Silicon Valley company Imerj (“I merge”) just launched a prototype phone/ tablet the smartpad. The smartpad device is halfway between a smartphone and a pad tablet. Its a bit like the Asus PadFone or more closely like the Kyocera Echo from Sprint which also features a dual-screen. I say that it resembles the Kyocera Echo with its dual-screen but that’s about it. The Imerj smartpad is taking dual-screen to a whole new level.
The Imerj smartpad features two 4-inch displays that expands to 6-inch when unfolded. Contrary to the Nintendo 3DS or even the upcoming Sony S2 tablet, the Imerj smartpad screens unfold outwards. This means that once folded the screens will be facing the outside world. No worries, the screens are made with Gorilla Glass and use Super AMOLED technology. I guess this outward clamshell like design comes from the fact that you can still use one screen for phone use when folded. Both screens are connected by a sturdy hinge which does not really obstruct your view.
The Imerj smartpad will be running Android 2.3 Gingerbread and will be powered by a dual-core processor. The device will have 1GB of RAM and is rumored to have internal storage up to 128GB. That’s a lot of room for a small device, Archos also introduced the G9 series tablet with 250GB of storage.
Multitasking will be key for this device to work properly. It is currently the world’s first device to be able to run different applications on up to 3 different screens. Not all apps are native for dual screen and Imerj will be releasing a special sDK for developers to take advantage of the dual screen.
All I can say is that Imerj have thought about everything with this dual-screen device making it really intuitive to use the smartpad. You can rotate, switch apps, enlarge apps, discards, select, deselect, reselect, whatever you want to do all this at the touch of a fingertip.
From the promo video, we can see that the fluidity when switching apps from different screens is just very smooth and intuitive. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these! It’s like the perfect mix between a smartphone and a tablet.
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