Gadgetory

when you think about a tablet chances are you're thinking one of two things maybe something like the iPad or something like Microsoft Surface which is virtually a full PC well lenovo thinks that is something different it's a new yoga book it's a super thin device that features both a full touchscreen on one side and a touch-sensitive panel on the other you can type on this you can write on it you can even use real ink to take notes lenovo says has been working on this for two or three years now and the story of how it came to be is almost as interesting as the device itself we want to hold true to this idea of a book the book we call the product a book from kind of day one joke around a lot because when you say book it conjures up an array of different ideas so you know a book that resonates with me as my favorite dr. Seuss book cat and a hat that's the one that really yeah that's the one that really mimics most closely the dimensionality of this product so we played around and said and when we say book you know a Seuss book is always the one that kind of comes to mind the most unique part of the yoga book is its touch sensitive side that's opposite the 10 inch full-color display it can switch between a full QWERTY keyboard complete with haptic feedback and a writing surface they use Wacom technology in the yoga books included pen to transcribe writing or act as a drawing pad then writing mode can even work with an actual pad of paper and ink insert in the pen and it can capture written input when the main screen is off it doesn't attach like many other tablet and keyboard systems but instead you can flip it all the way around behind the main screen similar to lenovo's yoga laptop line lenovo says it's spent the most development time fine-tuning the keyboards inputs like the virtual keyboard that's on your phone it has autocorrect and word suggestions and can even adjust the size of tap areas based on your typing patterns the company says that some people can get comfortable typing on it in as little as 40 minutes but most will probably take a couple of hours of use before it feels natural the other half of the yoga book is a fairly standard tablet with a 10.1 inch 1080p display until Atom processor 64 gigabytes of storage 4 gigabytes of RAM a battery that's good for up to 15 hours of use and an 8 megapixel camera all of that is housed in a thin metal shell that's just nine point six millimeters thick when closed remarkably though certain details such as a hinge changed over the course of the yoga books development the overall form factor stayed true to the original size thickness and vision it's certainly a different idea you know you know when you say tablet you think slate form factor hasn't changed in five years you know a little bit boring you know I mean honestly most tablet you go to the shelf you know at a major retailer and there's a bunch of them and they all kind of look the same we have certainly reinvented the idea of what a tablet is and I don't know that I necessarily want to even characterize it as a tablet because of that yeah yeah this is the start of a form factor and a line of products that we think has a lot of legs and we think there's certainly an opportunity right now to be a little bit more creative in the space you know in the tablet notebook space combined space Lenovo thinks that the yoga book will appeal to a younger demographic someone who might be a student now or just recently got out of school it'll be priced accordingly to starting at just $499 when it hits shelves in September there's going to be two versions Android model and a Windows 10 version but they share the same specs and form factor the company says that the changes it made to Android were to take advantage of the yoga books unique form factor I do enhance productivity so there's a new multi window system and a taskbar but the windows model has the usual Windows 10 experience so we concept at the product nearly three years ago now so this is one that you know we're typically nine months on a product development cycle so for anything to go three years it is really a long time for us you know we we have clear aspirations that we wanted to hit the thinness the lightness the simplicity of the form factor the functionality of both handwriting and typing capability but all of the entertainment functionality that you you know you know in a tablet so it took us a while to get the the ID right we spent quite a bit of time on the ID we did a lot of testing actually just on usability around the function of the of the device you know our mobile use over the last 10 years has changed a lot of our mindsets and our behaviors so our devices should really reflect that even you know even the devices that we use for productivity with the yoga book lenovo is hoping that you want to use your tablets same way you use your phone and that you carry it everywhere with you but it's also hoping that you get some work done on it like you do with your laptop but all of this depends on whether or not the execution of the yoga book is as good as the idea of the yoga book and when it gets released in a few weeks we'll find out how it came to be is almost interesting it's the yoga book it's a device that is supposed to be in high ready 3 2