Rockchip – ARMdevices.net

Archos Vision A43VB

Posted by Charbax – March 2, 2010

Category: PMPs, Exclusive videos, Rockchip, CeBIT, Archos

Here’s a 4.3″ Archos PMP, it will playback most video formats and be sold for only 99€ in Europe. This may be one of the cheapest 4.3″ touch screen PMP devices on the European and US market.

Category: PMPs, Exclusive videos, Rockchip, CeBIT, Archos
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Exclusive video: Archos 7 Home Tablet released for $179

Posted by Charbax – March 1, 2010

Category: Tablets, PMPs, Exclusive videos, Reviews, Rockchip, CeBIT, Archos, Android

Check out my exclusive video of the Archos 7 Home Tablet that will be released in April/May for $179 in the USA and 149€ in Europe:

It is powered by a 600mhz Rockchip 2808 processor, does web browsing pretty well (for an ARM9 processor) and plays all video codecs at up to 720p video playback (at up to limited 2500kbit/s bitrates for 720p).

For now, this Archos 7 Home Tablet is being released this next month or by May already and at this amazingly low $179 price for the 2GB version with MicroSD card slot. There will also be a 8GB version and maybe larger capacities for slightly more expensive. It also has a mini-jack to composite video-output using the headphones jack and micro-USB to USB host features built-in. The built-in stereo speakers are very decent for movie watching and the 7″ 800×480 resistive touch-screen is just very fine and does allow for fast text input.

Archos is still working on the Android software optimizations, it comes with special video player, audio player and file explorer applications by default. My guess is that the Google Marketplace could be hacked to work onto it by the open development community at http://forum.archosfans.com

Also, my expectation is that Google will release an Android 2.2 or so version which will provide the full Google Marketplace experience on all large screen Android Tablets and even on Android Laptop form factors and also to provide such for lower cost platforms than the latest ARM Cortex based ones. See my interview with Andy Rubin and Eric Schmidt about those speculations: http://138.2.152.197/2010/02/22/i-interviewed-eric-schmidt-and-andy-rubin-at-mwc-off-camera-for-now-watch-eric-schmidts-keynote-video/

Here are some pictures of this device (click to see full sized version on Picasa):

You can discuss this video at http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=31278

Archos has couple of Android-powered tablets in the pipeline (ubergizmo.com)
Video Review of Hivision’s $100 ARM-Based Android Laptop (linux.slashdot.org)
Archos Home Slate set to grace CeBIT with its family-friendly presence (engadget.com)

Category: Tablets, PMPs, Exclusive videos, Reviews, Rockchip, CeBIT, Archos, Android
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Android Laptop Review: Hivision PWS700CA

Posted by Charbax – January 29, 2010

Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, Reviews, Rockchip, Android

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)

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: