Freescale Pits £125 ARM-Based Tablet Smartbook Against Apple's Tablet PC

Finally, after more than five months gestation, the first ARM-based tablet smartbook device has been unveiled by Freescale Semiconductor although it is now little more than a "tablet reference design".

Powered by ARM's Cortex A8 chipset, it comes with a 7-inch LED backlit touchscreen with a 1024x600 resolution (ed: that's higher than the 800x600 resolution offered by the first Asus EEE PC Netbooks), weighs a mere 376g (yep, a fraction of an imperial pound), has 512MB RAM and up to 64GB storage.

If that was not enough, there's also a speaker, a microphone, a 3-megapixel camera (and front facing webcam), a minu USB and USB port, a light sensor and a fully-fledged accelerometer.

As expected, the device offers all the connectivity options that you will find on a traditional smartphone; that includes WiFi, Bluetooth, option QWERTY keyboard, integrated 3G modem and the promise of a full day worth of usage on one battery charge.

Henri Richard, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Freescale, said in a press release that the company's "new tablet opens the door to an exciting new world of compelling form factors specifically designed and optimized to support common online activities including social media, high-quality audio/video playback and light gaming".

There's even a pink version which matches the pink Pegatron smartbook which we reviewed back in August 2009.