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Ainovo NOVO7: 7-inch Ice Cream Sandwich tablet for £102.35

We’re always in the market for inexpensive Android tablets and the Ainovo NOVO7 ticks every box: Ice Cream Sandwich, 1080p video, 7-inch screen. The price? £60.

Yes please, we’ll take ten.

OK, so plus shipping, it actually jumps to £102.35 (converted from $159.99) with payments handled over PayPal. But even then it’s a cut under the average price for an Android tab over here.

Pitched mainly as an entertainment device, you get 6 hours of game time out of the battery and Gameloft’s Spider-Man Total Mayhem comes pre-installed which is nice. For music playback, you get 25 hours of power and 7 hours of web browsing.

Storage is a meagre 4GB, but according to product listings elsewhere, the NOVO7’s microSD port can handle cards of up to 16GB in size.

Screen resolution is WVGA (800 x 480) so we’re skeptical about how good video will actually look on the tab. But there’s an HDMI port, so you can hook it up to your big HD Ready telly.

Andy Rubin’s Seal of App-roval

According to Android Police, this inexpensive Android slate comes endorsed by none other than Google’s Andy Rubin, who said in a press release: “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.”

Ainovo’s site boasts that “NOVO7 obtained Google CTS (Compatibility Test Suite),” meaning that Gmail, Google Maps, Gtalk and the rest ought to run perfectly. Ainovo is also saying that it’s the ‘world’s first Android 4.0 tablet,’ which is odd because Fuzhou Rockchip is saying the same thing about its Android 4.0 PAD.

The release states that the NOVO7, available now in China, will be coming to the US and “other geographies within the next several months,” under other brands including the likes of “International Inc. and OMG Electronics Ltd.”

So we could well see the Ainovo NOVO7 under a different name if it makes it to the UK. Of course you could import one now if you really can’t wait.

There’s also 8 and 9-inch editions of the NOVO in the pipeline (called the NOVO8 and NOVO9 by any chance?) which we’ll be keeping an eye out for. Cheap Chinese goods uber alles.

Source: Ainovo via TechRadar, Android Spin, Android Police

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