The upgrade is expected to be released in January 2012

Dec 21, 2011 23:01 GMT  ·  By

MIPS Technologies has already launched world’s first Ice Cream Sandwich tablet about two weeks ago. The 7-inch tablet costs only $99 (75 EUR) and is delivered from China via Ainol Electronics.

 

Those who are interested in having an Ice Cream Sandwich as early as possible can give MIPS’ slate a try, but this is not among the most impressive tablets available in the market, on the contrary.

 

MIPS tablet comes with a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen display, a 1GHz MIPS-based XBurst processor, which is complemented by a Vivante GC860 graphics processing unit, as well as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI and microSD support.

 

However, it appears that MIPS is one of companies that contributed its technology to the official Android source tree given its importance for application devs.

 

This seems to be the main reason that Andy Rubin had something to say regarding the launch of the world’s first ICS tablet.   “I’m thrilled to see the entrance of MIPS-Based Android 4.0 tablets into the market. Low cost, high performance tablets are a big win for mobile consumers and a strong illustration of how Android’s openness drives innovation and competition for the benefit of consumers around the world.”

 

It has come to our attention that MIPS announced that Android 4.0.3, the latest release of Google’s mobile platform, is now available for the MIPS architecture and the code can be downloaded from MIPS developer’s site.

 

In addition, next month MIPS promises to push OTA (over the air) the same Android 4.0.3 update for all existing MIPS-based Android tablets delivered from Ainol. The update will also be pre-installed on all tablets that will be shipped after the update is released.

 

Following our recent announcement with our customer Ingenic about availability of the world's first Android 4.0 tablet, we are pleased to enable all MIPS licensees to bring the latest release of Android to their consumer devices such as DTVs, set-top boxes, automotive infotainment and service gateways, as well as MIPS-Based smartphones and tablets,” said Gideon Intrater, vice president of marketing, MIPS Technologies.