HP Confirms ARMDroid Ambitions With Compaq Airlife 100 Smartbook

HP quietly pushed its first smartbook out of the door as the Compaq Airlife 100 and it looks absolutely stunning, drawing comparisons with Apple's popular MacBook Pro range, one that Gizmodo calls an iPad for the Apple hater.

As expected, this smartbook - which was previewed at CES 2010 - looks just like a smartphone with a 10.1-touchscreen display and a proper, usable keyboard that's 92 percent the size of a full keyboard. 

It is likely to be a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor running at 1GHz, 16GB SSD, 3G and WiFi connectivity, instant power on, an SD card slot and Android OS. HP says that you will be able to use the smartbook for 12 hours with up to 10 days (yep 240 long hours) of standby. 

The device has already been launched in Spain by Telefonica as part of a mobile broadband package (yes it comes with an embedded 3G modem). It has already been approved by the FCC and will therefore be launched in the US as sa subsidised package.

It means therefore that O2 could potentially release the device fairly soon in the UK. We contacted O2 UK via Twitter and they said that they were not announcing about that at the moment.

You can read our review of the Pink Pegatron smartbook, a precursor of the Airlife 100 which comes with roughly the same specification and has been out in the wild since August 2009.