I thought I'd seen this all before with the $100 tablets last year, but then I noticed something that sent my jaw to the floor:
<a href="http://en.ingenic.cn/product.aspx?ID=78" rel="nofollow">http://en.ingenic.cn/product.aspx?ID=78</a><p>That's the manufacturer for the JZ4770 SoC (system-on-a-chip) used in the Novo7. Their page has:<p>- Product Datasheet (admittedly with only physical/electrical not logical details.)<p>- Links to Android NDK, Linux toolchain, Linux source, uboot source, sample Linux rootfs for the SoC family.<p>This is more open development information than almost any other SoC platform used in cheap Android hardware! Admittedly, it all looks a little old but even as an indication of attitude, it's a great sign.<p>To date, nearly every vendor of these kind of designs has kept this information close to their chest and charges for it - if it's available it's nearly always because of leaks not releases. That's one of the underlying reasons why most of the cheap tablets violate GPL.<p>Unfortunately, I can't turn up any information about the "vivante gc860" graphics engine - drivers for that will probably be binary blobs (like on nearly every other Android device, at any price point.)<p>Anyhow, I'm excited that if Ingenic put out sufficient information about this SoC and its features, and if the hardware is "good enough", you might expect to see some interesting other uses & ports in the coming months.
One nice property of tablets is they don't need to go obsolete like laptops or desktop computers. They can be turned in to picture frames, home automation interfaces, cookbooks, mini-TVs, combined into larger interfaces, (if only they had narrower borders!) etc.<p>The only real obstacle to making them really useful is power supply, but wireless electricity should solve that problem shortly (and tablet computers might be their "killer app").
Really bizarre formatting on this page, looks almost like a stitching together of images. That, plus the way its worded makes me suspicious of some kind of scam (worst) or is not fully baked (likely). Does anyone know more? Anyone have the same thoughts?
Anyone notice that it can handle 1080p, not just 720p. Not that you would be able to notice on that 7" screen.<p>Always the option of plugging it into the tv....but I have never ever in my life seen anyone do that.
Video from MIPS Technologies showing this tablet:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq79h-HA5lU" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq79h-HA5lU</a>
Wrote this up last night: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/05/99-chinese-tablet-is-mips-based-runs-android-4-0/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/05/99-chinese-tablet-is-mips-b...</a><p>I thought it was interesting for a couple reasons, though of course at a hundred bucks you're not going to get an impressive device, merely functional. It's running a MIPS-compatible processor, which was what caught my eye.
Hmmm...already sold out. The owner of this website is registered using the email of the domain of this company: <a href="http://ainol.com/plugin.php?identifier=ainol&module=page&action=info&pageid=1" rel="nofollow">http://ainol.com/plugin.php?identifier=ainol&module=page...</a><p>So it's probably not vaporware, but the lack of English certainly doesn't help me figure out anything.
It goes without saying, you get what you pay for. Quality parts, which are required for a quality experience, cost money.<p>This isn't going to be in the same league as an iPad, or even a Kindle Fire no matter what tweaks or custom ROMs you load.