7-inch Android Netbook From GNB

An anonymous reader writes "Netbooknews.com has scored a video of a 7-inch Google Android netbook from a company called GNB during Computex. The device is powered by a Freescale iMX31 CPU. The design might not be to everyone's taste, but it could turn out to be a super cheap Android netbook."

Comments

Some information would be nice.

[Gordonjcp]

You know, maybe a description of the spec, a couple of decent photos, that sort of thing...

Re:Some information would be nice.

[wisty]

Unless you just want to stick to VIM (or emacs), a 7 inch screen screws up a lot of user interfaces. My eeePC has dialog boxes in pre-loaded software that can't be "OK'd" because the buttons are off the screen. :(

Re:Some information would be nice.

[angryphase]

• CPU: 533MHz Freescale i.MX31 ARM-based processor
• Operating System: Google Android
• Display: 800 x 480 pixel touchscreen (Sascha says it's not glossy, but you can see a fair bit of glare in the video)
• RAM: 256MB
• Storage: Up to 8GB SSD
• I/O: 3 USB ports, mic, headphone, and 4-in-1 card reader
• Weight: 680 grams, or about 1.5 pounds

See working video of it here

Re:Some information would be nice.

[corsec67]

In most of the window managers I have used, if you hold alt, dragging anywhere on a window moves the window.

Having the OK buttons off the screen is a very bad design, but it can be worked around.

Re:Some information would be nice.

[Tranzistors]

Try what parent advised. It works under GNOME. Just grab by bottom of the window.

Re:Some information would be nice.

[TheRaven64]

Note that the i.MX3 series is very old (in CPU terms). The current generation, the i.MX5, is based on the Cortex A8 and is a very nice chip capable of, among other things, running Flash and encoding H.264 in real time. The i.MX3 is an older generation (there was no i.MX4) based on an ARM11 core. It does have the VFP (vector / floating point) coprocessor, but does not support the NEON SIMD instruction set. It is likely to be significantly slower than a 600MHz A8 as found in something like the OMAP3, and a lot slower than the 1GHz A8 found in the i.MX5. The i.MX3 didn't have an on-die GPU, so this may be using a simple frame buffer while most A8 SoCs (OMAP3, i.MX5, etc) include an OpenGL 2.0 ES-compatible GPU.

The A8 is currently in the process of being superseded by the Cortex A9, which includes a slightly improved pipeline, out-of-order execution, and support for up to 4 cores on a single die. ARM started licensing it a year ago, and SoCs based on the core (e.g. nVidia's Tegra) are beginning to appear.

Re:Some information would be nice.

[moronoxyd]

How about you read posts, think about what they are trying to tell you and then, maybe, post a reply?

In any windowsmanager I know you can hold down the ALT key, and drag the windows by drag-clicking ANYWHERE within the window.
GPs tip to click the bottom didn't mean the exact bottom of the window, but rather the lower part of the windows (so that you have enough space to move the window far enough up.

Re:Some information would be nice.

[erikina]

Damn it. If only I didn't burn my mod points being constructive, I could have so much fun abusing the mod system on this stupidity.

By starting the drag from the bottom of the visible screen you have more room to drag it up before your mouse hits the top of the screen.

Re:Some information would be nice.

[FrankieBaby1986]

CompizConfig settings manager has a plugin called "move window" which provides window movement. You can set mouse and keyboard shortcuts to move windows, as well as choose to "Constain y".

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the video on the site, they're covering all the specs in it

Ultra Small Resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

I evaluated a freescale board for a major computer manufacture and we ended up deciding not to go with it. Sure its a fast ARM chip and the video processor supports multimedia acceleration but the resolution is tiny. The max resolution when we looked at it was 1024x768(I beleive this was it, we needed much higher). So don't except to be able to hook these things up to an external monitor unless they go with a different video card.

The good news about all these arm manufactures coming out with netbooks is they really try to support the Linux community and are actively submitting patches.

Site slow

[boiert]

Better link the youtube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZlKnubPUbk

Re:Servers on netbooks?

[IBBoard]

And just as he says that, after a minute of sitting and loading, the page finally appears! Oh well, I'm sure it'll be true soon enough :D

In case it does happen, the video is on YouTube at http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/2ZlKnubPUbk&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hd=1

OK, saw it and my likes and dislikes are:

[blind biker]

First of all, it's a real netbook, with keyboard and touchpad (I wish it had the nipple, but ok) and all the connectors one can find on a number of (intel-based) netbooks. So this is good - this is the first real ARM-based netbook I have seen so far.

I like the weight - 650g! Amazingly light.

But battery consumption is not good. It will work for 2.5 hours on one charge. That's pathetic.

Re:I've got one already...

[Pembers]

Yeah, they might not understand the Internet, but they understand their obligations under the GPL :-)

The CPU in mine is a 400MHz MIPS clone. No idea how that compares with an x86 or ARM device. It has 128MB of RAM and 2GB of on-board flash. It has an SD slot and 3 USB sockets, so you could plug 4GB into each of those, for a (rather unwieldy) 16GB of additional storage.

It takes about 2 minutes to boot into an X desktop. More annoying is that it doesn't have a suspend or hibernate mode - or if it does, I haven't found it. It has a key with "Zzz" written on it, but this just switches off the screen backlight. Still, it does what I bought it for.

More info from video.

[spaceturtle]

Also has an Ethernet port. Estimated run time of 2.5 hours. Apparently will also come in 2GB SSD, 128MiB ram options.