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At CES, we saw the keyboard dock of the Motorola Atrix. At Computex, we saw the Asus Padfone, and its tablet dock. And now, at IFA, Korean company KT has taken the idea of ‘phone plus dock’ to another level with its Spider Concept, which has both laptop and tablet docks — and adds a gaming dock to the mix.
The phone at the middle of the Spider Concept is an impressive piece of hardware in its own right, AndroidPIT reports. It features a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, modified Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and a 4.5-inch display with a Galaxy Note-matching resolution of 1,280×800 pixels. The multiple docks, however, are what really make the Spider Concept interesting.
Firstly, the tablet dock. The phone attaches to the back of it, and connects via what looks like micro-USB and micro-HDMI. It’s similar to the Padfone’s dock, except the phone isn’t covered up, so you can still use its rear camera. The dock itself is just a shell with a 10.1-inch screen and a pair of speakers — the phone is what does all the work. When connected to the dock, you’re presented with a different interface, with a status bar resembling that of Honeycomb.
The laptop dock differs from that of the Atrix by having the phone attach to it at the front, where you would normally find the touchpad. In this case, however, the phone actually is the touchpad. As with the tablet dock, the laptop dock doesn’t have many internals. There’s an extended battery, a couple of speakers, and not much else. In laptop mode, the user interface is the same as it is in tablet mode, so it looks like Honeycomb.
The third dock is the gaming dock, which, when the phone is attached to it, could easily be mistaken for a PSP. The D-pad and buttons are laid out just like they are on a PSP, except they’re labelled with letters, not Sony’s famous symbols. The gaming dock probably has less inside it than the other two — it doesn’t even connect directly to the phone, instead relying on a Bluetooth connection.
KT says the Spider Concept should launch in Korea come November or December, but won’t say if an international launch is planned. Areamobile has a video of the Spider Concept, and we’re very impressed by it, but what do you think about it? Let us know in the comments below, or on our Facebook wall.
Image credit: AndroidPIT
