This morning Haier – the Chinese appliances manufacturer – launched the newest iteration of its HaiPad, a 7-inch touchscreen tablet. The new version’s biggest feature is a sophisticated Android theme by the team at DianXin OS, who have financial backing from Li Kai-fu’s Innovation Works fund.
The last time we encountered DianXin OS it was in connection with rumors of a Baidu mobile OS being readied for launch this year.
The HaiPad’s launch today at a consumer electronics show in Qingdao in eastern China, saw the usual exhibition theatrics – there were plenty of ‘booth babes’ on hand to show off the device and even explain some its features (pictured below). You don’t get that at an iPad launch.
The new HaiPad will go on sale in August. The specs, however, are not too impressive: besides the smallish 7-inch screen, there’s a Samsung 1GHz (single core) processor, dual cameras, W-CDMA 3G (ripe for China Unicom, should users want it), and Android 2.2.
Despite not running the latest version of Android – 3.0 Honeycomb for tablets – it looks like Haier will be selling the tablet on the strength of its DianXin-made theme, which brings some very un-Android enhancements, such as dragging apps together to make a folder, which sounds more like an iOS gesture. The emphasis seems to be on social media and streaming movies on it, rather than games. Haier has its own app store, to complete the total disconnect from Google in its own flavour of Android.
Haier might find it difficult to shake off the cheap perfume of shanzhai-ness about its tablets. Indeed, the haipad.net domain is owned not by Haier, but by a Shenzhen-based shanzhai outfit selling cheap, nondescript Android 2.1 or lower tablets.
[Image sources: Tech.Hexun.com, and Haier’s page on Sina Weibo]
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