i-mate preview Warrior laptop smartphone concept

MWC 2009: Plug in your smartphone to use as trackpad

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17 February 2009 18:02 GMT / By Stuart Miles

i-mate is currently working on an accessory for a new smartphone it is launching that would see it plugged into a laptop and double as the trackpad, Pocket-lint has learnt.

The laptop shell, called the Warrior and designed for road warriors, would allow the user to slot in their smartphone and then use virtualisation software to connect to their PC or Mac in the office or home.

"It's all about cloud computing" said Jim Morrison, the CEO of the company in a frank interview with Pocket-lint.

Where i-mate hopes the device will succeed is that the technical guts of the system will be in the phone, meaning the Warrior (the current codename for the yet to be announced product) will cost only $200 when it launches at the end of the summer.

It's so top secret that we weren't allowed to take a picture as it's still in the development process, however we were allowed to take a picture of the phone to give you an artists' impression (no we didn't do art at school) of what to expect.

What we do know is that the handset, currently going under the code name Legionnaire, will be Windows mobile 6.5, come with Wi-Fi and HSDPA connectivity and the usual GPS, Bluetooth 2.0 and microSD card slot. It will feature a 800MHz chip to give it the umph, say i-mate, to run applications on the laptop-esque device.

The Warrior will feature a 4:3 aspect 10-inch screen and an SD card reader to negate the need for a hard drive and hence keep the price down.

It's not the first time that a company has tried to suggest a smartphone that fits into a laptop. In the last couple of years we've seen Palm tout the Foleo, a UK company suggest a similar idea and only last month designer Willy Yonkers post a similar concept on design website Yanko.