VIA’s tiny Android-powered ARM motherboard gets a pair of upgrades

Earlier this year, VIA released a tiny $49 ARM-powered motherboard it called the Android PC System (APC) in an effort to ride the wave the Raspberry Pi Foundation accidentally started with its $35 Linux computer for budding young developers. Today, it's announcing a pair of follow-ups: the APC Rock is a $79 bare motherboard, and the APC Paper is a $99 version that is identical, except it loses the VGA port and comes in a recycled cardboard case designed to look like a small hardcover book. The Rock is available now, and the Paper has a March pre-order date. The original APC will continue to be sold with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) for $49.

Neither of these small, cheap boards are speed demons compared to high-end tablets or phones (and even some low-end tablets and phones, these days), but that of course has never been the point. These are targeted partly toward people who want either a tiny portable computer that travels easily or a small board capable of driving cool hobbyist projects like arcade cabinets and pictures of the earth from near-space.

Both the Rock and Paper include a respectable specification bump over the older APC to go with their higher prices: they include a single-core Cortex-A9 CPU from VIA with an unspecified GPU capable of pushing a 1920x1080 display, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of NAND flash. They both also include HDMI, 100 megabit LAN, two USB 2.0 ports, a micro USB port, a combination microphone and headphone jack, and a microSD card slot for easy storage expansion. If you want a VGA port, the Rock is your only option. For whatever reason, the Paper doesn't include one.

Both motherboards also come with Android 4.0 installed, an upgrade over the Android 2.3 of the original APC—this makes them ready-to-use out of the box if you're not the type who enjoys hacking around. If you don't want to wait for the Paper version of the board (or if you just don't care for its book-esque case), all APC boards are built to the Neo-ITX standard and will fit in standard ITX and ATX computer cases. All of the boards are (or will be) available directly from apc.io.