Smartphones are easily powerful enough to function as computers these days, and over at CES, a French company has revealed a shell of a laptop which effectively uses your handset as the processor.
The Mirabook from Miraxess is a notebook without any hardware innards, as the handset provides those vital components – although there is a battery on board.
This isn’t a new idea, mind, as a previous Kickstarter project called Superbook tried the same trick (which in turn followed in the footsteps of the HP Elite x3 with its Continuum-enabling dock).
At any rate, with the Mirabook you get a 13.3-inch Full HD display, and of course a keyboard and touchpad, along with a battery which can be used for up to 24 hours, and is capable of recharging your mobile.
There’s also storage on board the notebook, and you simply plug your phone in via USB-C and the display is replicated on the laptop’s screen.
Getting clever with Continuum
So you have a notebook to hand for serious productivity work which is obviously tricky to do on a small display. The device can use Continuum for Microsoft or Andromium for Android to provide an interface more suitable for desktop work.
Aside from the USB-C port, the aluminium Mirabook has an HDMI connector, SD card slot, and you get a pair of ‘premium’ speakers (or at least speakers which are better than your smartphone’s).
One of the chief attractions of this concept is the idea of getting a cheap laptop because you’re using your phone as the actual hardware, although rather disappointingly the crowd-funded Mirabook is going to be considerably more expensive than the Superbook – it’s set to be priced at €299 (around £255, AU$430).
The Superbook is pitched at around the $100 (about £80, AU$140) level, which makes more sense as a tempting budget option.
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