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Chromium OS on a $199 Tablet powered by Freescale

Posted by Charbax – March 8, 2010 – View Comments

Freescale is showing their reference design for sub-$200 tablets. The target is that tablets can soon be sold below $200 to end consumers that are able to run any Linux-based OS, including Android or Chromium OS – based on the open-source code available at http://chromium.org

In this video, Freescale’s product manager of Software Development demonstrates the status of their optimizations of running Chromium OS on their i.MX51 based devices, among other form factors is the recently announced $199 tablet form factor. It even supports hardware acceleration of HTML5 based video playback.

This means, full power Chromium OS could be made available in the next few months in Laptop and Tablet form factors to be sold well below $200 unlocked without contracts. The main question is how fast and how smooth will the Chromium Browser feel on ARM Powered devices? This is to be seen and tested very soon! Follow my video-blog for hands-on reports showing performance of Chromium OS running on all the ARM Powered devices very soon. Check also for Chrome browser running within Android, or for Chromium OS modified to add Android apps support, thus merging the two.

I also wonder, how much more does a $65 ARM Powered laptop cost if it uses an ARM Cortex A8 processor like the ones from Freescale instead of the ARM9 or ARM11 based ones from rockchip, VIA, Samsung and others. If the price increase is within $35, then welcome will be all the sub-$100 full power smooth ARM Powered Chromium OS laptops and tablets! Without actually knowing the real price difference between the ARM9, ARM11 and ARM Cortex based cheap laptops, my guess is that the availability of sub-$200 and sub-$100 Chromium/Android Laptops/Tablets is a possibility.

How soon will we see Google sell unlocked Chromium/Android on ARM powered laptop/tablet/e-reader convertibles with 50-hour battery life on Pixel Qi screens at http://google.com/laptop?

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  • Cool post, thank you for the info - I dont really ever post on these thingy’s but enjoyed the info. Awesome stuff!, I bookmarked your blog!
  • Wow that A Great News
  • I have right here an awesome $95 10" version of their Android laptop, I will post a full video review of it here very soon. If they can load Chromium browser smoothly on it with an ARM Cortex processor..
  • Do you have the review already? If yes, kindly post it right away because I have a plan on buying a Android laptop and one of my concerns so far is about the Chromium browser. Thanks.
  • Cool, but you know we need to test it over to understand is it cool or not?)
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  • thanks for the information, awesome blog.
  • very nice, keep it up
  • wow it very good
  • Mark
    The Chromium OS is cool and fresh. With a push from a huge company like Google, it won’t be a tough task for Google to make this project a success.
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  • awesome
  • love reading your articles, just cant get enough, really good post! enjoyed reading it, thanks :D
  • A great price point and it looks like it'll be an excellent product.
    Remember this is a reference design, not an actual product,Thank for sharing.
  • Nice post, Thank for sharing
  • This is really cool. A great price point and it looks like it'll be an excellent competitor to the iPad. Hopefully it'll be available soon though.
  • I'm looking forward for such interesting ARM Cortex A8 devices, hopefully ARM vendors will scratch their heads and release them soon. Cause 2 years of pure marketing is enough.
  • This is going to be great.. i'm looking forward to it too!
  • aludal
    "How soon will we see Google sell unlocked Chromium/Android on ARM powered laptop/tablet/e-reader convertibles with 50-hour battery life on Pixel Qi screens at http://google.com/laptop?"

    I swear I've read it first time, lol. Just didn't have that impact. Now we are talking Google (some old pieces of my 2005 designs for Google could be found in my blog fineoils.blogspot.com)

    So, how soon? NI claims June-July, however I wish Liquavista would have some Tegra2 prototype to show before their projected date in Q4.
  • billmayor
    Hopefully we'll see this tablet before the market is saturated with iPad version 2.
  • linnil
    smartq has already release such devices and sold at a similar price. Check it out at their website.
  • The Smartq products are not ARM Cortex A8 and not running Chromium OS as far as I know.
  • Great thanks guys
  • aludal
    On $65 ARM Powered laptop: aren't they those guys who were kicked out of CeBIT by the Polizei? Jeez, it pays to watch closely exactly these prototypes that were kicked out to understand future trends. I want my Pixel Qi Adam for $95 this July. Or Liquavista Tegra 2 10" tablet for $150 this December.
  • Yes, Firstview, who manfactures the $65 Android Laptop http://armdevices.net/2010/03/05/65-android-laptop/ did have their booth raided by the German police for some patent issue (valid or not, I don't know all the details). I have right here an awesome $95 10" version of their Android laptop, I will post a full video review of it here very soon. If they can load Chromium browser smoothly on it with an ARM Cortex processor, have enough RAM memory for unlimited full speed tabs and advanced javascripts and full flash 10.1 support, and a 20+ hour battery life using a Pixel Qi screen, then that would be pretty much perfection.
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