By Tim Conneally, Betanews
German site Netbooknews.de posted a video today displaying a quick demo of the I-Buddie ultra-portable running Android. Though a number of manufacturers have openly discussed the idea of an Android netbook, and testers proved it could be loaded onto a standard Eee PC, none have yet displayed even a working prototype of a purpose-built Android netbook, until now.
There has been a recent spate of rumors about Android netbooks, speculating on a product from anyone from Acer to Nokia, but again, no commitments. The video from Netbooknews.de may show why.
While it does show a mostly working Android environment on what claims to be an Atom N270-based 10.2" netbook, the errors are frequent and functionality is low. In under a minute, there are three force-close messages, and there's really no show of any applications running -- arguably the most important facet of platform adoption.
So there's now video proof that Android netbooks are possible, but there's still no proof that it's viable.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009