Haier Electronics Freescale-Powered haiPad Prototype Previewed in China

[xaueious]

China based multinational electronics company, Haier group, dispatched their haiPad Android tablet prototype to popular web news page eNet last week. Americans may recognize Haier electronics as an official partner of the NBA. It was supposedly announced at CES in January earlier this year.

In the preview of the device, eNet reported that the 7-inch Android 2.2 tablet shall be powered by a Freescale i.MX515 Cortex A8 processor at 800MHz. It also has built in wireless WCDMA, wifi b/g, phone call, and bluetooth 2.1 support. The iMX515 platform is not rumored to see an Android 3.0 Honeycomb update in the future, but an upgrade to Android 2.3 is possible considering that source codes are available from Freescale. It will have a multitouch capacitive touchscreen, and as well as what appears to be rear and front facing cameras. It does not appear to be a product intended for international markets, as it only bears the Chinese CCC certification symbol.

On an interesting tangent, Shanzhaiben is reporting that Haier's Chinese trademark registration came a month after Haipad, which has been one of the more new popular shanzhai tablet brands. According to the article, both trademarks are pending review by Chinese trademark approval agencies for a year after their initial submission.

Source: eNet news

 

[gobbledygook]

Any idea how much such tablet will cost?

 

[xaueious]

I cannot confirm a price right now, but the hardware equivalent Synrgic Dreambook W7 is going no lower than $350USD. I doubt Haier is going to be able to price this competitively, despite their claims in the eNet article.

 

[meltwater]

Is it me or does that photo make the quality of the screen look rather poor? Glossy and bad viewing angle...