The US netbook market has been stagnating for some time due to the onslaught of Android-powered tablets and the meteoric rise of Apple’s iPad lineup.
Nevertheless, quite a number of Chinese vendors have continued manufacturing cheap mini-laptops equipped with displays that measure 10 inches or less. Although some of these devices are loaded with Windows and x86 chips, many are fitted with ARM silicon and run Android or Windows CE.
However, as Liliputing reports, a number of slightly more powerful models boasting ARM-based Allwinner chips are likely to hit the streets in the near future.
Indeed, the Allwinner A20 is an ARM Cortex-7 dual-core chip paired with Mali-400 graphics, while the A31 is a Cortex-A7 quad-core processor with PowerVR SGX 544 graphics. Clearly, both chips will offer significantly more performance than the single-core VIA WM8850 processors that currently populate the majority of Android netbooks in China.
So what are the Android netbook devices that are housing the latest Allwinner silicon? Well,
the N101-A boasts a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, an Allwinner A20 chip, 1GB of RAM, up to 32GB of storage, WiFi, HDMI, and Ethernet. Battery power is advertised as 7.5 hours per charge, and yes, the N101-A runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.
The N70-A and N70-B both are both equipped with 13.3 inch displays, although the A model features an Allwinner A20 chip and 1GB of RAM, while the B has an Allwinner A31 quad-core CPU and 2GB of RAM. Unfortunately, the larger models are equipped with smaller batteries which top out at around 5.5 hours of run time, as opposed to the 7.5 mentioned above.
Release dates and pricing are currently unknown, although we will keep you posted.
