EKEN M003 iRobot aka The Android Tablet PC

Chinese manufacturers have always been good producing clones of many famous electronic devices and turning them as famous as the real deal. Among the most famous clones there is the Sciphone i68 or CECT i9 which are clones of the Apple iPhone. These phones look like the iPhone but software and aplications are far behind the quality the of iPhone OS. But what if you could put a quality Operating System on a machine that is almost as good as the original hardware? Well, you could have a quality clone of the original machine. This is what happened with the creators of the iRobot Apad, the Chinese version of the iPad which runs Google Android. Chinese manufacturers took one step ahead in competing with Apple launching a similar product with good software and a trusted and open source Operating System.

In terms of the hardware the iRobot is very simmilar to the iPad, appart maybe for the 3G connection built in. This is not a problem because it as built in wifi and some hackers have allready managed to put an 3G usb adapter runnind on the Apad. This is one of the advantages of the Android OS, it is Open Source and anyone with the right expertize can get virtually any devoce running on it.

We have seen this kind of device before when Smart Devices, a Chinese electronic devices company launched the SmartQ series devices which run Linux, Win CE and now also Android OS.

The biggest improvement from its predecessors is the 8 inch high quality touch screen display used to produce the EKEN M003 iRobot. It gives you the full comfort and user experience of an iPad with the power of Android "under the hood". You can run virtually any application that runs on Google Android OS on the Apad.

The main features of the iRobot are the 8 inch touch screen with 800x480 resolution, webcam, stereo speakers, built-in microphone, USB Host ports and SD card slot. With USB ports in host mode you can connect an infinity of external devices such as hard drives, flash drives, 3G broadband adapters, keyboard, mice and any other device supported by the Android kernel.

• CPU: RK2808a Chipset (ARM9 @ 600 MHz + DSP @ 550 MHz dual-core)
• Operating System: Google Android version 1.5
• Supported Languages: English, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish and many others Android has built in.
  
• Display: 800×480 8 inch LCD
• Input: Resistive touchscreen
• Sensors: Accelerometer
• Camera: 1.3 Mega pixels (0.3 hardware and 1.3 extrapolated by software)
  
• Audio input: built-in microphone
• Audio output: 3.5 mm jack, integrated speakers
• Networking: 802.11 Wireless b/g
• Peripheral Support: USB Host (mouse, keyboard, memory stick)
• Battery: 3000 mAH (2 hours with wifi on, 4 hours with wifi off)
• RAM: 128 MB
• Internal ROM Memory: 2 GB (optionally 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB)
• Expansion memory: SD Card Slot (microSD) up to 16 GB
• Supported video formats: MKV (H.264 HP), RMVB, MPEG-4, FLV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, HD Video at 720p
• Supported audio formats: MP3, WMA. FLAC, AAC, AC3, OGG, WAV
• Supported picture formats: JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF
• Dimensions: 190.5 x 118.5 x 14.7 mm Weight: 332g

• You can surf the web using the Android Web Browser
• You can communicate using Skype and the Built-in Camera and microphone.
• You can play games
  
• You watch movies and play music
• You can use social web applications such as Twitter and/or Facebook
• You can take pictures and make movies
• You can chat using Gtalk, MSN and Yahoo Messenger
• You can blog or read ebooks
• You can use Office applications and read PDF's

Form more information, prices, complete review and how to's just look at my website, I have many applications, games and hacks for the iRobot Apad so you can expand your Android Tablet experience.