New Samsung Google Chrome OS Notebook Revealed
0Overall Score

Several Asian manufacturers are set to get behind the new Chrome OS with Samsung, Asus, Lenovo and Samsung all preparing to launch new netbooks followed by notebooks in coming weeks.

We saw the first Chrome OS laptop last year when Google released the strangely named Cr-48 notebook. At the time we were told that a number of manufacturers were planning on releasing laptops running the new OS during 2011 and today details of offerings from Acer and Samsung have been revealed.

Mockup of new Samsung Chreome OS offering

The Cr-48 was used by Google to test the Chrome OS and was sent out to testers as part of its Chrome OS Pilot Program but it was always going to be just the first step in Google putting a fully working version of the OS in OEM devices. The release date for the new laptops was slated for mid-2011 and today we’ve gotten a glimpse of some details of two of these devices.

 First up is the Acer laptop, codenamed ZGB, which will be powered by an Atom processor, will have a 1366×768 resolution display between 10in and 12in in size. The only other piece of information which can be gleaned from bug reports is that the laptop will be able to hook up to an external display via HDMI port powered by an encoder chip from Chrontel.

Moving on to Samsung’s offering, and the laptop codenamed Alex will has a 1280×800 display, 1.5GHz dual-core Atom N550, SanDisk SSD P4 of unknown capacity, and 2GB RAM. Also listed are a Qualcomm Gobi 2000 3G card, Bluetooth, WiFi, webcam, and a Synaptics touchpad. The laptop is rumoured to be at least 10in in size and could even make an appearance at Google I/O, its developers’ conference which takes place in San Francisco in two weeks’ time.

Chrome OS is Google’s attempt to move from the mobile space with Android into the more mainstream PC market. We expect to see a number of devices running Chrome OS in the coming months and we can’t wait to get our hands on them.