Cheap Android tablets are all over the place, and generally not any good. They often have resistive touch screens instead of capacitive ones, are slow, or have no access to the Android Market. For Ice Cream Sandwich, MIPS Technologies is trotting out its existing Honeycomb tablet – which, you guessed it, uses a MIPS processor – licensed to Ainovo. For some reason, that makes this $99 tablet with capacitive screen kind of interesting.
In all honesty, I don’t believe this tablet is going to be any good – it didn’t shatter any earths in its Honeycomb incarnation either. Still we’re looking at a tablet which uses a MIPS processor, and as someone who used to spend money on ‘exotic’ non-x86 hardware, this fascinates me. As is to be expected, this MIPS processor is an SoC design, and with some interesting specifications, I must say.
“The JZ4770 SoC is powered by a MIPS32 compatible XBurst CPU designed by Ingenic,” the press release reads, “The XBurst CPU core adopts an innovative ultra-low-power pipelining architecture which consumes less than 90mW in 1GHz (with L1 cache), and the entire SOC consumes ~250mW with the CPU and video engine operating under full load. In addition to the XBurst CPU, the JZ4770 SoC integrates an optimized 1080p video processing engine, OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics processing unit from Vivante Corp. and numerous on-chip analog and application blocks such as audio codecs and GPS.”
Further, we’re looking at a 7″ capacitive touch screen, and pretty decent battery life, too. It’s fully Google certified, and is actually the first Ice Cream Sandwich tablet – earlier than all the other major brands.
The tablet sells for $99, but shipping is exorbitant right now because it has to come all the way from China, but it will launch ‘natively’ in the west, too. It’s just… $99 for what is, for all intents and purposes, a MIPS machine? Awesome.
I’m sorry, but this does rekindle that old (and outdated) x86 sucks!-mentality. I want one. Just so I can say I have a MIPS machine.
Wow.
Yeah but it does kind of fit the cheap product
.
Ouch at the $60.00 shipping. Still a great deal.
Having just purchased the Nook Color not too long ago, I’d rather spend money on something with a keyboard and a bigger screen with a great battery (like the Asus Transformer … except I guess I’ll wait till prices are competitive with x86 laptops).
Edited 2011-12-05 23:42 UTC
This is a marketing failure. People freak out when they see a shipping fee thats %60 of the price, even if the total isn’t that bad of a deal. The right approach is to price that at $140 with $20 shipping. The company still gets the same amount of money, but it seems like a better deal to most people.
That guy didn’t even look like he was enjoying it…
btw
You have never had a home router or a playstation 1/2/psp? Those had mips processors in them…
Edited 2011-12-05 23:49 UTC
The Apple fanbois were telling us recently that a $200 tablet was impossible let alone a $99 one.
Apple RIP. You are now officially fscked. It will probably take a year or two before you begin to really hurt. After that your decline will be terminal.
Can’t tell if serious or just trolling…
10″ tablet with proper screen, 8/16Gb storage and a good ARM SoC still costs about $260 to manufacture.
Try $120. Tablets with this hardware already wholesale in China for well under $150.
A Tegra 3 quad core SoC currently costs less than $25.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Nvidia-Tegra-3-Costs-Between-15-25-1…
High end quad core tablets are expected to be <$300 within six months.
>> Tablets with this hardware already wholesale in China for well under $150.
Are you joking or just don’t see anything behind the numbers?
Cheap china tablets are unusable crap stuffed with Rockhip, weak batteries and cheap plastic.
Sorry, but even Archos things are million times better than that “tablets”.
A good quality display cost is comparable to this entire tablet.
Stop talking nonsense.
These tablets have 1GHz A9 Cortex, capacitative touchscreens, 1GB RAM and 8GB memory.
If you really think a display costs $200 you must be paying retail or drinking the Apple Kool Aid.
High impact plastics are used by practical people who understand engineering and real world.
Plastic is light weight, can be made in any colour, is non-slip, high impact, doesn’t dent and doesn’t block or distort signals.
Glass and aluminium are used by brainless designers who prefer form over function.
Glass is heavy, brittle and slippery.
Aluminium scratches and dents easily and must be painted or anodised. It blocks and distorts signals.
Have you handled any of the devices? The plastic the use for the cheap devices? It’s not Samsung grade plastic, it’s the low end knockoff children’s toys plastic.
In addition, I just checked – Tegra2 1GB RAM, 8GB storage with 1280×800 is sill about $300 in high volume. With lower rez panel it’s $20 off.
For Cortex A9 from Zenithink(that crap) with 512Mb RAM and 4-8GB storage at 1024×600 it’s 140-200.
All prices quoted FOB Shenzhen.
These tablets have 1GHz A9 Cortex, capacitative touchscreens, 1GB RAM and 8GB memory.
Haha. That’s I wrote. You are blinded with the numbers and don’t see anything behind them.
If you really think a display costs $200
How $99 is transformed to $200 now?
Famous iSupply breakdown state $89 for the panel Apple using.
Glass and aluminium are used by brainless designers who prefer form over function.
LOL I’m brainless user who prefers glass and aluminium over cheap china plastic toys.
At least I respect myself to stay away from crappy made things.
Edited 2011-12-07 13:01 UTC
I don’t need to “try”, I actually know.
Sure with the most crappy panel, soft plastic and so on. A capacitive panel is still rather expensive.
Rockchip, Via WonderMedia and Amlogic devices are are cheap, anything with a proper CPU is much more expensive.
You link to an article that says how much Tegra3 costs, without any mention of how much actual devices cost. Next time try contacting an actual Chinese manufacturer for a quote. I use quite a few contacts that I have left from my career in procurement.
Heh, my laptop was fscked last night, but then again it does that every 30 boots or so. It was a minor annoyance. I wonder if thats how Apple sees getting fscked too?
I think they are probably using a shiny but limited GUI frontend to the UNIX way :
date;cd ~;gunzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep
Edited 2011-12-06 19:58 UTC
Is that satire Fester?
I’m serious. Apple is going to be totally overwhelmed by many powerful and dirt cheap tablets and phones within 6-12 months.
Same thing was said 6-12 months ago. Funny how that hasn’t happened.
It’s almost like some people actually want a quality product (whether that’s apple or android) and not the cheapest thing out there.
You couldn’t buy a $100 tablet a year ago. You can now.
The best use for tablets is keeping young children amused. Young children only need to watch movies, read a story or play simple games. This need is easily satisfied by very cheap tablets.
You couldn’t buy a $100 tablet a year ago. You can now.
Where do you live? In your imagined reality? =)
http://s.dealextreme.com/search/tablet+android.html?GPrice=1.00&LEP…
Edited 2011-12-06 16:41 UTC
Sure you could. Lots of chinese sites were selling really cheap android tablets. They sucked, and this one is better, but still nothing compared to an iPad or premium android tablet.
How exactly is the market for childrens toys the same as the tablet market? You said Apple would be in trouble. Last I checked they weren’t in the business of making toys.
Tablets are “lifestyle” machines, not commodity devices… If you can afford a tablet you don’t need to scrape the bottom of the barrel. People buy Tablets not because they need them, but because they WANT them… Apple will dominate the Tablet market for as long as the tablet is a luxury device, as soon as they become commodity devices that is when Apple will suffer market losses, only then will cheap tablets have a real market.
Back on topic, from hardware point of view the MIPS is beautiful… It truly is my favourite CPU ISA (possibly only just second to 68k, but only because I have history there with my Amiga experience). But from a practical perspective, the ARM wins hands down… Designed not by idealist scientists (like MIPS), but by two engineers (with virtually no budget) it makes sensible engineering trade offs that allow it to dominate the Low Power market.
Like Thom, I also wouldn’t mind this device just for exotic hardware geek lust, though I wouldn’t expect it to be a practical device
You’re right, tablets are luxury devices because most of the people don’t need it. But when people will stop wanting them, cheap tablets are not going to have a real market… it will simply collapse.
There’s some logic loop, non sequitur of sorts there – paraphrasing, roughly: one very successful tablet doesn’t target lesser people …hence there’s no real market for tablets which would target them?
It’s not really about scraping the bottom of the barrel (that’s a very relative thing) either, there are billions of people who would probably do well with a tablet – there are 2+ billion PC users, 5+ billion mobile subscribers (how many of them need those phones? how were they able to get by a short decade ago?); the numbers receptive to some kind of a tablet* possibly fall somewhere in-between, and Apple openly states distaste for targeting them.
With economies of scale & software base the choices of those people should, yeah, in time overwhelm classes of devices aiming at “premium” image (oh well, home computers, Macintosh, workstations and PC all over again). And it will be very much a “lifestyle” for many (most?) of them, just as mobile phones already are.
PS. * Though I wouldn’t be too surprised if we’d – partially or largely – settle on, essentially, small tablets with phone functionality (just without their usual now, in developed markets at least, silly price premiums); at least it would finally give real purpose to Bluetooth headsets…
(and, in a “largely” variant, would allow many to claim that Apple never gave away the tablet market; while what would really happen is that the rest of the world leapfrogged it, like with music players)
Edited 2011-12-06 11:38 UTC
There is already a massive market for cheap tablets – children. A tablet is a movie player, story book and games machine all in one. Even the very cheapest 7″ tablets are more than adequate for keeping a child amused.
Within 12-24 months the tablet will be as common as a games console or a DVD player in middle class homes.
Though I disagree with Uncle Fester’s original point, I do agree with this. There’s still plenty of untapped market for tablets, particularly for kids. However, my kids have iPod touches, and they’re actually a little bit more practical for a lot of the things mentioned here (entertainment) precisely because they’re smaller and more portable.
But of course the ipod touch costs $200. I think that cheap tablets will probably spur Apple to do two things: an intermediate tablet between the touch and the ipad, and pushing the price down until the touch is $99 and they have a 7″ tablet for $199.
The reality is that most people don’t care about raw specs, but on the actual experience of using the device. My wife has a much better phone spec wise than her friend who has an original iphone 3g. However, her Sony Experia X10 keeps crapping out on her: slowing down randomly rebooting, ect. That doesn’t happen to her friend with the older, slower cpu’d less memoried, iphone.
I think Apple will be fine.
Not to mention that their specs have been competitive lately. Still haven’t seen a tablet or phone with a better GPU than the iPad2. Perhaps the Tegra3 surpasses it, but I haven’t seen any benchmarks on that yet and it isn’t out in anything.
Anandtech has a review of the Asus eeePad Transformer Prime, using a quad-core Tegra3. For most of the benchmarks, the iPad2 and TF are neck-and-neck. Which, is actually kind of sad, considering that the Tegra3 is clocked much higher with 2 extra cores. But, the CPU in the A5 is a beast that nothing else can touch as of yet.
Yeah, just like how the easy availability of dirt cheap mp3 players totally destroyed Apple’s iPod business.
Would be really nice, but I am unsure. Netbooks for example seem to become more expensive here (Europe). At least I bought my first one for just above 100EUR and three years later I can’t really find anything comparable. Of course they have become better, but the main reason – at least for me – for buying such a device is that they are cheaper than something comparable.
I wonder if this is the same MIPS CPU Commissioned by the PRC Military and Intelligence Services. The same one featured in a new super computer produced by the Chinese Government. This should be interesting to watch. I wonder what hidden potential/pitfalls are in that Chinese MIPS CPU.
This is definitely not Loongson nor any of the followups.
I also believe after doing a few google searches that the chip used in China’s new HPC is derived from ALPHA rather than MIPS
Here is a link to an article which mentions it’s supposed lineage to the DEC ALPHA 21164:
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4230214/Chinese-processors-…
It seems like no one actually knows for sure though since they processors aren’t exactly out in the open…
Edited 2011-12-06 22:34 UTC
does this have? Many Android apps use native ARM code to get around pitfalls of the Dalvik VM. I’m assuming that none of those will run on a MIPS-based Android system without a recompile.
Not that many. Since NDK restricts usage of Assembly, you would mostly have to change the NEON functionality.
you would mostly have to change the NEON functionality.
For the sake of 0.0000001% of tablet market?
FYI: A lot of devices don’t have NEON.
i’m strongly considering buying one of these.
It is selling "i?yen599 for a (4GB Storage) Version.
"i?yen699 for the 8GB version. Here mentioned, it can be upgraded from Android ver 3.2. But it comes with Android ver 2.2 only. Strange?
http://www.ainol.com/plugin.php?identifier=ainol&module=article&act…
Not sure how long the battery can last actually last.
Here is the Specs
http://www.ainol.com/plugin.php?identifier=ainol&module=product&act…
Let’s hope they aren’t are bad as the other $100 devices. I suspect that MIPS might be interested in a higher quality device as their first device.
I think you may have used the wrong monetary symbol there…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/^Ayen
Yuan, yen and won (Korea) all come from the same Chinese word.
Generally there’s no key for http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a…f (the everyday handwritten symbol in China & Taiwan), so ^Ayen is often used, even if most Westerners associate it only with Japanese yen (understandable given China’s previous low level of of economic interaction with the West).
Ahhh, now I realize what your avatar reminded me of… http://www.kyon.pl/img/5478,CTD,Johnny,grammar_nazi,lol,grammar,naz… (sure, it’s not quite up to that with “^Ayen” above, but… ;p )
I can take you insulting me as a grammar nazi, but your dangling preposition is something up with which I will not put!
Can it stream 720p mkv’s or similar container?
Is there a DLNA/UPnP client available that WORKS for ICS?
I won’t pay 60 bucks for shipping, but when it becomes a locally available device I may very well spend $100 on it and maybe $10-15 shipping. I would like to play with it and 100 bucks isn’t a purchase I need to budget/save for, but $200 would be.
I’m with Thom on this. Having a MIPS based device would definitely give you some geek points. Brings back memories of my assembly language class that used a MIPS emulator. ARM is so 3rd quarter 2011
Having a Playstation or PS2 (oh, only the best-selling console in history, overall; and PS1: 2nd best-selling among non-handhelds), also an early PS3 model with hardware “emulation” of PS2, or maybe one of many consumer WiFi routers & NAS devices, brings geek points?
Hm, OK then.
Didn’t Thom have, IIRC, a PS2 at some point? That’s two MIPS processors right there… (the 2nd taking over as a main one in PS1 mode)
I also prefer MIPS ISA because it can trap on integer overflow which is nice for efficient Ada compilation.
But unfortunately nearly nobody use a language with this (nice) behaviour instead of stupid C/C++ or Java’s behaviour on integer overflow, so it doesn’t really matter: both ISAs are quite nice, much better than x86 anyway.
renox,
“I also prefer MIPS ISA because it can trap on integer overflow which is nice for efficient Ada compilation. ”
You may be right about mips handling overflow better than x86, but I actually don’t mind the way the x86 does it.
ADD [edi], dword 5 # cause overflow
JO xyz # optionally handle overflow
INTO # generate an interrupt on overflow
ADC [edi+4], dword 0 # add carry
CMOVO [edi], … # clip the range
# do nothing, modulo arithmetic is often desirable.
“But unfortunately nearly nobody use a language with this (nice) behaviour instead of stupid C/C++ or Java’s behaviour on integer overflow, so it doesn’t really matter”
I share the same gripe of the C language. It offers no way to use or act upon the overflow, leading to less efficient algorithms.
Also, I think modulo arithmetic should be made explicit. Languages like C/Java that implicitly discard overflow information lead to bugs regardless of architecture. New languages should automatically assert errors on overflow unless told to do otherwise.
Uh? MIPS has two version of integer operation: ADD/ADDU, SUB/SUBU (one which trap on overflow, one which doesn’t and corresponds to modulo operation) (not sure about multiplication and division though), so the big thing here is that there is nearly no difference in performance between “modulo” computations and “trap on overflow” computations(*) which isn’t the same with other ISA.
*: not 100% true even if both operations have the same performance because “trap on overflow” allow less reorganization than modulo arithmetic.
renox,
“Uh? MIPS has two version of integer operation: ADD/ADDU, SUB/SUBU (one which trap on overflow, one which doesn’t and corresponds to modulo operation”
I wasn’t really disagreeing with you.
“so the big thing here is that there is nearly no difference in performance between ‘modulo’ computations and ‘trap on overflow’ computations(*) which isn’t the same with other ISA.”
To be fair we’d need to actually test the performance differences on real CPUs. We cannot draw performance conclusions by counting instructions. For some x86 CPUs, jumps are “free” as long as they are predictable.
For example:
TEST1:
mov ecx, 0x00000000
mov eax, 0x00000000
.again:
add eax, 0x00000001
jo .overflow
.overflow:
loop .again
TEST2:
mov ecx, 0x00000000
mov eax, 0x00000000
.again:
add eax, 0x00000001
loop .again
TEST3:
mov ecx, 0x00000000
mov eax, 0x00000000
.again:
add eax, 0x00000001
jno .nooverflow
.nooverflow:
loop .again
On my 3GHz machine, 2^32 loops * 3 passes gives the following:
Test1=8.597570, 8.597259, 8.597007 -> 8.597278
Test2=8.596904, 8.599724, 8.598505 -> 8.598377
Test3=8.596864, 8.596893, 8.597207 -> 8.596988
Note that the addition of a jump instruction did not hurt the performance of the loop within a reasonable margin of error.
The same tests with unpredictable branching (adding 0x80000000 forces the branch to toggle each iteration).
Test1=10.694893, 10.742191, 10.759600 -> 10.732228
Test2=8.597308, 8.596457, 8.595678 -> 8.596481
Test3=10.862917, 10.777331, 10.680178 ->10.773475
So, the unpredictable branches hurt the performance, but I have to question whether a MIPS trap would do any better. Can MIPS do overflow checking without a trap? So long as the overflow is exceptional behaviour, I think we should both agree from these tests that the extra jump won’t make any significant difference.
Now maybe it’s true an inordinate amount of silicon has gone to branch prediction in the x86, which may have theoretically gone to better use in the MIPS, but you can’t deny the x86 seems to do a decent job in this microbenchmark. Unfortunately I don’t have a MIPS processor to test with.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i41fA9WfsA&feature=player_embedded&…
Did you notice the subtle and creepy “mmmm” that he does at the very end as the music comes on?
I got and dust off my SGI O2
Form a miniPC version with ICS is more suitable. I don’t like tablets and laptops. My only reservation is Vivante GPU. Is it open source? If not I would prefer x86 with amd/intel GPU.
Edited 2011-12-06 05:39 UTC
I have cheap ass android tablet, and I swear me of just seven years ago would have killed for it. Resistive touch screens? I can read the web, ALL OF WIKIPEDIA IN FULL COLOUR, ebooks, and even comics on the thing. With a linux kernal underneath everything. I’m sad that this is in any way considered bad. Better than it’s good? Sure, I’ll accept that. But just being able to do one of those things at a price of a couple of dinners should be considered amazing. Let alone all of them.
It appears to be sold out already. Anyone managed to order one?
Tablets are only considered luxury devices because they have been expensive until very recently.
Within a year or so tablets will cheap enough ($100-150) to be used as electronic toys for children. They will then sell tens of millions each year.
Tablets are not price sensitive because they are a luxury, not the other way around
You’re aware that Apple sold about 35 million iPads in the last year, right?
I used to have/use a Casio PocketPC (MIPS) back when HP and Palm were popular pocket devices. It was pretty good for its day but most software wouldn’t run on it because of the processor. I will stick with ARM these days for my portable devices thank you.
And since it is so cheap, one could buy a few of them, one for each member of the family.
I think that 99$ is the right price for such a product.
Hey Mom, look what came with my happy meal – a tablet computer! Pokemon, pokemon!
ARM > MIPS.
I don’t know why this stupid architecture is still around. Anything I’ve ever used with MIPS in it was horribly slow and buggy. You know what I’m talking about. Especially MIPS routers are a NIGHTMARE to deal with!
Edited 2011-12-06 17:45 UTC
You’re blaming the architechture for firmware issues?
From most companies I’ve had to deal with? Something tells me coincidence is the least likely option here. A flawed architecture (or at least, an implementation of it) seems more likely.
1) Learn the difference between architecture and implementation.
2) MIPS has always played second fiddle in terms of performance and stability because there never has been the sort of investments required in the compiler tool chain and optimisations made to the various GNU components which make up LInux (or any other *NIX like operating system that uses GNU tools such as GCC).
Btw, ARM used to be like this years ago – back when Corel launched the ‘NetWinder’ running its own version of Linux the performance was appalling, the stability and bugginess of applications was horrific but here we are almost a decade later and things have changed remarkably. The question is whether MIPS and partners are willing to make the necessary investment so that it is a first class citizen in a world dominated by x86 and so far I’ve seen no indication that MIPS is willing to put the resources into what needs to be done.
MIPs has proven to scale. It used to run in high end workstations (64bit even!), and runs in embedded spaces.
The problem of course is fragmentation. MIPs processor features are across the board, partly because the embedded MIPs have scaled back features compared with the SGI days..
ARM has been generally scaling up so there’s a general backward compatibility, although there’s been fragmentation as well (tegra2 w/o neon is a prime example of that).
It’s good to see MIPs has decided to compete with ARM. More choice is good, even if MS isn’t targeting it.
This holiday season, toy makers have turned Apple’s pricey tablet and smartphone into playthings for kids. They figure in this weak economy, parents will be willing to splurge on toys for their children that utilise devices they already have – or want – themselves.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/smartphones/parents-buying-ipad-a…
This is the real market for tablets.
One very clear message form reading the comments. That message is that the average techie has absolutely no understanding of human nature or business.
So far the arguments have been that:
– tablets are useless
– tablets are expensive
– tablets are a luxury
– cheap tablets are crap
– people want expensive tablets
The reality is completely different:
– tablets (even top of the range models) are far cheaper in real terms than a C64 was in the 80s. The C64 was a mega success.
– a tablet is cheaper than a decent TV. Every middle class family has multiple TVs.
– people will spend a lot of money on their children. In Australia about 40% of children attend private primary and high schools. These schools cost $5,000-40,000/year.
– tablets are ideal for children. Many toymakers and entertainment companies are making child specific devices (such as electronic crayons) and games for iOS and Android.
– the average toddler doesn’t doesn’t give a shit about a aesthetics, screen resolution or battery life. As long as they can watch a Wiggles video or play a simple game they are happy.
– for children the perfect tablet has a 7-8″ low resolution screen, a low end CPU and a thick plastic case.
I can guarantee that next Xmas there will be super cheap ($70-100) child specific tablets in the stores.
Have to agree here. Most people, unlike the ones who generally visit this site, are very poor hunt and peck typists who aren’t nearly so inconvenienced by lack of a keyboard like I am especially.
For kids: yeah it’s a great option. You can teach them starting piano interactively, they can do paint programs, watch videos, etc. This tablet for $100, well it’s absolutely perfect for that audience.
Do you have a point?
I’ve got news for you. It’s not the 80s anymore. I spent $2500 on a 386 desktop once too. Not relevant to today’s market.
And? Your point? We’re not comparing tablets to TVs. We’re comparing tablets to tablets and laptops.
So you’re contradicting yourself. You say cheap tablets will dominate for children, and then you say it doesn’t matter because parents will and are already paying premium prices for iPads.
Except tablets aren’t being bought only for toddlers. Yes people buy them and give them to their kids to play games on sometimes. But lots of people also then pick it up and use it themselves once the kids have gone to bed.
Oh really. And you’ve done the research on this I assume?
Great. Is anyone even arguing this point? So what if there is? How does that affect the existing market, or support your statement that apple is in trouble? Apple is not interested in making a $100 kid’s toy, and this is not the tablet market. It might be part of it, but it isn’t the whole thing by a long shot.
Get out of the basement and open your eyes.
One of Australia’s major department store chains sells 8GB iPod touch style MP3 players for $59 and 7″ touchscreen media players (stripped down tablets) for $79.
Unlocked Apple phones and tablets are already being sold at 10-15% discounts in Australia department stores.
Harvey Norman, until recently the biggest Apple reseller in Australia, doesn’t have single Apple product in their latest catalogue. They have plenty of Android products though.
Telstra, Australia’s largest phone company has just opened an Android only store in Melbourne.
Australia is one of Apples strongest markets. If sales are going badly here for Apple they must be a disaster elsewhere.
Back in the 90s we were constantly told that Apple products were unique, special and highly profitable as marketshare dropped to 5%.
I don’t know where in Australia you’re located but as early as 2003 (I was living in Canberra at the time) Apple computers and i-devices were flying out the door – the local Dick Smiths were selling them faster than they could get it supplied by Apple. I’ve since visited Australia a few times since arriving back in New Zealand and Apple has gone from strength to strength without any let up. You keep going on about Android – great, buy a phone and find 6 months later the hand set as abandoned you by refusing to provide software updates in a timely manner – sorry, I’ll sit here pretty with my iPhone 4 and receive updates for 3 years whilst the Android phone you purchased outright for just under a grand has been abandoned in under 6 months.
Btw, here I am in New Zealand whose GDP per capita is well below that of Australia and I see i-devices everywhere with Android only ever popping up when it comes to carrier branded Android devices such as the Vodafone 455, 555 and the 858 or in the case of Telecom’s XT Network there is a Huawei X1 – all of which are running outdated unsupported versions of Android. Android’s only marketshare is being gained in the low end bargain basement for teenagers who, as soon as they get some cash, quickly upgrade to an i-device at the earliest opportunity.
Btw, there is a reason why Apple is still selling 3GS – it is their price fighting phone to compete against the low end Android because that is where the Android is growing, not in the upper segments but down in the bargain basement carrier branded low end segment.
Edited 2011-12-10 02:21 UTC
Apple devotees (rightly) point to the fact that Android tablets didn’t gain much traction this last year. However, they fail to consider the fact that Android didn’t even have a dedicated Tablet OS until this last month. Every tablet thus far has been loaded with a shoehorned, bastardized version of a smartphone specific OS. The only Gingerbread version created for a tablet that’s worth speaking about so far is Cyanogenmod7. And that’s only been loaded on hacked hardware by geeks.
Hence forth, Ice Cream Sandwich will be available on even the cheapest China tabs. As is evident with this $99.00 tablet with a capacitive screen (even at 840×480)and otherwise pretty respectable hardware specs when compared to pretty good tablets of just a year ago.
What I particularly like about these low end devices is that they seem to all have better connectivity. Full sized USB host ports and SD card slots are the norm it seems.
You can buy a case with a USB keyboard for a 7″ tablet for around $20.00. That will make this Tablet, fully outfitted with a keyboard and case less than $150.
Also, you need to consider that blue-tooth keyboards can’t be used on an airplane and must be charged separately as well.
Kids who are naturally brand-slaves, who like brand-slave adults judge their self worth by their possessions, will ask for iPads but they’ll more and more be getting Android Tablets. I think ICS is going to make a big difference in Android Tablet uptake.
I understand the geek love for the MIPS version of the Novo 7, but why does the article completely neglect the earlier ARM version of the tablet? Sure the Novo7 Basic comes with Icecream Sandwich, which is definitely a selling point in its favor, but the price of that updated OS is compatibility, which along with the well known issues of possibly needing to find MIPS complied applications makes me really hesitant about its longevity in the market. Much better to get an ARM processor tablet, which if some of the posts online are to be believed actually gets double the battery life of this MIPS tablet.
Plus, while this MIPS tablet seems sold out at their Paypal link (LOL this is totally legit guise…) you can still find the Novo 7 advance at various retailers. It may not come with Icecream Sandwich yet, but there seems far more likelihood of updates to it, if for no other reason than the ease of porting within the same processor groups.
–bornagainpenguin
going price seems to be 117usd free shipping.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3679904
here’s some benchmarks:
http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/21022-tablet-performance-comparison…
its last on the list. The cpu numbers are very good (in the a9 range)
Edited 2011-12-09 04:53 UTC
What about all the games that are written in native C/C++ using the NDK? I assume MIPS won’t be able to deal with them…
i saw mention of an arm to mips recompiler. maybe not great but better than emulation.
Can you really go wrong? In the 7 inch Tablet market in the US, What are your options? You can’t consider a Nook (no matter the flavor), nor the Kindle Fire, true Tablets. They’re more-so bastardized devices built to sell media from their respective makers. Case in point, The Nook Color and Nook Tablet lack cameras, bluetooth, microphones(Kindle Fire), external memory slot (Kindle Fire), USB connectivity for third party 3G/4G support.
Now Let’s talk about a real US Tablet in the 7 inch realm. The Samsung GalaxyTab 7 inch. This has all of the above, But at $499(verizon w/o plan), that’s quadruple the price of The Ainovo7. And WITH a Verizon 2 Year Plan, it’s DOUBLE the price.
But then again, there’s the Archos Arnova 7 inch tablet. At around $146, it’s heavily bastardized. It Ha s a microphone, no camera, no bluetooth, and is landscape oriented.
Now the Ainovo7 May not be an iPad killer(Since the 10 inch market is totally irrelevent here), but given the price($99, & $160 with shipping), features, and lack of a serious contender in the 7 inch Tablet market, can you really go wrong?
At most, I seriously hope that it draws enough attention to move Samsung, Asus, and any other major OEM in the tablet business to engineer a better tablet for less.
And grease spots all over the place!
The product and especially the price look interesting though.