IP878 Android TV Box – $40 AllWinner A10 mini PC?

I’ve been tipped off about a new Android mini PC called IP878 selling for less than $40 on a site called ahappydeal.com. This HDMI Stick is said to run Android 2.3, features an ARM CPU, 512 MB RAM and 4 GB flash and comes with a basic remote control. There’s no mention of the exact processor on the website mentioned above, but I found what looks like the (a?) manufacturer website (NewMi), which describes IP878 features as follows: SoC – ALLWINNER TECH A10S RAM  – 512MB DDR2 Storage –  2GB Flash + microSD card slot Video and Audio out – HDMI (high-resolution video output up to 720P ???) Video Containers – *.mkv,*.wmv,*.mpg, *.mpeg, *.dat, *.avi, *.mov, *.mp4 *.wmv, *.FLV, *.3GP Video Codecs – H.264, H.263,VP8,RV8/9,MPEG4,Xvid,Divx 3/4/5,MPEG1/2 USB –  USB 2.0 Host & OTG Wi-Fi – 802.11 b/g Power – 5V/1A Remote control – IR extender Weight – 25 g Dimensions […]

New Android 4.0.4 Firmwares for Mele A1000 / A2000

Mele released a new firmware for the Mele A1000, A100 and A2000 Android media players. Here are the download page for Android 4.0 V1.1 (Thanks Fabricio & JP) and the changelog: Update to Android 4.0.4 Fixed problem with Flash Player “black screen” Mouse speed can be set Option to turn on/off the background applications Allowed to set the font size Supports playback of DVD and Blu-Ray ISO files (Files mode) Multiple mouse devices can be used Full-screen playback of online video sources I haven’t had time to try it myself yet, but some people did, and it fixed some of their issues (e.g.  HD multicast video streaming). Tip: Since the whole download process in in Chinese,  “下载” means “download” in Chinese. You’ll have to be patient because the download is slow right now (About 5KB/s on my side). Kimdecent also informed me they’ve released a new firmware for the Mele A1000/A2000 […]

Zero Devices Z802 mini PC Unboxing and Review

Yesterday, I received 2 mini PCs from Zero Devices: The AllWinner A10 based Z802 and the Telechips TCC8925 based Z900. Today, I’ll show the unboxing pictures of the Z802 and review the device, and I’ll take care of Z900 mini PC another day. Zero Devices Z802 is actually the same design as Rikomagic MK802, and was released about 2 weeks earlier, but fate made the media “gods” hype MK802 instead of Zero Device Z802. This mini PC features AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 processor clocked at up to 1.5 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 4 GB flash,  built-in Wifi 802.11 b/g/n, a mini USB OTG port, USB 2.0 host port, a microSD card slot and an HDMI female connector. I received the device in the package pictured on the left. Once you open the box, you’ll see the Z802 on top, and once you pull off the cover, you’ll see quite a […]

Rikomagic To Sell an AllWinner A10 Android & Ubuntu Netbook

Rikomagic, the company that sells the MK802 mini PC, is planning to sell a netbook based on AllWinner A10 processor that runs both Android and Ubuntu operating systems. This device looks very much like the H6 netbook  with a 10″ 1024×600 display, 1 GB RAM, 4 to 8 GB flash. an SD card slot, 3 USD ports, audio in/out and a front camera. Android currently runs in the internal flash, and Ubuntu can be booted from an SD card. In the video below, Andy Kirby of Rikomagic gives an overview of the netbook and shows a demo of Ubuntu Desktop running from an SD card. The Linux OS seems to run relatively smoothly as he shows pages rendered in Chromium.However, hardware acceleration (both OpenGL and VE) is missing, and Youtube video playback is very slow as it is rendering in software. Open Office is also a bit slow, but it’s […]

Zero Devices Z902 mini PC Can Now Be Pre-ordered for $75

Zero Devices Z902 is an upgrade of Zero Device Z802 (virtually identical to MK802) mini PC powered by AllWinner A10, with 1 GB RAM, a total of 3 USB ports (1 USB Host and 2 mini USB ports) and an HDMI male connector. The device will eventually sells for $89, but the company currently offers the 500 first pieces for pre-order for $75 US including shipping via Asiapads. The company expects the first batch to be shipped by the end of August (25th to 31st). The package includes a micro USB to USB (male) cable, a microUSB to USB (female) adapter, an HDMI female to male cable for those who can’t or don’t like connect the device directly in the TV, and a mini CD with a user manual in English. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software […]

HackBerry AllWinner A10 Board is Now Available for $60

The Hackberry “development board” is now available for sale on Miniand. This board powered by AllWinner A10 processor comes in 2 versions: 512 MB RAM version – Available now for $60 1GB RAM version – Available by the end of the month for $65. Both boards features a 4GB Flash, a SDHC slot, 2x USB 2.0 port, 10/100 Ethernet, Wi-Fi, HDMI & composite outputs,  headphone & microphone ports and a IR sensor. The good thing is that serial interface and FEL connectors will be soldered on the board for easy debugging and recovery. The FEL recovery port allows to reflash the board using Livesuit. As a side note, Henrik, a developer involved in Allwinner A10 software development, has done some work to reverse engineer FEL USB protocol, wrote a small program to enter into Livesuit mode with an SD card (Go to the bottom of the page section “Forcing FEL […]

AllWinner A10 Initramfs Support and Linaro 12.07 Image

An initramfs is a minimal root filesystem that is loaded at an early stage of the boot process, before the rootfs partition is mounted. This is optional but is now used by many Linux distributions such as Ubuntu in order to speed up boot time among others things. Up to recently, there was no support for this in the AllWinner A10 nightly builds, and there would be lot of error messages due to ureadahead process with Ubuntu, but I’ve changed that by: Using a boot.scr file (U-Boot Script) for each supported device in order to either follow the default init boot method or do an initramfs boot if uInitrd file is present in the FAT partition. Adding a script (a1x-initramfs.sh) to generate and install uInitrd initramfs in the rootfs. The initramfs can’t be generated at build time since the hardware packs are (mostly) distribution agnostic. If you want an initramfs, […]

AllWinner A10 Based H6 Android 4.0 Netbook Sells for $140

I’ve been tipped yet another time by one of my reader (Thank you Alex!) about an interesting low cost ARM device. H6 Netbook is powered by AllWinner A10 processor with 1 GB RAM and 4GB Flash, features a 10″ display (non touch) and runs Android 4.0.3. I wrote about the Sunlike UMPC-1021 in April, but the H6 is the first AllWinner A10 netbook – that I know of – that is available for retail. Here are the specs of this ARM netbook. CPU – AllWinner A10 @ 1.0GHz (Cortex A8;) with Mali 400 GPU System Memory – 1GB RAM Storage – 4GB Flash + SD Card slot (up to 32 GB) Display – 10″ LCD Display (no touchscreen) with 1024×600 resolution. Connectivity 10/100M Ethernet Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n built-in 3G support via external 3G dongle: E1916, ZTE AC2736, HUAWEI E1750, HUAWEI EC122, HUAWEI EM770W… USB – 3x USB 2.0 Host ports […]

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