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.