Hivision Low Cost Netbook Shown Off

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Hivision is going for the cheap, cheap netbook market with their new, unnamed netbook. The netbook will feature a low, low price, starting at $149 or lower, and will come with a 7-inch screen, and will ship with Android. Hivision, a Chinese company, also makes low-cost eBook readers and digital photo frames, as well as a conventionally priced netbook.

As for specs, don’t expect a lot of computing horsepower from a $149 computer. It’s running on an ARM9 processor clocked at 500 MHz, which is comparable to what you’d find on mobile phones. Android, which was originally designed for mobile phones, likely wasn’t that difficult to get running on the small processor.

Graphics are provided by the processor and Hivision hasn’t announced how much memory will be included in the computer, but our estimate is about 512MB. Hivision is using the older ARM9 over the newer ARM Cortex A9 to save on cost. As far as other features go, the Hivision will support WiFi and have an Ethernet port, and that’s about it. They’ve also promised four hours of battery life.

Hivision expect the device to sell for $149, possibly less, depending on the distributor. Obviously, such an underpowered device can’t do much, and Hivision intends them for ‘light’ web browsing. Tech blog armdevices.net got their hands on one and reported that web browsing was fast, and they expect it to be even faster at release, if Google optimizes Android for laptops.

A potential release date hasn’t been announced for these dirt cheap, mini form factor netbooks.