Philips to launch Android 4.0 tablet line (China only at first)

Consumer Electronics company Philips is preparing to launch new line of tablets with 7 inch displays and Google Android 4.0 software. While Philips will hardly be the first company to follow that path, one of the interesting things about these new tablets is that at least some models are expected to feature MIPS processors rather than ARM or x86 chips.

Philips PL300 Android tablet

The move comes at a time when Google is starting to take notice of MIPS-based products. The maker of the Android operating system plans to build better MIPS support into future versions of the mobile operating system.

In fact, one of the first devices to ship with Android 4.0 software installed was the Ainol Novo 7 tablet with a low power MIPS processor.

We may not see the new Philips tablets in the US right away. The company plans to launch the products first in China. But looking at spec sheets for some of the company’s 2012 tablets it looks like we can expect models with 1024 x 600 pixel or 800 x 480 pixel displays, support for a range of media codecs including MP4, H.264, and WMV, and 4 to 5 hours of battery life.

Posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2012, 11:00 am by Brad Linder | 8 Comments

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JAXCZPGDEQKYXAMYHBOJZ2LVMY dontrenigin12

seems like their are tablets everywhere but the uSA
Guest

I hope the devices Philips makes have better quality than the shoddy stuff it’s been selling. Unfortunately, using MIPS CPUs doesn’t give one hope. MIPS-based tablets, like the VIA-based ones, are usually the cheapest you can find from no-name Chinese manufacturers. I frankly don’t know how Philips has managed to be in business this long.

It’s a good thing Philips won’t sell these in the US.

US buyers will find out that ARM-based Android software won’t run on the MIPS tablets unless the developers recompile using the tools Google is yet tol come up with.

(Intel x86 tablets running Android have the same problem as MIPS.)
Bolsen

The typical jz4770 MIPS processor that’s possibly being used isn’t too bad. The performance is rather good. A couple of mistakes: Unknown vivante gpu and no hdmi out from the SOC. The allwinner a10 is really hard to beat for features and value.
CyberGusa

Support for MIPS is starting to improve, as was mentioned in a previous article…

http://liliputing.com/2012/04/better-mips-processor-support-coming-to-android.html

While Google has officially been working to help optimize Android for Intel since the September of last year.
Thejamjam

The tablet is intended to provide a more qualative alternative to C brands like novo accessible to the Chinese. The goal is not to have the best specs or highest resolution. Just to provide a simple design which works well and is affordable. there are 1.3 billion people in china and 95% of them cannot afford ipads. More info on the tablet on Philips Chinese website here: http://www.philips.com.cn/c/Ta… you may be interested to know that Philips has been selling android tablets in China for more than a year now and also have an 8 inch 4:3 model http://cn.engadget.com/tag/phi…
Thejamjam

video of the tablet range here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X58PnC9hY8g
http://www.liliputing.com/ Brad Linder

Thanks! I’ll add that to the post.
Guest

I’ll believe that the Android apps will run on all these processors when the app listing includes the phrase “This app will run on ARM, MIPS, x86 CPUs” like it did during ye old days when operating systems (Win NT, PocketPC, Mac OS) ran on more than 1 type of CPU.

Before that, I’ll stick to ARM.

Philips to launch Android 4.0 tablet line (China only at first)

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