FXI Technology has introduced a tiny new computer that’s the size of a USB stick — but which has a processor, WiFi, Bluetooth, and HDMI output. All you have to do is plug it into a monitor and pair a mouse, keyboard, or other accessory over Bluetooth to surf the web, watch videos, play games, or do just about anything else you can do with an Android device.
The FXI Cotton Candy has a 1.2 GHz ARM Samsung Exynos Cortex-A9 processor with ARM Mali 400 MP graphics. It can be powered through the USB port. FXI is showing off the device with Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread — although it can also run Ubuntu Linux or other operating systems.
It has 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, 1GB of RAM, and supports up to 64GB of storage with a microSD card slot.
The whole thing weighs just 21 grams… which is less than an ounce.
The Cotton Candy name was chosen because it’s a small stick connected to a cloud. The difference is that instead of a pink, sugary cloud, the FXI stick connects to the internet.
While you can connect the system to an external display via an HDMI port, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can also connect the Cotton Candy into a computer’s USB port and launch an Android environment on a Mac or PC. This lets you run Android apps on a Windows or OS X computer, or transfer files between your Mac or PC and the USB stick by dragging and dropping.
FXI hopes to find partners to bring the Cotton Candy to market in late 2012 for less than $200.
via The Verge
Where connect keyboard? And mouse?
“pair a mouse, keyboard, or other accessory over Bluetooth”
Kinda interesting. Too bad HDMI ports only supply 50ma because if it could have been powered from that it would have been really interesting. Then you could have walked up to just about any HDTV and stuck it into a spare port and BAM!. As it is you need cables, possibly power bricks, etc. and that mostly voids the advantage of the unit’s tiny size.
Perhaps if they built a short half foot USB cable into it so it could work without carrying anything extra. Guess they could also just pack in a half foot foot male-A to female-A USB cable and ya just snap it on and leave it if using it that way. Trick in either case would be to have a switch on the unit to stop it from appearing as a USB device so TVs don’t try to switch to that instead of the HDMI.
This is mainly just a basic version for developers and the final product will likely look very different.
Mind however they could possibly also use the USB port for attaching peripherals and not just for power, much like the Raspberry Pi but for more mainstream use. So a hub like accessory may be more likely.
While unless the TV thinks it’s a MHL port then the USB attachment shouldn’t be a problem. Even if it is they can just have a USB cable that has power pins only to avoid any issues.