One of the issues with touch tablets, the exorbitant price for most of the people, is addressed by Freescale, the company that delivers Kindle’s CPU and 70% of the chips inside any eBook reader on market. Freescale presented at CES 2010 a reference design for a touch tablet/slate that could be sold for a price as low as 199$ and it’s not cheap on features as you might have expected. Freescale will try to sell the reference design to other manufacturers which in turn will customize it and sell it to consumer, but enough with the business part of the story and see what the Smartbook Tablet, as this device is called, has to offer for us.

    First, let’s start with the hardware chipset which is a i.MX515 featuring an ARM Cortex A8 CPU running at 1 GHz, helped by 512 MB RAM and internal storage varying from 4 to 64 GB. The good story with this CPU is that it supports 3D graphics (OpenVG and OpenGL/ES) and HD decoding so you’ll be able to run some videos without any problems. In Freescale’s tests the 1900 mAh battery is able to power the Smartbook Tablet for up to 12 hours, more than a regular day of work, so if those number are somewhat true you can expect brilliant battery life from this cheap tablet.

    Freescale Smartbook tablet looks good in black

    Freescale Smartbook tablet looks good in black

    The screen will have 7 inch and 1024 x 600 pixels resolution but will use resistive touchscreen technology, so no multitouch but Freescale is planning on offering a capacitive version too for 50$ more. Connectivity options are comprehensive, to say the least and include: 3G modem (option) 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, RF4CE (option). Regular ports include MicroSD, USB 2.0, microUSB (used also for charging), audio in/out, speakers, microphone and a 3 megapixel camera. Nice touches include accelerometer sensor and ambient light sensor that adjust screen luminosity according to the environment saving both battery life and your eyes.

    The external keyboard acts like a docking station

    The external keyboard acts like a docking station

    Freescale Smartbook Tablet will run a browser based OS, with a Debian Linux core, so expect some 3rd party apps that could be installed on this slate/tablet. If you’re planning a texting a lot on this gadget Freescale will also provide an external keyboard that will also act as a docking station for 50$. The color palette is wide enough to satisfy everyone’s taste: white, black, red, dark red, orange and blue. Regarding availability Freescale says it will try and deliver the device in a few months. Let’s hope everyone is interested as we are here at AllTouchTablet. [source]

    Update: We got our hands on a video showing in a few seconds what the Freescale Smartbook is capable of.

    And the device running full screen HD videos thanks to an integrated decoder chip: