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

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

#141

Post by [deleted] »

ajiang wrote: post #13
Jedd wrote: post #11

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, a…

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…

[deleted]

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

#142

Post by ajiang »

ajiang wrote: post #133
ethanpil wrote: post #111

Whats your plan on competing with China copycats, who are no doubt already working on a lower cost clone of your product? Since its such a great idea, but uses mostly off the shelf parts and doesn't require much specialization, its a perfect target for them. Look at the patterns: They quickly cannibalize and eventually completely commoditize the market for easy-to-copy products by flooding ebay, amazon, aliexpress, e…

Oh man, passed out (it's like 5 AM here in Shanghai). Great question. The hardware for the Superbook isn't hard, to be perfectly honest. We actually fully expect that we'll have copy cats, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about that. We are at heart a software company, and if you look at the various attempts at doing this, getting the software experience right has been the challenging part. One of the reason…

Btw, if you're reading this and you are an Android dev interested in working on a really challenging technical problem (and not 'just an app'), reach out - we're looking to hire employees #1-3.

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

#143

Post by ajiang »

adultSwim wrote: post #124
ethanpil wrote: post #111

Whats your plan on competing with China copycats, who are no doubt already working on a lower cost clone of your product? Since its such a great idea, but uses mostly off the shelf parts and doesn't require much specialization, its a perfect target for them. Look at the patterns: They quickly cannibalize and eventually completely commoditize the market for easy-to-copy products by flooding ebay, amazon, aliexpress, e…

Great question. The copycats will be agile (quick to market, quick to iterate through changes) but I imagine their software side would be lacking. Should Andromium be more afraid of Samsung/HTC/etc? Xiaomi? (in between a generic copycat and a Samsung) With so much data being pushed off devices and onto 3rd parties, I wonder if the real competition is Apple and Google?

Much more afraid of Google here. Or correction - much more afraid of us delivering such a bad experience software wise that no one will use it, meaning no developers will care to build software for it, meaning no one will care. And after that we're much more afraid of Google.

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

#145

Post by tlundberg »

I read that someone mentioned it already, but didn't find a good response, so I'll ask again.

When doing web development the browser dev tools are indispensable. Is there any possibility to run a full desktop browser on an Android phone to get those tools? Or some other way to inspect elements, live edit CSS properties, debug JavaScript etc.

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

#146

Post by ajiang »

tlundberg wrote: post #145

I read that someone mentioned it already, but didn't find a good response, so I'll ask again. When doing web development the browser dev tools are indispensable. Is there any possibility to run a full desktop browser on an Android phone to get those tools? Or some other way to inspect elements, live edit CSS properties, debug JavaScript etc.

Yea we see developer work as a key use case for the Superbook. We have a decent desktop browser in the Superbook, but it's going to take some work to integrate a full dev environment. Something that we're keen on doing.

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

#147

Post by tlundberg »

ajiang wrote: post #146
tlundberg wrote: post #145

I read that someone mentioned it already, but didn't find a good response, so I'll ask again. When doing web development the browser dev tools are indispensable. Is there any possibility to run a full desktop browser on an Android phone to get those tools? Or some other way to inspect elements, live edit CSS properties, debug JavaScript etc.

Yea we see developer work as a key use case for the Superbook. We have a decent desktop browser in the Superbook, but it's going to take some work to integrate a full dev environment. Something that we're keen on doing.

Ohh, you have your own browser? What other browser is it based on? Do you have any screen shots? Does it support plugins?

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

#149

Post by cordite »

ajiang wrote: post #66
cordite wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently one can still get to the google play store [1], similar to Cyanogenmod missing Play Store out of the box. Is there inspiration or parts you can share with Remix? [1]: http://liliputing.com/2016/01/remix-os-for-pc-how-to-install...

Totally. We will absolutely love to get as pretty and as functional as Remix, with just downloading an app. I think that's the key - it needs to live on the phone and it can't require installing a new OS.

Best wishes! It would be very neat to see how this proceeds!

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

#150

Post by mattmaroon »

ajiang wrote: post #99
mattmaroon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has been burned on about 50% of Kickstarters, I find it totally underwhelming. There's a 50% chance I save like 20%, and a 50% chance I lose 100%. Bad expected value for sure. Your making an effort to combat that perception is a good move.

Thanks Matt. Totally get it. I think because Kickstarter starts feeling like a store, its easy to forget the situation of the campaigners: super early on, having invested their own funds to come up with a prototype that they're now crowdfunding to come to life. Thinking about it in terms of expected value, Kickstarter never makes sense. Thinking about it in terms of providing an incremental X% chance that something c…

You're right. And I think it feels that way for inexpensive items. If I put $30 into a board game and it never gets made, oh well.

But if I buy a $300 smart lock and it never ships or it ships to me a year later and is so poorly-designed as to be completely useless, it starts to feel like a really bad store.

I think if it feels to backers like a store, it'd be nice if Kickstarter and the people who put projects up treat it like one too.

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