Eken isn’t exactly a household name, but earlier this year the company introduced a 7 inch Android tablet which has been rebranded and sold under different names around the globe by a number of companies. Now Eken is back, this time with an 8 inch tablet with a distinctive design and a 4:3 screen ratio.
The Eken M005 isn’t exactly a state of the art machine. It has a 400MHz VIA 8505 CPU, and 128MB of memory.
The tablet has an 800 x 600 pixel display, 802.11b/g/ WiFi, and 2GB of flash storage. It has an SD card slot, USB port, headphone jack, and webcam.
When Eken previewed the tablet in August, the company said it would run Android 2.2, but Shanzai.com reports it’s actually running Android 1.6.
It’s on eBay right now for $179, but that machine also specifies a 300mhz processor instead of the 400mhz. Still, this device makes me optimistic that 4:3 displays may catch on with some slightly higher-spec units… even this device might do exactly what I’ve been wanting from a tablet.
The Eken M001 has become this year’s Asus EeePc. It’s an extremely low cost and low spec device that has become a hacker’s dream. Alternate firmwares are available that have transformed the M001 from a barely functional tablet into a very useful tablet.
I hope the M005 follows the same low cost form factor and becomes another hacker’s dream. I do wish that the specs were a bit higher though since at first glance, they seem to be awfully similar except for the screen size, usb port and webcam.