The Alpha 680 is using an ARM11 CPU running at 533 MHz. First introduced in 2002, the ARM11 chip, including later, more powerful versions, have been used in many different smartphones, including Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPhone Touch devices.

Android performs fairly well on the chip, said Wu. YouTube's Flash-encoded videos, for instance, can play fine, he said.

The Alpha 680 will have a 7-inch LCD screen at 800 x 480 pixels, 128 MB of DDR2 RAM (expandable to 256 MB, a 1 GB solid-state disk drive (expandable to 4 GB), though users can also add storage through the SD card or two USB ports. It will also have built-in Wi-Fi, keyboard and touchpad.

These barebones specs are what will enable the Alpha 680 to hit a $250 price, said Wu.

That's more than the $200 price talked up by ARM, but less than the $300-$500 price of most Atom netbooks running Windows XP.