I’ve been following the CrunchPad since it was announced last year,and the more I learn about it,the more I want one (I am ready to pre-order at this point…something I never do with electronics,especially first-gen electronics…so I am really excited about this). What you see above is the fourth design revision,and is the launch prototype. More news and the actual final version should be announced at a press event TechCrunch (yes the blog) is going to be holding in July.
CrunchPad Concept
The CrunchPad started in July 2008 as an idea of a cheap simple tablet display,about $200,that was as thin as a Macbook Air display,ran a linux kernal that could load Skype and Firefox. It would have a headphone jack,a built in camera for video,speakers,and a microphone to allow it to run video conferencing over Skype. It would also have Wifi,a USB port,and about half a Gigabyte of RAM and a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. All of this would be controlled through a touchscreen keyboard a-la iPhone-style.
Prototype A
After about a month,by August,they had the first prototype,dubbed Prototype A,booting up and able to connect to Wifi. Physically,it looked nothing like the concept,but this was only a month in and very early in the development cycle.
Prototype B
By January,another picture of a new prototype (Prototype B) was released,showing a much sleeker (albeit not close to as thin) shapped device. It also gave us the first look at the on-screen keyboard and interface in general.
Prototype C
Finally,in April of 2009,a bunch of pictures of Prototype C leaked onto the internet forcing TechCrunch to make a proper posting about it. The device looked stunning compared to the first two prototypes,and was the one that really convinced me that this endevour that TechCrunch was embarking on might actually bear fruit. This device looked amazing. It was thin. It was sleek. It had that excellent capacitive touchscreen that makes me love my iPod Touch (and equally hate my HTC Touch Pro). From here,they moved from plastic to alumnium and managed to decrease the width to about 18 mm for the launch prototype pictured at the top of the post. The screen has also been made flush with the case,alowing for easier control and handling of the device.
TechCrunch also released the below video of the interface that they have been demoing:
When is this coming out?
TechCrunch are going to showcase the final version sometime in July. When the actual device will be available to purchase is still unknown but we can only hope it is sometime this year
Did you check out the E-paper/LCD screen? They should use this for the screen!