Category: Android
$120 iPad2-clones in Shenzhen China
Bill from http://1pad.cn presents an example of the $120 iPad2 copies that are being sold on the Shenzhen Huaqiangbei Electronics Market, and that are being spread as the most popular 9.7″ tablet being sold in China, which is the fastest growing tablet and smartphones market. The ARM processors being used are currently mostly the Boxchip A10 and RockchipRK2918 which now have extremely smooth graphics accelerated Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich support. The actual performance of these are above iPad1 and slightly below iPad2, yet they include features such as the HDMI output, USB Host, MicroSD card slots and they run Android software which easily supports as many pirated apk apps as one wants to transfer to the device and install without rooting (of course, many Chinese people don’t want to pay the normal prices for apps as people do on the European/American Google Play marketplace). But these tablets do come with the full Google Play Marketplace pre-installed so users can use that if they want. It also comes with a bunch of alternative Chinese marketplaces where all the apks are always free.
Aipad Tab A8, Wacom Android tablet
Here’s a tablet for pen-based productivity, the price is close to $200.
Zhenai A900 waterproof MT6575 smartphone
They are showing it with the MT6573 right now, the MT6575 is ready quite soon for it.
Shenzhen Tena Smartbox WiFi mirroring
$63 7″ capacitive Boxchip A10 Tablet
This is getting close to the cheapest price you can find a 7″ capacitive ARM Cortex-A8 with Mali-400 graphics powered Ice Cream Sandwich WVGA tablet. I bought 2, because I want to test this more. Let me know in the comments if you may be interested to buy one of these (I may try to organize some group buy of this through my website if there is demand). Let me know in the comments what I should test about this tablet.
Zopo ZP100 MT6575 4.3″ qHD $174 street price
The MediaTek MT6575 is out of the gate. ARM Cortex-A9 invades the low cost Shenzhen Smartphones market. http://www.zopomobile.com opened their first store on the Huaqiangbei Shenzhen Smartphones market street, to sell their new ZP100 smartphone at 1099rmb (USD$174). It’s got an awesome 4.3″ qHD 960×540 LCD capacitive screen made by Sharp, a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera/camcorder made by Sony, the MT6575 makes it support Dual-sim WCDMA/3G/Data and GPRS/Voice at the same time. And it’s got a removable 1650mAh battery, MicroSD slot and Micro-USB that does not double as an MHL output. Of course I bought one because I want to test the MT6575 processor. Let me know in the comments what you would like to see me test on this and other upcoming MT6575 Smartphones.
$142 7″ WVGA MT6573 Dual-sim 3G/2G tablet
http://www.yooe.com.cn and http://www.runtong.com.hk presents their latest MediaTek MT6573 ARM11 based 7″ WVGA 3G/2G dual-sim tablet with a removable 4000mAh battery. They also plan to provide the MT6575 version at nearly the same price after June.
Boxchip A13 sub-$55 7″ Capacitive ICS Tablet by www.yooe.com.cn, even cheaper ARM Cortex-A8!
The new Boxchip A13 is designed to provide for even cheaper Ice Cream Sandwich tablets, now reaching the sub-$55 price point. By June, http://www.yooe.com.cn says they can sell this one in bulk below 300rmb which is below USD$47! At that price you get a 7″ capacitive ICS awesome experience! WVGA at that price, I don’t know how much more it costs them to make it a 7″ 1024×600 screen. The AllWinner Boxchip A13 removes the HDMI output, otherwise most seems to be the same as the now very popular AllWinner Boxchip A10 based tablet platform! If you are interested to buy this tablet for sub-$55 (any quantity) let me know in the comments (maybe I can find a way to make it a grouped purchase through Hong Kong on my website).
$158 5″ WVGA MT6575 Cortex-A9 Smartphone presented by yooe.com.cn and runtong.com.hk
This 5″ smartphone looks pretty awesome for $158, it’s powered by the new MediaTek MT6575 single-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, with Dual-sim slots WCDMA 3G and GPRS. If you are interested in buying this phone, let me know in the comments (maybe I can find a way to make it a grouped purchase through Hong Kong).
Huaqiangbei Shenzhen Smartphones Market
Here is my first 2012 video at the Shenzhen Smartphones Market! This market is so awesome, huge, fantastic, compressed, action packed, full of devices, walking around the Shenzhen Smartphones market is hugely impressive. Check back in the days to come as I’ll post videos of the coolest devices that I can find here.
Smartphone repair at the Shenzhen Smartphones Market
At the Smartphones market in Shenzhen China, you can find these experts who can open up any broken phone, find out what is broken and fix them. They have screws, soldering irons, volt measuring equipment, cutters, and other equipment to analyse, find the defects and fix the devices.
Metaio Augmented Reality status on the Texas Instruments OMAP4
Metaio shows a demo featuring their latest status for augmented reality on the Texas Instruments OMAP4 platform.
MHL for the car, using the Pioneer AppRadio2
Now the MHL standard can be used to charge your MHL compatible phone in the car and at the same time send audio and video to the car, and remote control the phone over Bluetooth and MHL using a larger touch-screen GPS and in-car entertainment type of screen like the Pioneer AppRadio2. As every phone is getting to have an MHL connector, it’s likely that every car also soon enough are equipped with an MHL connector. Your smartphone screen isn’t big enough to provide a safe in-car user interface, but it should be fully synchronized with your in-car optimized screens and user interface.
InHand Hydra-T3 Ruggedized 7″ Pixel Qi tablet released
InHand releases their new Hydra-T3 ruggedized 7″ Pixel Qi tablet. It runs on the Texas Instruments DaVinci DM3730 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 and 800MHz TMS320C64X+™ DSP, up to 1GB DDR2, up to 16GB eMMc Flash, the Pixel Qi LCD screen is the 7″ 1024×600 built using a chemically strengthened resistive touch screen layer (I wonder how readable this resistive Pixel Qi implementation is). Having been tested through the military specs MIL-SPEC, MIL-STD-810G, MIL-STD-461F it can support extreme temperature, fluid contaminates, solar radiation, fungus, immersion, shock and vibration. It uses a 37WHr redundant 3.7V Lithium Polymer battery for up to 10 hours of battery life. It can run Android 2.3, Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows Embedded Compact 6.
This tablet seems to compete with the Orchard Inc Toughlet which is also a ruggedized 7″ Pixel Qi tablet for military and industrial use. The military and the industry must be very eager to use the Pixel Qi screen for tablets outdoor readability, low power consumption as soon as possible.
Read more about this new Pixel Qi tablet at: inhand.com
Source: InHand press release
900,000 Rockchip RK2918 7″ Tablets purchased by Thailand’s Government for Education
The 900,000 Scopad SP0712 Android tablets are going to be delivered before the next semester. The first batch of 50,000 tablets to be delivered within 15 days of the signing of the memorandum of understanding (which may mean 15 days from now).
The price per tablet is $82 and to be delivered by Shenzhen Scope Scientific Development. The Chinese Government had suggested four suppliers be considered for the deal including also Huawei Technologies Co, TCL Cooperation and Haier Information Technology (Shenzhen).
I don’t know if those have capacitive screens, what the battery life is going to be.
I think it’s crucial for the successful use of tablets in education for those to include a Pixel Qi LCD screen! Readability and very low power consumption are crucial features for these! Android tablets can become very successful tools for education, but they need to last 20 hours on a battery and not 5 hours! And the screens need to be as readable as paper! And the screen must be usable outdoors!
Not using Pixel Qi I think may be the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful educational tablet initiative! In rich countries, consumers don’t care much, because they always have enough power, they don’t care about reading and they are satisfied just playing video games on the devices, in rich countries, the tablets are just being used as entertaining gadgets for a bit of fun, nearly no productivity happens thus far. If you want to use tablets in education, you really carefully have to think about usability, battery life and productivity.
A $5 keyboard dock design can also be quite crucial for those to actually be usable for productive learning!! A built-in kick-stand I think is also pretty much compulsory.
The Pheu Thai Party promised during its campaigning ahead of last year’s election that, if voted in, it would give a tablet computer to every first-grade student nationwide.
Gp Cpt Anudith said the next step was to draft the agreement and forward it to the Office of the Attorney General for checks. The process would be finished before the end of this month, he said.
Chinnapat Bhumirat, secretary-general to the Office of Basic Education, said: “The G to G contract and MoU agreement are not that different, and the Chinese government will help us deal with the supplier and get as low a price as possible.”
Mr Chinnapat said the first batch of about 50,000 tablets would be sent to Thailand within 15 days of the MoU being signed. A team of 1,000 experts will train 15,000 teachers and supervisors nationwide on tablet use in early May.
According to Rockchip, here are the 3 key points for the Rockchip Tablet solution to win governmental tender projects:
1: RK2918 has the highest cost-performance for governmental tender projects;
2: RK2918 MID has already passed CTS certification from Google both on Android 2.3.5 and Android 4.0.3 version, which is the most important thing for governmental tender projects;
3: RK2918 has its good reputation for its well software-supporting service from Rockchip Electronics among its clients all over the world.
Source: bangkokpost.com
