[Arm-netbook] Lenovo To Offer $200 Budget Tablet

[Bari Ari]

On 09/04/2011 02:50 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> "Amazon's not the only big-name company planning on a budget-level
> tablet release; Lenovo recently announced their Ideapad A1 tablet as
> competition. It includes a 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, along with other
> features more commonly seen on higher-priced tablets, such as dual
> cameras, bluetooth, GPS, wifi, and a MicroSD slot. Is this the start
> of the Android tablet price avalanche?"
>
> http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/04/1439221/Lenovo-To-Offer-200-Budget-Tablet
>
> so it begins...
>
>
Archos Arnova 7 Android 2.2 tablet will be priced at US$99
ARM Cortex A8 1 GHz
http://www.gizmag.com/archos-arnova-7-tablet/19016/

another low cost tablet, Rockchip A8 (no open docs) Archos Arnova 8 G2
http://www.slashgear.com/archos-arnova-8-g2-android-tablet-seen-at-fcc-07170114/

Ramos W10 Amlogic cortex a9 (no open docs), 7.0" $149.99
http://www.androidauthority.com/best-cheap-android-tablet-for-games-2011-16502/

The prices have been falling for the past year along with being even 
more locked down. The docs have also been closing for the past 2 years.

Without open docs for the ARM SOC's it's difficult to develop open 
firmware (coreboot or u-boot). There are some hacks to clone closed 
firmware or projects like http://kexecboot.org to work around being 
locked into a kernel and boot source. But how do you keep the device 
free from malware in the firmware (hardware init and bootloader) 
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11372 , tracking  or closed firmware, 
etc?

Somebody reversed some of the firmware used in the Asus Transformer 
since Asus had used the Secure Boot Key in the tegra2.

http://androidroot.mobi/technical/tf-secure-boot-key/

http://tabletroms.com/index.php/2011/06/08/asus-transformer-secure-boot-key-leaked/

About a month or so later Asus changed their secure-boot-key. Is this 
the mess we want to deal with? If we want to build open designs we need 
devices with open docs. TI might be the only vendor with cortex a8 
devices and newer with at least partially open docs.

-Bari

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