Image via WikipediaBefore breaking out of your SOPA&PIPA protest and rushing to Sears, have another look at what exactly waits for you there.Name has stabilized around "Ainol Novo 7 Basic", but it still be around "Ainovo...", or "Ainol.... Knight Paladin" at other vendors. Then, there was camera-less "Ainol Novo 7 Paladin" (not the Knight Paladin) that was demoed at last CES. Knight Paladin (or Basic) was promised to hit US after January 15, and here we go, it did. As for what drives this tablet, here's an excerpt from my article at Mobile.Mag:
First thing that hits you, it's an overall cheapness, plus 800x480 low-res screen. How narrow are viewing angles, you may decide for yourself at Sears. I won't be near Sears till next weekend at least.
Second, and a very peculiar feature of the Ainol Novo 7 Basic is that it’s based on a first non-ARM SoC: a MIPS32-based Xburst JZ4770 SoC by Beijing Ingenic Semiconductor company. Brushing aside issues of further fragmentation of the Android ecosystem, this chip has passed 24,000 tests of obligatory Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) needed to get Android certification back in June.Ingenic’s JZ4770 SoC is quite interesting chip in any case, and preliminary specs for the one that is used in Ainol Novo 7 Basic can be found here. Major highlights of these are:
– 65nm geometry process;
– embedded DSP (digital signal processor);
– Vivante GC860 GPU, a very good 3D performer;
– and a plethora of special features:
-- XBurst SIMD instruction set, 8-stage pipeline,
16/32-bit LP-DDR/DDR/DDR2 SD RAM interface, 8/16-bit SRAM interface, NOR Flash SLC/MLC/TLC NAND Flash interface, 4/8/12/16/20/24 bit ECC, SRAM interface, 12-ch DMA,
-- 500MHz Xburst VPU (this VPU must be "video processing unit), 1080p HD video decode,
-- 444MHz Vivante GC860 GPU, OpenGL ES2.0 and ES1.0, OpenVG1.1,
-- AC97/I2S/SPDIF, Audio Codec,
-- LCD interface, LVDS,
-- TV Encoder, EPD interface, 16.7MP camera interface (cameras are 2MP and 0.3 MP though), Touch ADC, 1-wire, PCM, I2C, SPI, UART, SIM-IF, SD/MMC/SDIO, USB Host, USB OTG 2.0, TS-IF, GPIO, Ethernet MAC, OTP Slave
That info was reported back in December when data was pulled from several sources, piece by piece.
Today, Sears has this to say about their product:
USA SELLER!! *** INCLUDES 32GB MEMORY CARD, USB KEYBOARD, CAR CHARGER****
Brand New Novo 7 capacitive multi touch tablet pc android 3.2 1GHz 7.0 Inch Capacitive Screen,
800*480 Pixel, 5 point multi touch
OS: Android 3.2
CPU: 1GHz DDR: DDRII 512M
Wifi: 802.11a/b/g/n(300Mbps)
Camera: Front 0.3, Back 2.0
G-sensor
Remote Control
Video Formats Resolution:480x272, 720x480, 1024x768, 1280x720, 2160p Video: supports MKV, AVI, WMV, RMVB, TS, TP, MPEG, VOB, FLV, MOV MP3/MP4 Player: compatible with multiple formats, supports shuffle and repeat playing mode, high definition video playback
Support Android APK, APK game
E-Book: TXT, LRC(PDF, EPUB, FB2 installing the third party software ) HDMI Output
According to a commenter, there's also might be a GPS radio on board. Picture above shows something with a satellite and car in cross hairs, but it could be a joke, just like a Green Dude, or Adobe Easy button that you won't find in your bundle. But GPS, or no GPS, Sears $209.99 deal includes 32GB TF card (better known as SD card here), a USB keyboard that doubles as a flap case, plus a car charger bundled on top of standard set of boxed stuff.
By the way, you might also try merimobiles and get the tablet with standard USB cable, charger, earphones, and remote for just $132.99. You may want to know it will be shipped from China though. Even if it's with free shipping, it's still a risk much greater than dealing with Sears. If you decide go for China still, take into account that all China will be closed till January 31st for holidays.
Your unit might run Honeycomb when out of the box, but the ICS 4.0.1 upgrade is waiting for you here.
First reports have units with the screen corruption, complaints about official ICS 4.0.1 being laggy compared to its leaked beta.
Battery life is not so spectacular even by the specs claim (4-6 hours) and may turn out shorter than 4 hours.
YouTube doesn't play videos, pre-installed Google Market can't download a single app. When it does, after some tweaking, the apps available to your Ainol Novo 7 Basic are of quite limited list.
MIPS incompatibility with ARM architecture is to blame, but in many cases of good programming there might be left some MIPS flags that if turned ON could make an app start working on Basic. Here's what c0demag1c of XDA-Devs offers:
MagicCode is a software designed by "c0demag1c dev team"to make it possible to run an ARM based native apk on a MIPS device. It changes the .so in the apk to the mips mode directllllly so that users can run a arm-apk easily. Up to now,we have tried to run a lot of apps and both of them is working well now.
Tablet Republic has a rapidly evolving forum for those that took a plunge and got the device. While there, look for ICS 4.0.3 upgrades, plus what to do with them to keep/restore root and MagicCode functioning. Or getting just plain version cleaned out of Chinese-only apps.
All in all, Sears will see many returned units. The price for their "refurb" bundle may get to something more realistic, like $130...$140.
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