Among all the high-end business pieces, new smartphones, strange wearables and monstrously overkill gaming laptops, Lenovo managed to steal the show using a device with relatively meager hardware specs. That device, the Lenovo Yoga Book, takes an incredibly unique approach to expanding its possible use cases and audience, which is why it turned so many heads. The 2-in-1 is not only extremely thin and light for its category, but the way that this was accomplished is nothing short of special, and has been in development in Lenovo’s labs for about three years now. That special hardware touch is a bottom half of the tablet, when opened, that can be used as a user pleases, whether that’s a keyboard, drawing pad, or a possible number of other things down the road as the tablet catches on.
A reporter with TechRadar managed to track down the Yoga Book’s campaign manager, Matt Lazare, and sit down with him to discuss the strange beast. Questions about the device’s origins, intentions, and of course its oddball keyboard all came up. When asked about how well Chrome OS could work with the Yoga Book’s distinctive design, he said that Chrome OS was something that the company was “thinking very seriously about” in regards to the Yoga Book. He went on to explain that Chrome OS getting Android compatibility in the near future made it a very interesting proposition, and something that consumers may possibly see at a later date.
The Android and Windows variants share an Intel Atom processor, but with different bootloader code, it’s highly probable that only the Windows-based version of the machine may end up seeing Linux and unofficial builds of Chrome OS, while users bringing home the Android version will be stuck with that decision. Given the design and niche, Chrome OS only seems like a natural fit for the Lenovo Yoga Book, and Lazare seems to agree. Still, nothing is written in stone at the moment, and the Yoga Book may wind up being strictly an Android and Windows machine, but chances seem good that we will be seeing a version of this laptop running Chrome OS in the near future.