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Android Laptop Review: Hivision PWS700CA

Posted by Charbax – January 29, 2010 – Comments

This is the world’s first video-review of the Hivision PWS700CA ARM9 Powered Android Laptop, find more info at Hivision’s website. (Hivision, which I previously video-Interviewed about cheap Laptops from the trade shows at CES 2010 and IFA 2008)

Hivision Android Laptop

The Hivision PWS700CA is based on a Rockchip RK2808 600mhz ARM926 processor, 128SDRAM, 7″ 800×480 screen, 720p Video playback support, WiFi, Ethernet, audio input/output and weights only 650grams.

The price has not yet been announced officially because Hivision is looking for worldwide distributors who will then decide how much it will be sold for to end consumers. But you can understand that if Hivision was able to sell those types of laptops for $98 to distributors more than a year ago (when I filmed my popular video from IFA 2008), then surely the mass manufacturing price has not gone up since then. My expectation is that if a giant consumer electronics reseller such as Walmart or Best Buy approaches Hivision today to order huge quantities of this laptop, it could be sold below $100 to end users.

I’ve seen those kinds of cheap laptops running Windows CE or some less optimized Linux distribution at Buy.com (2), at Amazon.com, at Kmart.com and plenty other places for even cheaper. The point of this video is to show that Android can make all these cheap laptops much more usable when it comes to browsing the web. The Android browser is much better than the one in Windows CE or the Mozilla-based ones used in other Linux distributions. More usable web browsing means more people will want to buy it, which means even cheaper prices.

Click on the thumbnails below to see the full sized pictures at Picasa:

Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail Hivision Android laptop thumbnail

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  • You can buy an Archos 5 Internet Tablet with 8G of flash storage for $250 from Archos. It’s also available with 16GB or 32GB of flash storage, or a 160GB of 500GB hard drive
  • akthab
    this website was useful
  • tsetse
    did you ever wonder how these low prices are possible?
    do you want to profit from slave-work in china?! ^^
    price isn´t everything, right?
  • YouTube can be viewed in HTML5, eliminating the Flash requirement. It is part of the experimental lab at YouTube, you just have to join it while signed in at YouTube.
  • vrt
    "some kind of crappy linux"??? what do you think Android is made of?
  • No offence to the other Linux distributions that were used in previous of these cheap ARM Laptops that I have seen, but the web browsing experience is much faster using Android for some reason. Google must have done some really awesome work optimizing the web browsing experience. And they surely have even more optimizations that they can make, basic ones like optimizing it for the laptop form factor instead of the touch screen.
  • Android is actually a Linux system with custom built graphical environment with mobile devices in mind, it is optimized very good for such low power devices basically out of the box, other custom Linux distros which was shown on these Menq/Razorback/Hivision low power netbooks were not optimized at all cause usually it was some crappy commercial distro which was ported very fast only for demonstration purposes. I personally would like to see Chrome on Ubuntu like devices with Freescale i.MX51 and Marvell Armada 510 based devices. Like showed by Charbax Quanta EBOX device some posts ago. I bet it would be very appealing internet experience.
  • stoffer
    It would be even better if it would run a normal Linux, since repositories are full of software for normal Linux.
  • I've seen those kinds of cheap laptops running Windows CE or some less optimized Linux distribution at Buy.com (2), at Amazon.com, at Kmart.com and plenty other places for even cheaper.


    The point of this video is to show that Android and the much faster Android web browser can make all these cheap laptops much more usable when it comes to browsing the web. The Android browser is 100x better than the one in Windows CE or the previous Mozilla-based one they would integrate in those $100 Laptops. More usable means more people will want to buy it, which means even cheaper prices.
  • we sent out 200 enquiries for these kinds of systems, a couple of weeks ago, and got about 10 responses. of the 10 responses, about 5 of them included unnecessary specs for Intel Atom 8.9in or 10.1in systems, which were not asked for but interestingly showed absolutely nothing available for less than $190 (ex tax and shipping). also interestingly, VIA C7 ULV systems weren't that much cheaper, or had 800x480 7in LCDs.

    it was only when you got down to the ARM 7in systems that the prices became interesting. ARM7 and ARM9 systems with completely inadequate 300mhz or 400mhz CPUs were being priced at $60 to $80; Samsung ARM11 systems were priced at around $110 (and one TI OMAP Cortex A8 system a whopping $200). There was even one ARM11 8.9in 1024x600 netbook priced around $135.

    so there is this yawning chasm of price ranges, with the older inadequate systems (usually running WINCE 5 and with 64mb or 128mb of RAM) below $80, then a few systems around $110 to $140, then absolutely nothing until you get to $190 and then it's Intel, Intel, Intel all the way.

    I haven't found one single system yet with a 1280x800 10.1in LCD with an ARM CPU. it's almost as if it's an anathema to these designers to think that a low-power low-cost CPU could ever be "good enough". but the thing is that i know several debian developers and other free software users who would buy such systems instantly, and use them as their main machine.
  • Please subscribe to my RSS feed, I plan to find these cheap ARM Powered laptops that you are looking for during the next few weeks. You can already find some really interesting ones at 10.1" and even 12.1" with the latest fastest ARMv7 processors in my Laptops category: http://armdevices.net/category/laptops/
  • amazingagainlol
    it looks more llike something from the 90's , uncomparable to the ipad even with touch screen ability
  • yes. it's funny, when you have had access to the latest and greatest technology, how "utterly useless" something "old" looks, and the fact that it happens to be affordable by people who could never dream of being able to buy the luxuries that you are pampered with never entered your head, did it?
  • Fredi
    Looks like a big hit from the early nineties.
  • Steve
    Just the fact that this is a Linux kernel running on ARM is nice step forward. At $100 it's a no brainer, provided there's an unfettered shell in there somewhere.
  • Tehrasha
    I find this far more appealing than Apple's iPad.
  • None
    Yea, if it is added with touch screen capability on laptop, then it is ipad could be nothing.
  • This is the shape of things to come. It's kinda impressive see even older ARM9 processor which is pretty capable. ARM Cortex netbooks gonna be even faster and more multimedia friendly. I think Google will not help with adoption of Android on netbooks too much, vendors will have probably to customize Android on its own but that can be achieved. Like with HP Android Smarbook showed at CES, it had really netbook friendly c customized Android and even dedicated keyboard keys which was really sweet.
  • what makes you think that android android android is everything everything everything? you are aware for example that debian, the basis for ubuntu and dozens of other linux distros, has _thirteen_ up-to-date hardware ports, including ARM CPUs and the IBM s390 mainframe?

    i'm currently running ubuntu (because it came sold with it) on an IGEPv2 board with 256mb of RAM and a 600mhz ARM Cortex A8, and it's absolutely fine.

    so yes, by the time you get to the 1ghz dual-core A9, and you add 1gb of RAM, you've got a system that is comparable to any of the Atom Netbooks you can get right now.
  • I personally don't think that Android is best solution for ARM based netbook like device, but I think that Android and/or ChromeOS could be the selling factor for the masses, for people which are generally not interested technically in computers too much. I think more useful operating system will be Ubuntu which has large userbase, plenty of software packages and in my opinion best "ARM Cortex ready" Linux port to date.
  • I haven't seen such smooth and fast web browser as in this Android distribution optimized for this ARM9 based laptop with only 128MB RAM. Also, Android seems great for apps when it comes to making them with as little bloat as possible and keep system requirements to the minimum. Don't you agree?
  • srw
    Android doesn't have a full capable webkit based browser. If you want details: doesn't support things such as contentEditable, designMode.
  • The full Chrome browser could be added as an icon in Android, don't you agree? This way there would be a full webkit based browser right there within Android, and with user interfaces optimized for browsing on laptops.
  • srw
    I don't agree that Android is the solution for netbooks or mobile. I think GNU/Linux or other complete operating system is the real answer and surely they have the capabilities to match every android performance. Just the issue is that the GNU/Linux wasn't worried about user experience on these devices (may be maebo). I am sure a team of 10 really focused and capable Linux developers can match every iPhone/Android feature.

    The reason that the full chrome browser is not added for Android is precisely that it will run very slow and it's not optimized for low ram/cpu. iPhone has the same issue, its browser doesn't have all the webkit features.
  • I think Google are working to solve the low RAM and ARM Processor issues of the Chrome browser during those next few months. Google has announced that Chrome OS will come for ARM processors, so I deduce from that that if a good Chrome OS can be made, then a Chrome icon in Android can also be added. Just as Android apps support can also be added in Chrome OS, thus both become the same basically. Android and Chrome are open-source, so I think those should be embraced by all GNU/Linux people as well, since basically what Google is doing is investing heavily to create the best implementation of Linux for the industry to embrace it.
  • I think it would make sense to add a Chrome browser icon in Android and thus provide the full Chrome web browser for Android laptops. That would be a pretty good combination of Android and Chrome. How hard could that be?

    Also, I think it would be logical for Google to filter applications when they are well optimized for higher resolution and larger screens than the ones used on the small smart phones. Most of the .apk Android applications work fine on this laptop when one simply installs them from the file browser, it's just a question of sorting through the ones that are best usable and suited for that form factor.
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