An Affordable $199 Tablet for Everyone -- And It's Not From Apple | Hacker News Reader

An Affordable $199 Tablet for Everyone -- And It's Not From Apple

pcworld.com

40 pointscmars23227 comments

This isn't a real product; it's a reference design. What's unclear is whether 199 is what it will cost manufacturers to make or the price it will be on the street.

Even if they sell it at 2x that, it'll still be cheaper and potentially more capable than the iPad.

The article was published on Jan 4th 2010. According to the article, they were suppose to demo it during the CES which has already come and gone and since I didn't see any headlines regarding the $199 tablet from Freescale, I would assume they have already pushed their release dates to much later (or may have abandoned the plans).

An interesting up-and-coming alternative to a recently hyped, closed-platform tablet.

It's a concept car, at this point. I may never arrive, and there is certainly no promise of price point.

Don't get me wrong, I hope it does, and I hope it's cheap, but for now it's vapor.

The specs:

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?co...

Also, an article saying they have it running android, chromium os, and ubuntu:

http://www.liliputing.com/2010/01/freescale-tablet-running-c...

Does anyone know if there's an easy way to get something like this to play with? It might be fun to start thinking about iPad killers.

Since it's a reference design I'm guessing they're only sold in batches of 10000 or so to companies who want to slap their own brand name on them. Perhaps if you can call them out and sound like you have the money lined up and are really seriously interested in putting in a 50000 unit order, they might send you a few samples for free.

I don't understand how a camera above the screen on this thing is even usable. Are you supposed to grab the tablet by its sides and aim it at you photo target? The tablet seems large enough to make such an operation unwieldy. Not to mention the need to somehow press a button to actually snap the shot in addition to using both hands to hold the thing....

People have been calling for a front-facing camera on the iPhone, and one was rumored (among other things) to be on the iPad, but I really don't see the point. The only real use seems to be video chat, but who want's to hold the damn thing steady for video chat?

If it has decent auto-correction software, small bumps shouldn't futz with the picture. Much.

(The main method I could see for this is making the viewable area of video smaller than the sensor; an accelerometer or clever image analysis could determine if the picture is shaking, and autocorrect it)

True, but I'm not so much thinking about small bumps as having to hold it relatively still and pointing at your face. With a laptop it's easy, the thing has a large base and even if it's on your physical lap it's not going to move that much, and it's oriented so the camera points at you when at rest. A tablet device on the other hand, well, try it with a small mirror, how long do you want to hold it like that? How jarring would it be to the other end when it shakes (minor steady-cam business aside)?

I could be wrong of course, maybe people would get the hang of it quickly, but it seems like one of those potential features that people look at with their rose colored glasses (like full OSX on a tablet, imo), without really thinking about what it would be like in practice.

Video chat. Just like the front facing camera on laptops.

let's be honest here, noone would expect something "affordable" from Apple, they are a premium brand. It's like BMW coming out with a ~12,000 car....just won't happen.

That's not actually true--when Apple innovates, they come with something at a higher price end, but they aggressively push downwards after that. The original iPod was $400. The closest functional equivalent to the original iPod, from Apple, is now $150 (but it's actually a lot better).

And you can get comparable (minus the patented touch wheel thingie) mp3 players for 50 bucks.

I'm actually quite shocked people are saying the iPad isn't affordable. This is probably the most affordable overly hyped product Apple has ever released. I was expecting $1,000 just like Steve Jobs said and was blown away when it was as low as it was, and even more blown away by the pay as you go unlimited 3G for $30 a month.

The smaller models in the iPod line -- particularly the Nano and Shuffle -- have always been priced rather nicely, able to take advantage of Apple's brand prestige in the market combined with a price point that makes them affordable gifts around the holidays.

Yeah, Steve Jobs is a genius -- he says it's $1,000 and then you're not shocked that the minimum configuration costs nearly twice as much as a netbook.

I don't think you can easily compare a $250 netbook to the iPad. Lower quality screen, heavier, thicker, significantly less battery life, no multi-touch, lower build quality, and of course weaker software. They may serve some of the same purposes but I don't think they're directly comparable.

Weaker software, lower build quality? Have you even used the ipad? Its a beefed up ipod touch, not a scaled down laptop. The netbook wins from many perspectives.

The multi-touch is sexy, i'll admit. but form is not greater than function. Imagine chatting, posting on HN, or uploading photos to Flickr. These 3 easy actions are not easily handled on the ipad.

<edit> I have never used it and cannot comment on the build quality (which is the point i was trying to make. Sorry!)

You forgot doing all that while listening to mp3s and driving a 60" tv as a second monitor showing a movie.

Lower quality screen? Hmm, I thought sure there were netbooks out there with .. oh, yeah, the dell mini-10 has a true 720p option.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to get the large screen and a 3G card together. Or the higher powered CPU and an OTA tv tuner. In fact, it's pretty impossible to build a decent dell mini-10 system, so forget I even mentioned it. Or don't, and remember not to spend ten minutes futzing with their customization workflow...

The price of the unit is irrelevant. If it has a 3G modem you will need to sing up for $100/month data plan for 3years (much more outside the USA) So you are really buying a $3600 3year old computer

Say what?

I pay AU$10/100MB (about US$9) for prepaid (no contract) mobile data

In the US it is MUCH more expensive my friend.

Unlimited 4G internet (small USB dongle for a tablet like this) costs $30/mo for 6 months then $45/mo through CLEAR or Comcast if it's available in your city

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