MIPS to Make Ice Cream Sandwich Tablet Priced Below $100
This cheap Android tablet features Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich," a 1 GHz SoC and enough GPU power to play your favorite Gameloft titles... all for less than a hundred bucks.
On Monday MIPS Technologies announced the release of the "world’s first" Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" tablet, the NOVO7. The good news is that the gadget will cost less than $100 (non-subsidized) for those looking for a cheap mobile solution for the holidays. The bad news is that it's landing in China first and won't cross over onto North American soil for the next few months.
Manufactured by Ainovo, the tablet is powered by Ingenic Semiconductor's JZ4770 SoC containing a 1 GHz Ingenic XBurst1 MIPS32-based CPU, a 3D-capable Vivante GC860 graphics core (supporting OpenGL ES 2.0) clocked at 444 MHz, and an optimized 1080p video processing engine. It also features a 7-inch capacitive multi-touch screen, 802.11 b/g/n connectivity (external 3G supported), a USB 2.0 port, HDMI 1.3 output, a microSD card for adding storage space, a front-facing camera and a 2MP rear-facing camera, and support for the exFAT storage format.
According to MIPS, the XBurst1 CPU core adopts an innovative ultra-low-power pipelining architecture which consumes less than 90mW in 1 GHz (with L1 cache), and the entire SOC consumes ~250mW with the CPU and video engine operating under full load. The SoC also contains numerous on-chip analog and application blocks such as audio codecs and GPS.
"I'm thrilled to see the entrance of MIPS-Based Android 4.0 tablets into the market," said Andy Rubin, senior vice president of mobile at Google. "Low cost, high performance tablets are a big win for mobile consumers and a strong illustration of how Android's openness drives innovation and competition for the benefit of consumers around the world."
The 7-inch model is available in China now as well as online through Ainol Electronics Co., Ltd. at www.ainovo.com. The tablet will be available in other geographies within the next several months, and will be followed by 8 and 9-inch form factors that will be announced soon.
- WSJ: Galaxy Nexus to Sell for $299.99 on 2-year Contract
- Sen. Al Franken Seeking Carrier IQ Answers from Carriers
- New .XXX Domains Finally on General Sale
- Sony Ericsson Dropping Ericsson Name in 2012
- Asus' 2012 Padfone will Pack Nvidia's Quad-core Tegra 3
- Siri Ported to iPhone 4, iPod touch (But Potentially Unsafe)
- Syria Bans the iPhone to Silence Citizen Journalists
- Google Launches Android Retail Shop: Androidland
- Patent Troll Sues Nearly the Entire Mobile Industry
- Google Search is Now Drawing Mathematical Graphs
- CNET Accused of Bundling Software Downloads with Trojans
- NASA's Kepler Telescope Good at Finding Extrasolar Planets
- RIM Executives Fired Over Drunken Antics on Flight
- Facebook's New Address is '1 Hacker Way'
- Navy Preparing Underwater Drones, Could Find Red October
- Computer Scientists Discover How to Simulate Rainbows
- Motorola Confirms Droid Xyboard Tablets Coming This Month
- Galaxy Nexus Launches in Canada With Sheepdogs Support
- Verizon Launching Streaming Video Netflix Competitor
While I probably wouldnt get it for myself, I bet my daughter wouldnt care one bit. Might have to keep an eye on this.
all this for $100? dam this thing gonna sell fast...
Seriously! This thing looks great!
if it has all of that + 1GB RAM and a capacitive touch screen, then it will be good.
Tablets really need to come down in price to their proper price bracket.
Even the fastest tablet is slower than a common netbook
and yet, tablets worth using are hovering around 2-3 times the cost of a significantly faster and more functional netbook.
tablets need to enter the sub $200 range, with $200 and probably topping out at $250 for the very top of the line, and $100-150 for the the more mainstream tablets
Even the fastest tablet is slower than a common netbook
No way, my Atom netbook can't play 720p video's or even Angry Birds smoothly.
In saying that however, AMD's E350 APU's in those $350 netbooks are considerably faster.
I really do wonder about build quality though.
If their website is any indication, it will be horrible.
Just skip the 8-9" and go 10" instead for below 150USD.
Some atom based systems lack a decent videocard that can accelerate many of the common video formats.
Set a high end tablet video player to software only and it will lag far more than a netbook.
get a netbook with a better GPU and HD video runs perfectly.
If you want to compare CPU and memory performance of a tablet to a netbook, you will see that a netbook runs significantly faster.
Netbooks tend to fit intoo the $200-300 price range, while laptops tend to just go into the $300- unlimited price range
based on functionality, tablets offer less in just about all aspects, placing then in between a smartphone and netbook.
based on that, I strongly feel that tablets should be priced lower than netbooks and smartphones should be priced below tablets.
Some atom based systems lack a decent videocard that can accelerate many of the common video formats.Set a high end tablet video player to software only and it will lag far more than a netbook.get a netbook with a better GPU and HD video runs perfectly.If you want to compare CPU and memory performance of a tablet to a netbook, you will see that a netbook runs significantly faster. Netbooks tend to fit intoo the $200-300 price range, while laptops tend to just go into the $300- unlimited price rangebased on functionality, tablets offer less in just about all aspects, placing then in between a smartphone and netbook.based on that, I strongly feel that tablets should be priced lower than netbooks and smartphones should be priced below tablets.
Points taken, but nobody is going to disable hardware acceleration on their tablet.
Not only that, but high-end tablets consume CONSIDERABLY less power then the most power-efficient netbooks.
Yes, notebooks definitely come cheaper and with more powerful hardware if you ignore Atom entirely and jump right into the E350 etc.. Or for around the price of a new tablet ($500) you could grab something with an i3 in it.
As said by many in these comments, tablets and netbooks are in completely different markets. The prices of a touch screen and all the other tablet components can be more costly then that of a netbook and is the reason why they cost so much in comparison.
It isn't an oranges to oranges (Yes, avoided using Apple.. Crap just used it >.
I recently just dove into the Android development world so that I could put my Java skills to good use and I've been looking for a good honeycomb table to practice/play around with. This would be a perfect opportunity, that is IF I can get my hands on one!
The big news here is that it's a MIPS processor running Android.
Is this serious competition for ARM?
250mW for the whole SoC under full load is pretty impressive.
Set a high end tablet video player to software only and it will lag far more than a netbook.get a netbook with a better GPU and HD video runs perfectly.
Except no netbook can play video for 10hours straight without recharging the battery. Battery life on some tablets is just insane.
I don't think there is much overlap between netbook buyers and tablet buyers.
Netbooks are for people who just need a cheap laptop. Tablets are for people who already have a $1000+ laptop and just want a handheld device to surf the web/read documents/watch videos/etc.
it will be one of a kind in it's market thats for sure. Surprised no one did this earlier.
as of now many users are rooting it , os came from advent vega
This looks freaking awesome. But I'm concerned the quality will not be very good for $100.
There is no mention of built-in storage-- does that mean that everything beyond the OS will be on SD cards?
If so, what does that mean for your apps? When I swap cards because I want a movie that is on another SD card and all my apps are on the 'primary' one, do I have to re-install apps on to that card as well to have access without swapping back?
Can anyone comment on differences in performance between using built-in SSD versus SD cards? Does 'heavy' use of SD vs SSD drain the battery faster [or slower?]
100 bucks give me a reason to buy a tablet... find me some quality toilet time.
go to slatedroid.com and search for ainol novo 7 advanced. the reviews are all good.
As said by many in these comments, tablets and netbooks are in completely different markets. The prices of a touch screen and all the other tablet components can be more costly then that of a netbook and is the reason why they cost so much in comparison.It isn't an oranges to oranges (Yes, avoided using Apple.. Crap just used it >.
Obviously by the announcement of this device, the prices of tablets are higher than they should be. If Ainovo can manufacture a tablet with all of these features for less than $100.00, then other manufacturers will have to take notice.
If manufacturers can't give competitive pricing, they will have to work harder to find less expensive ways to build tablets, or will have to get out of the tablet business.
This can be compared to the Nintendo Wii, because their low price and sales numbers forced XBOX 360 & PS3 to drop their prices to stay competitive.
100 bucks give me a reason to buy a tablet... find me some quality toilet time.
Then you could wipe your butt with one and buy another one and it would still be cheaper then a Nook Tablet.