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Some manufacturers lock down their devices. Others try to appease the developer community through tools that void any warranty. Auraslate puts the Android tinkerer first. The new tablet is designed to honor the open nature of Android, shipping completely unlocked and ready to handle anything and everything up to Ice Cream Sandwich. Two models are available, a 7-inch version (726B) and one measuring 10 inches in screen size (1026).
Priced around $130 bucks, don't expect to be blown away. The Auraslate is a typical Chinese-made budget slate running on the ARM Cortex A9 platform. Its real value comes from its freely available source code, open hardware, and community tools built for developers to discuss ideas and swap code. The tablet may be less useful for someone looking to cook up the latest and greatest Android 4.0 ROM than it would be for a developer simply looking to test an app for tablet compatibility across a variety of OS builds.
The folks behind Auraslate should easily be able to woo some Android devs, but we can't say for sure if it will cut it for most. Now if only we could see this sort of support from the larger manufacturers.
