Hands-on Review: $99 Tablet Ainol NOVO Basic 7–MIPS

In December 2011, BSN* announced the promise of a 7-inch tablet priced at $99 running Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). MIPS Technology, Ingenic Semiconductor and Ainol have launched a game changing product. Suddenly, Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich is on a commodity pricing tablet.

The 7-inch $99 tablet is powered by Ingenic's JZ4770 mobile applications processor which leverages a MIPS-based XBurst core running at 1 GHz on 65nm process geometry at TSMC. It has an 800 x 480 LED display, VGA 0.3 megapixel (MP) front-facing camera and a 2 MP rear facing camera, microSD card, miniHDMI, and 3.5mm headset jack.

For a first generation product MIPS Technology, Ingenic Semiconductor, and Ainol have put the competition on notice that they are serious players. Only a few devices, including the Galaxy Nexus and ASUS Transformer Prime, have officially shipped Android 4.0 ICS. Samsung Italy has confirmed that the update is coming - but possibly not until Q2 2012. HTC said they have "been working hard to get its Ice Cream Sandwich upgrades ready, and we’re excited to announce that our first round of ICS upgrades will roll out by the end of March for the HTC Sensation and HTC Sensation XE, followed soon thereafter by the HTC Sensation XL."

BSN* got our MIPS Technology-provided evaluation unit at CES 2012. The tablet came with Ainol’s official version 4.0.1 ROM (read only memory) of Google’s Android Mobile ICS Operating System (OS).

 CES 2012 & Ainol NOVO Basic 7–MIPS running Spiderman game

In our first article, we compared the NOVO Basic 7’s specifications to three other tablets. On paper they were similar. A few publications took their evaluation Ainol NOVO Basic 7–MIPS platform and immediately compared the 7-inch $99 tablet to $200 - $800 7-inch and 10-inch tablets. Of course, the 7-inch $99 offering fell short. However, so would a $12,000 2-door economy car when compared to a $25,000 mid-range 4-door sedan. No automotive publisher would bother to set up that wrong-headed comparison.