We first covered the Android-powered Cubieboard – which is targeted at devs and modders – last week.
The uber-mini developer board is priced at a rather sweet $49, so one really can’t avoid drawing comparisons between this little device and the wildly popular Raspberry Pi.
However, the little Cubieboard boasts a faster processor, more memory and integrated storage. The first Cubieboard prototypes were offered for $49 plus shipping (from China) on AliExpress – but have already sold out.
Here’s a quick rundown of the Cubieboard specs if you missed it the first time around last week. The device is powered by a a 1 GHz Allwinner A10 ARM Cortex-A8 processor paired with Mali 400 Graphics. Cubieboard also features 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB integrated flash storage. Unsurprisingly, a souped-up version of the board is reportedly in the works and will be loaded with a total of 1 GB of RAM.
The dev board is also equipped with an HDMI output, dual USB ports, an SD card slot for memory expansion, and other expansion pins and connectors for adding peripherals. Although the Cubieboard does sport an integrated Ethernet jack it lacks integrated Wi-Fi. As such, one of the available USB ports will have to be given up for a dongle – if wireless access is required. Soldering is a must if you want to use any of those header pins for additional accessories.
Originally, there was no indication that the bare-bones Cubieboard was equipped with 4 GB of flash storage, a feature which will make the already attractive system even more appealing to devs and modders.
Cubieboard is capable of running Android (2.3 and 4.0), as well as multiple flavors of Linux.
