Arnova 7, a $99 7-inch Android tablet
The $99 price tag does sound tempting, but beware, there are a few limitations you should know about before you even start thinking about getting the Arnova 7 from, well, Arnova. First off, the tablet runs Android 2.2, so if you are looking for the latest build of Honeycomb or even think this might be upgraded in the future, you will be wrong on both counts here. And then there’s the Android Market, or the lack thereof – the device only has access to AppsLib store instead of the original Android Market, giving you access to about 38771 apps out of the hundreds of thousands that are currently available. The third straw obviously would be its resistive touchscreen display – no pinch zoom or any other kind of touch gesture-based controls here.
That said, the Arnova 7 could do very well for someone who are okay with a decent Android device with a 7-inch display that can throw back 720p on its 800×480 display. There’s also 4GB of flash memory built in and a microSD slot to expand that, so you are covered on the storage side at the least. We are guessing they have added in Bluetooth, WiFi and the like too, but what you read above pretty much is what you will get for the 99 quid you will put down.
No release date has been revealed, but I am guessing you guys aren’t holding your breath on that point anyway.
The only thing that turned me off on this one is the hardware limitation of a crappy touchscreen. The rest could be fixed in short form by the gentlemen of XDA.
Not bad – an interesting alternative…