Qualcomm teased us with a brief glimpse of the Lenovo’s first smartbook using the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor a few months ago. Now Lenovo has pulled back the veil on the device it’s calling the Lenovo Skylight.

At first glance, the Skylight looks like a typical netbook. It has a 10 inch display and a nearly full-sized keyboard. And honestly, if you want to call it a netbook I don’t think too many people would correct you. But while netbooks generally come with Windows 7 and Intel Atom processors these days, the Lenovo Skylight is something different.

This machine uses the ARM-based Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset which provides always-connected access. That means you can receive alerts about incoming email, IM, or social networking messages even when the lid is closed, much the same way you could with a smartphone. But because the Snapdragon chipset uses less power than most x86-based processors, the Skylight is expected to get up to 10 hours of battery life.

What the Skylight won’t do is run Windows. Instead, Lenovo is shipping the laptop with a custom operating system based on Linux. It has a user interface based around a series of customizable widgets for interacting with web services such as Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter. There’s also a media section for watching movies or playing music.

The Lenovo Skylight weighs just 1.95 pounds and will sell for $499 without a contract. It will also be available from AT&T in the US and possibly other wireless carriers across the globe at a subsidized price for customers that sign up for a long term service contract.

You can check out the detailed specs, plus higher resolution images after the break.

• Read the rest of this entry »