Hot from Indiegogo comes an intriguing new product, the Castaway, which is billed as the ultimate smartphone accessory. It is essentially a mini-tablet that attaches to your smartphone, turning your iPhone or Samsung device into something like the Galaxy Fold.
With a starting price of $129 / £100 for smaller smartphones, and $139 / £108 for larger ones (that’s the the Early Bird offer, incidentally), this promises to be a productivity powerhouse of an accessory, albeit with a delivery date well into 2020 according to the Indiegogo page.
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The Castaway runs Chrome OS and has 4GB of RAM plus 32GB eMMC storage, with a display in either 5.8-inch or 6.3-inch sizes featuring a QXGA resolution. The two screen sizes make it compatible with the most popular devices on the market, the Apple iPhone (from version 6 onwards) and the Samsung Galaxy (from the Galaxy S7 onwards, and from the Note 7).
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When we say it’s compatible, we mean that the Castaway can attach to those aforementioned devices magnetically and transform them into a mini laptop.
You will be able to use the Castaway as an independent tablet as well thanks to its powerful six-core CPU. It also benefits from two cameras, two USB Type-C ports, a microSD card slot, an audio jack and a 35Whr battery. Oh and let’s not forget, there’s a stylus bundled too.
At the core of Castaway is an app called MultiTask+ which enables your phone to connect to the mini-tablet over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The goal, ultimately, is to create an open source project around this accessory by the end of the year, with the overarching aim of fostering new ideas for dual-screen use cases.
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