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Hena Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Tablet Flaunts itself at the FCC
Another day has come and another entry-level tablet has shown up at the FCC for the folks over there to go crazy and tear it down. This time around a tablet running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich by a Taiwanese company called Hena has made its way there. I must admit that prior to this; the name was unknown to me. The tablet in question has a 10.1-inch touchscreen display with 1024 x 600 pixels in resolution, a 1GHz Boxchip A10 ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 1GB of RAM with up to 16GB of internal storage. The Hena MID-1107CM also comes with a microSDHC card slot, 802.11n WiFi, a mini HDMI port, a USB 2.0 port a mic as well as a front-facing VGA camera for video chatting.
According to the report from which this information comes from it has a relatively short battery life which tops out at three and a half hours while playing a 1080p video. The stipulated battery life is about half what other competitively priced tablets such as the Kindle Fire or NOOK are capable off. But reports suggest that there could be a chance for the Hena tablet to be even cheaper than either the Amazon of the Barnes & Noble tablets which are about $200. Another point that could possibly point to a lower price range is that despite its larger screen, it has a slower processor and its brand name is not exactly a household name yet.
The Fairphone 2 was first unveiled in June earlier this year, where this particular handset carried a modular design while featuring majority of its components that have been sourced from conflict-free mines. It seems that this particular handset that you can purchase with a clear conscience has begun to ship to those who happen to live across Europe.
Fairphone announced in a blog post, “It’s been almost two years in the making, and some of the earliest buyers have been patiently waiting since July to receive their new phones. As community manager, I want to personally welcome the new batch of Fairphone owners to our community.” The initial 1,000 units are tipped to ship this month, before the other pre-orders follow in January 2016.
In terms of hardware specifications, the Fairphone 2 will run on a Snapdragon 801 chipset, has a 5″ 1080p screen with Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 2GB of RAM, an 8MP camera, with Android 5.1 Lollipop in tow. It will be a dual SIM capable handset with a microSD memory card slot and plays nice with 4G LTE networks, retailing for approximately €525 a pop.
It looks like the upcoming flagship model from Xiaomi will feature NFC support, at least based on a document that was released by China UnionPay. Just in case you are scratching your head and wondering who China UnionPay is, they happen to be the only domestic payment gateway supplier and card organization, and hence, to see them offer detailed support concerning the newly released NFC-based payment system points to the very real possibility of the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5 featuring NFC capability.
After all, the Xiaomi Mi 3 was also mentioned on the list, which so happens to feature NFC, and there is no mention of the Xiaomi Mi 4 which does not come with NFC. Still, such a new payment system would be the ideal tool to see the reintroduction of NFC to the flagship model.
OnePlus did make an announcement in the previous month that the Ceramic variant of the OnePlus X will be released on November 24. True to their word, they did exactly that – although only a pitiful number of units were made available, and not only that, this was through a charity auction. Thankfully for the rest of the masses who are on the lookout for this device, it has gone on sale officially already.
Needless to say, this particular variant is available only by an invitation, although do bear in mind that standard OnePlus X invites are not good here – you will still need to snag yourself a specific Ceramic variant invite before you make a purchase. OnePlus is also on the lookout to offer additional methods of picking up this smartphone, although no further details were revealed.
The OnePlus X Ceramic will be available only in select markets, where among them include Europe, India, and Hong Kong. To date, we do know that OnePlus had made only 10,000 units of the handset available. A case of the early bird getting the proverbial worm here?