Summary: The new 10.1-inch notebook will join a slowly growing number of PCs that use Android as their operating system.
The pesky online leak has struck the tech world again. This time, Lenovo has been caught making a boo-boo that has forced the company to confirm a forthcoming laptop that will run Android before it was ready to announce it.
The oopsy started when the user guide and manual for something called the IdeaPad A10 surfaced on Lenovo's website. And, as almost always seems to happen, someone spotted the documentation and the next thing Lenovo knew, it was telling PC World (and our sister site CNET) that the posted documents were legit and that it had been hoping to do a formal launch of the notebook in the near future.
What makes the IdeaPad A10 notable beyond its unusual unveiling is that it is a laptop that is powered by the Android OS, which is a far rarer occurrence than some (including ZDNet's own Matt Baxter-Reynolds) had previously thought. There have been a couple of notebooks that are hybrid Android/Windows devices (like the Samsung Ativ Q and the forthcoming Asus Transformer Book Trio), and HP is readying an all-in-one desktop (the Slate 21) that uses Android as well.
According to the hardware manual, the A10's specs suggest it will be a budget system. It's using a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor from Rockchip with either 1GB or 2GB of RAM and 16GB or 32GB of storage. It is built around a 10.1-inch touchscreen that can rotate 300 degrees, allowing you to turn the display away from the keyboard for video viewing. The A10 will run a version Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.
Unfortunately, Lenovo's spokesperson declined to provide pricing and availability dates for the IdeaPad A10, but who knows -- maybe that will leak before the company is ready to disclose it officially, too.
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