VIA introduces amazing $49 APC Android computer, we go hands-on

Uploaded on May 22, 2012 / 8 views / 21 impressions / 0 comments


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http://www.tweaktown.com Earlier on today we were invited down to
the VIA headquarters where we met up with marketing director
Richard Brown who introduced us to its new APC computer system. The
APC computer is a $49 Android system based on the brand new Neo-ITX
form factor which measures in at roughly half the size of standard
Mini-ITX based motherboards. It features an 800MHz ARM SOC with
512MB of DRAM and 2GB of onboard flash memory for storage. A
modified version of Google Android 2.3 uses up most of that 2GB of
flash storage, but there are external storage options. On the back
I/O is a SD slot and of course you could hook in an external USB
2.0 drive. VIA spent a lot of time customizing Android to enable
keyboard and mouse support which natively it does not support. The
system also comes with the modified apps such as a YouTube player,
Angry Birds, a file manager, web browser and more. However, the VIA
APC is not designed to be about local storage. It is designed to
stream your content from the cloud and does so at an amazing price
and within a very tiny footprint. The APC will fit in normal
Mini-ITX cases with room to spare for something like a 3.5-inch or
2.5-inch hard drive. On the I/O panel you get VGA output, HDMI
output, four USB 2.0 ports, gigabit LAN and audio out and
microphone in. There is not much on the motherboard / computer
itself. There is just the few chips required to power the system
along with a four pin fan header if you wish to add a cooling fan
to the system, but it does not require it and enables a completely
silent system. One of the other amazing aspects of this system is
that at load it only consumes 13.5 watts of power and hardly
anything at idle coming in at just 4 watts. The system will ship
with just a small 15 watt external power supply. VIA expects to
start shipping the APC, "a bicycle for your mind", towards the end
of June or sometime in July for just $49. The other big news is
that VIA will be selling the APC direc

Tags

  • cloud
  • VIA
  • TweakTown
  • Tweak
  • Android
  • ARM
  • APC
  • computing
  • HDMI
  • Google
  • Birds
  • Angry
  • Town
  • SOC
  • SD
  • Neo-ITX