl=en

Phones that don't work: Yea, definitely lower end phones, phones with <2GB RAM run a little rough. There are still a bunch of software features to add / fix / optimize. It still has a bit to go before we hit full desktop parity. We see this as a software problem that we just need to spend a bunch of time on.

Real talk on limitations: really intensive apps will be hard to run in Andromium. Also, phones with <2GB RAM will run into latency issues. Most apps will currently run in full screen mode, with only those with our SDK included having resizing / multi-window capabilities.

Yes totally for 3D games. We see the Superbook as more of a productivity tool. You would most likely still play your games on your phone. But for video watching, no. There's virtually no lag. See our Surface demo to get a sense of how well it works: https://vimeo.com/176370847

Btw because we use DisplayLink, you can also use the Superbook as a secondary monitor / keyboard / mouse for windows tablet,s laptops, and PC sticks.

Great question - and spot on in your assessment. The answer right now is not always on 1080p at 60Hz depending on what's happening on the phone, but generally not noticeable to the user.