By Via, a known name in the circuitry world, seems to be dabbling in the Android game with an interesting new product. They’ve introduced an Android PC that will cost $49 and whose motherboard is about the size of a small tablet.
The device comes with an ARM 11 800MHz processor, 2GB of NAND flash (storage can be increased using a microSD card slot or possibly using one of 4 full-sized USB ports), 512MB of RAM, a VGA port, an HDMI port, an ethernet port, and more.
The device’s chassis is nothing special — a black, plastic-based case is the norm for most computers and that’s exactly what you get here: no frills. For $49 you can’t expect much out of a PC, especially when it’s only running Android 2.3 (for now). But this will be perfect for those who want a cheap computer to do very basic things on like web browsing, playing 2D games, and listening to music.
We should know more about this bundle once we get closer to launch (Via isn’t saying when that launch will happen), but take a look at a preview video embedded above
. [via Netbook News]
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Neat! A potential replacement “PC” for my parents!
That’s a very good price! If they can make one for $100 with a gig of ram it could be running ICS easy.
Can’t wait til this is being made by big manufacturers. I’d love to see a nice AMD APU, bluetooth compatibility for Onlive and Apps that support controllers, multiple SD card slots, 1080p support, and much more. This could be big for Android OS.
Sounds more like a ChromeOS device the way you describe it, but ya… I’m with ya on this.
What are the inputs? Keyboard and mouse?
USB for both, clearly.
I was wondering when something like this would come out. It was just a matter of time. Needs improvement, but a great start nonetheless.
$49 seems like a borderline steal for this kind of service. I don’t look for frills, as long as it can do the job!
800MHz ARM11…….512MB RAM??? ICS will kill this thing. Make it a gig of RAM and for a low end model the Snapdragon S3 and a high end model with an S4. Hell even better go with Exynos 4 quad for low end and 2GB RAM and Exynos 5 for high end. It’s not like LTE compatibility is an issue.
Nice. I’m hoping this will catch on. Google should really consider opening up a new market for affordable mini PCs with built-in monitors. *cough* iMac *cough*
I hope to see Nvidia’s involvement with Tegra chipsets, built-in bluetooth, and Wi-Fi adapters and much more.
I say up the price to $100 and give me 1GB ran and a better
processor and I would be in love.
And WIFI.
This little thing is perfect for my kid and would be fun plug in to the Tv.
Nice product, I’d like to see that get Google TV. It’s amazing they can sell that for $49, when you consider the premium Sony adds to a TV with this integrated.
You would have thought the guy in the video could have been a bit more enthusiastic. It was like he was being forced to participate.
I’m a big Android fan, but on this piece of hardware, I think I’d rather see a lightweight linux distro running. It makes me think of a more robust RaspberryPi for only a slight amount of money more. If a linux install is possible, I might have to pick one of these up.
It’s a great price point.
I’d need to see it’s flash performance. The YouTube app looked like it bypassed flash entirely.
And I suspect it won’t have access to the Market (or Play store?). That makes it a lot less useful to me… :-/
Insanely disappointing. Needs at least a dual core processor and a gig of ram and ICS. What’s the point of outputting to HDMI with HD content when I am pretty sure there are no HD display resolution apps for 2.3? ARGH!!
Seems clearly aimed at a hobbyist market. Why not shoot for what hobbyists will want?
Also, hello??!!! BlueStacks App Player! I already have this on my PC. Why am I going to drop 50 bucks for functionality that I already have on my desktop PC? What I don’t have on my PC is ICS, for which I would gladly pay 100 to 150 bucks.
4.0, put an intel chip in there, also throw in a nvdia graphics card, 4 gb of ram, 64 gb of storage, and put a decent price tag on it. I’ll pick it up in a heart-beat!
it makes me wonder… if android can be implemented as a cpu, then we would be able to upgrade it (e.g. replacing ram, hard drive, etc.). Also, I wonder if we can implement it to our current PC’s so we can switch from Windows to Android seamlessly..
Am I dreaming or can this be a reality? lol…
Of course you can already do this….its easy. http://source.android.com/
The first thing I noticed was that he’s not very good at playing angry birds :P
Raspberry Pi has REALLY upped the Ante for EVERYONE
Now if only it had SO-DIMM slots to expand the RAM
Could we see the end of Chrome OS since android seems to be ready to go way before anything except teh few expensive chromebooks out there? Plus with android at least I can do a lot more offline. Developers are seemingly backing android a lot more than targeting the browser based chromeOS
That’s interesting.
Too bad its not a bit more powerful for say $99. It should at least be powerful enough to run ICS.
heck, I’d pay $150 if you gave me a quad core (tegra 3 or exynos) and ICS
no SATA, no RAM, no need this