Lenovo’s Yoga Books are some of the most innovative notebooks around. Certainly more so than Apple’s stylish MacBook Pros in terms of design. But these are Windows-based notebooks which means they are bound to be expensive. To bring them to the masses, Lenovo is looking at launching Chrome OS based versions of the YogaBook in 2017 claims a report by LAPTOP Magazine.
Lenovo’s VP and General Manager for Android and Chrome computing business group Jeff Meredith has confirmed the same to the publication. Already, there are versions of the YogaBook that’s based on Windows and Android, so this points towards the popularity of Chrome OS especially in the education sector.
"We've had a lot of interest. It's an interesting idea for education, especially with the form factor. Over time, we probably see the Android and Chrome versions melding together, especially based on the fact that we've now seen Chrome roll out the Google Play store capability into Chrome. We'll probably maintain the three distinctive products throughout this year at least," said Meredith said about the possibility of the Chrome OS-powered YogaBook.
Meredith also claimed that new features like Real Pen which Lenovo introduced for the Android version of the Yoga Book at IFA in September will also be available on the Chrome OS model.
The very same laptop was launched in India last week for Rs 49,990 and is available on e-commerce website Flipkart. That being said, in India, Lenovo has chosen to launch the Windows model, not the Android model pointing towards the usability of the Windows model.
The Yoga Book in India has a halo keyboard which is a touch enabled keyboard and the Real Pen. It has a 10.1-inch full HD screen, an Intel Atom X5 quad-core processor clocked at 2.4GHz and 4GB RAM. It also comes with 64GB of internal storage and also has a microSD card slot supporting up to 128GB memory cards.
Chrome OS based products over the last few years have grown in popularity and have started to give Windows based alternatives stiff competition in developed markets like the US. That being said, the future of the platform is clouded as there are rumours rife which suggest that Google is planning to merge Android and Chrome OS and create one OS called Andromeda.
