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You show me $99 and I’ll show you a 7-inch resistive touchscreen, Android 2.1, and not a whole lot more. That’s basically what you get from the latest Arnova tablet from Archos. The Arnova 7 is designed to compete on one point, and one point alone, and that point is the price point. You don’t get the Android Market (you’ll have to settle for the AppsLib store), you don’t get the most recent version of Android for smartphones (let alone tablets), and you don’t get a camera (front or rear). But did we mention it will only cost $99? No word on when you can drop a lone Benjamin on this one.
[via Engadget]
Trust me, Resistive screens on these things are their downfall. The rest is OK, but those screens suck. I have a Gentouch 78, and if not for that screen, I’d love the device. (for the money)
Oh, one point of contention with the article: You should be able to put the Amazon Market, SlideME, and the other 3rd party markets for it, not just the one mentioned. So yeah, no Android Market, but still a LOT of software available.
Is that a giant trackball?? I’ll buy one just to roll it all day.
EDIT: The fact that it’s resistive is good. You can take draw/write stuff on it with a cheap stylus with good accuracy, assuming the touchscreen used is of decent quality anyway.
Wow, I’m impressed and slightly worried for RIM, they cannot compete at this price point, I love the Blackberry PlayBook but must admit it a temptingly low price. I have to admit concerns about the resistive technology. If I can get hold of one I will do a review on my website http://www.blackberry-playbook-reviews.co.uk love to hear from anyone that has actually used the Arnova and the Playbook.
are you kidding me? you’re comparing blackberry playbook to this? first of all, two totally different OS’s, and secondly the hardware inside each of them arent even in the same ballpark. shut up.
Can you watch movies on it? Might be a good cheapo movie screen for long trips…
looks like it does 720p, according to the tech specs.
Yeah. Honestly that’s a lot of gadget for $100.
I bought a 5” Archos for international travel for over $400 a few years back.
Assuming the battery lasts a good long while, something like that is worth its weight in gold when you’re 4 hours into an 8 hour flight.
-Suntan
I thought it was a 2.2 tablet?
it is 2.2. http://arnovatech.com/products/arn_7/specs.html?country=us&lang=en looks like an error from phandroid’s part.
Everyone I know who has purchased a tablet of any kind in the past 6 months say the novelty wore off quick and most are now gathering dust. They’re too big to carry around daily, too small to use regularly at home. Have you seen anyone trying to take a picture or video clip with these things….it looks ridiculous! To each his own I guess.
Who cares if this thing is $99, that is a waste of $98 dollars. Wow, I honestly wouldn’t take this POS if they gave me $25. Nope. Get this crap outta here
How DARE they make a $99 tablet not as good as a $700 tablet!
If you can side load apps or another market, this might be great for my kids as a cheap alternate to a Nintendo 3DS.
I’m sure the novelty will wear off quite fast, considering the quality of the thing. The Nintendo DS lite had its price cut to $99 a while back, why not get them that?
What are the minimum requirements for Google Music? I need a device for the kids room to listen to music at night. This looks like a good option.
Amazon’s Appstore is also available on some of these Android AP but non Google API tablets. Geeks don’t mind paying $500+ to be a “respectable geek” but most of the public could care less and $99 is a whole lot less than $500 especially if all they’re going to do is occasionally look up something on the Internet, read an ebook or do some email.
You know how ridiculous you people sound, who equate price tag with quality? What kinda a stupid idea is to be a “respectable geek”? True geeks put Android on some POS and make it run. True geeks take hardware limitations challenge and make the thing do what it wasn’t priced to. People with expensive toys are just same as iCrowd, that’s it. The difference is, iCrowd pays high premium for the features that may be revealed to them in a year or so. People who overpays for WiFi only tabs with GPS are just plain dumb and don’t understand what their real needs are.
Strap it to the headrest for the kids to watch movies. 4 gigs should hold 5 or 10 before I even have to bust out a microSD.
Could be a lot of fun. Interesting to see if it could be rooted, that would open up a whole lot of possibilities. Good spare to have knocking around the house, the kids could play with as well.
Sounds like a decent front-end to a car stereo to me.
How is it that it won’t have the android market but it’s a android 2.2 tablet? Isn’t that the a big part of the point of having android?
Google offer developers of android devices too options. They can get the android software for free and develop it on there devices but will not include any google apps such as android market and gmail. The 2nd option google give companys is that they pay google royalties, which then allows them to include google apps with the android device. Clearly with these being cheap devices they have decided to go down the route of using the free version and developing it themselves. I suppose this reduces the total cost of the device as well. And im sure there is a peice of software on the internet called Arctools that can install the android market and google apps on these ARNOVA devices.
the only dealbreaker here is it;s a resistive screen.
I’ve got an Archos 4.3 and Android 2.2, plays 720p although you might ask why given the screen size. Quality is ok. The resistive screen is not great without a stylus but might actually be usable on a 7″ device.