The Android-powered Cubieboard first hit the streets late last year at a $49 price point. The original iteration of the board was powered by the versatile and ubiquitous Allwinner A10 ARM-Cortex A8 processor we’ve all become familiar with over the past few months.
It also boasts Mali 400 graphics, 1 GB of RAM, and dual SD card slots for extra storage. At $49, Cubieboard it is the cheapest Allwinner A10 board around. However, and this may be a big however for some, Cubieboard lacks onboard storage, as well as WiFi or Bluetooth. As such, I suppose it’s safe to say that Cubieboard is probably one of the barest of the bare-bones Android-powered devices out there.
Nevertheless, the board features dual USB host ports, a single USB OTG port, an IR sensor, Ethernet, along with an HDMI output for connecting to a display. Industrious types who want to add more functionality will be glad to hear the device is loaded with 96 expansion pins for lvds, SATA and other add-ons. Of course, you’ll have to break out the soldering gun and do the work yourself.
Although little has changed on the Cubieboard front since its original launch, a new version of the board (dubbed “CubieTruck) is now available with an AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 chip, 2GB RAM, GbE + on-board Wifi+BT + HDMI/VGA and a $59 price tag.
“The board supports Linux (WIP) and Android, although I don’t seem to find images right now. But there’s definitely progress on the Linux side for AllWinner A20, as Olimex released a preliminary Debian image for their A20-OlinuXino this morning,” the folks at CNX Software added.
