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

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71–80 of 153 posts

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

#71
post #70

Is it plausible that this could work with a raspberry pi? Or hell, even as a tty/dumb terminal for a random linux box?

I'm interested in the second one? Is there any way to run code on the DisplayLink-like chip? Would a dedicated CPU module with 2G+ ram be an option?

Likely not for our product. Our focus is bringing device convergence to Android smartphones - everything else to be honest is kind of a nice to have

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

#72
post #30
post #26

How well does it work without Andromium? For instance: Can I enter directly to the phone with the keyboard? Does the phone screen show on the large screen without Andromium? Is the large screen a touch screen? Even more important -- if I have a rooted/virtual machine instance of a standard Linux distro running on my smartphone, can I use that? Do I have to use Andromium if I have a setup like a rooted chromebook? Tur…

It works fine without Andromium, but it is just a larger version of your phone screen. The answer is Yes. As long as the device you're working on as a displaylink driver, you can use it. In fact: Superbook + Surface tablet: https://vimeo.com/176370847 Superbook + Mac: http://imgur.com/a/oZwwN Superbook + PC Stick: http://imgur.com/a/eTbtm

Is it a DisplayLink 3? There doesn't seem to be an open driver for that due to hardware copy protection features.

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

#73

You mention that you can write code on the Superbook, but I've yet to find any good ide in Android. Any plans to create or partner with someone to get something like Atom running in Andromium/Android? Do you have a particular favorite that you always use right now?

If you're a terminal person, definitely check out Termux[1], it's really, really good (Android 5+ only, however). For a text editor, I really enjoy Quickedit[2]. But I'm not aware of any decent quality IDEs, either. Personally, I'm really hoping Blackberry knocks it out of the park at some point with an Android phone with PKB. I do a lot of traveling, and Termux (with ssh, vim, go, tmux, fish, etc.) would handle 99% of my computing needs if I had a good keyboard. (But I'm not willing to get a phone without a removable battery, and I don't see BB going back to that anytime soon.)

[1] https://github.com/termux/termux-app [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rhmsoft.ed...

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

#74

You mention that you can write code on the Superbook, but I've yet to find any good ide in Android. Any plans to create or partner with someone to get something like Atom running in Andromium/Android? Do you have a particular favorite that you always use right now?

Not an IDE, but you should really check out Termux.

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

#75
I'm curious about how the Superbook is charged. It seems you're shipping a custom charger, but also somewhere on the Kickstarter it talks about micro-USB. So, would a regular USB charger be able to charge the Superbook, or does it only work with your own charging brick?

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

#76
post #69
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also interested in this. Do anyone knows how something like eclipse che would work in this? Do you think this will be a viable alternative for coding while traveling and dont have a laptop?

We see coding as a key use case for our product. The current IDEs for Android are ok, but we can make it better with partners and potentially some good Cloud IDEs. Still not there though

I hope you stay focussed on the low end of the market and don't get bogged down by demands of developers since they are likely to be different from everybody else.

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

#77
post #75

I'm curious about how the Superbook is charged. It seems you're shipping a custom charger, but also somewhere on the Kickstarter it talks about micro-USB. So, would a regular USB charger be able to charge the Superbook, or does it only work with your own charging brick?

Great question. The Superbook is charged using a standard micro-b cord. A regular charger works fine. To charge the phone however is a little complex. We have a custom USB-OTG cord for that. The reason is because we need to send data one way and power the other.

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

#79
post #68

Is it plausible that this could work with a raspberry pi? Or hell, even as a tty/dumb terminal for a random linux box?

Haha..keep it a secret: http://imgur.com/PViKxMD Actually have only sneaked this to our commenters. Will do an update to everyone soon...

Cool! Have you considered embedding a Raspberry Pi Zero so the Superbook can get on the web when there's not a phone attached? I know that's like reinventing the Chromebook, but the CPU and memory are so cheap...

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

#80
post #15

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.

What about the multi-window support coming in Android Nougat, will that enable more out of the box functionality?
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