ICE Docking Station Turns Smartphones to Tablets
Much like CES last January, it’s clearly the year of the tablet at Computex and manufacturers are showing off everything they’ve got. Still, while CES brought us a lot of run-of-the-mill tablets, Computex is providing quite a few 'tablets with a twist.'
Before Computex kicked off on Tuesday, Asus revealed its Padfone smartphone/tablet combo. Joining Asus in its efforts to create a fuss around tablet docks are ICE and ECS, two companies that have teamed up and are showcasing their own docking station. Cult of Mac reports that the as-yet-unnamed mobile display allows you to dock your smartphone via a HDMI connection, turning it into a full, 9.7-inch touchscreen tablet.
The picture you see is the tablet being tested with an iPhone but, according to Cult of Mac, the device will work with a variety of Android and Windows Phone 7 tablets as well as Apple's iPhone.
With support for an SD card slot, two USB ports and a front-facing camera, the resulting tablet isn’t anything to turn your nose up at. Whether you think it's worth the $200 ICE and ECS plan to charge for it is another matter altogether.
Scheduled availability is set for Q4 of this year.
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It would be cool if it had a battery built in that would charge the phone and power the tablets screen while you're using it.
Now, do you turn it into a tablet? Or do you just make the screen bigger?
@macewrox:
It turns into a tablet since it adds USB ports, front-facing camera and sd-card slot, which two of three are not present in iPod touch 4th gen.
@yadge:
Yes, a built-in rechargable battery would be nice.
So it's like a dumb terminal playbook...well isn't that nice.
yes, the days when we're implanted with a computer, that we then plug into various physical devices is drawing nearer, mauahahah
yes, the days when we're implanted with a computer, that we then plug into various physical devices is drawing nearer, mauahahah
Think of all the not so savvy users that get viruses for thinking they won a free car for being the millionth visitor, now imaging people being infected instead. Yeah we got a long ways before a cyborg happens.
This could be a hot item if its implemented correctly. Lets see how many hours after release it takes for Apple to sue both of these companies for putting iDevices into them.
I think this could be a real alternative to buy an expensive tablet. I would be interested for $200. But I do feel they might sued, which be unfortunate imho.
Interesting docking station, I hope to see it in the market.
Hope ICE won’t be sued by Apple.
Hope the iPod would work on this docking station.