OLPC's 7-inch Android XO tablet is coming to Walmart this year (hands-on)

We've just had our first look at OLPC's XO tablet, the company's first Android device. Like the OLPC laptops, the tablet can either be charged regularly or via a hand crank. When charging manually, you'll get ten minutes of use for every one minute you spend cranking. It's got a 7-inch multi-touch display running at 1024 x 600 and is powered by a dual-core 1GHz Marvell Armada chip paired with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage.

Grid View

Aesthetically, the XO tablet shares the bright green color synonymous with OLPC devices, but the color is simply a rubber case that surrounds a very regular-looking tablet — it actually appears similar to the Nexus 7, and seems just as well built. OLPC has created a custom child-friendly software layer that it says will help kids to learn with the tablet, but we had a lot of trouble getting it to respond properly; even unlocking the tablet was a chore. We'll put that down to the fact the neither the software nor hardware is finished just yet, though. There's no precise information on a release date or price just yet, but it's supposed to be coming to US retailers at some point this year.

Update: Walmart has just announced that it'll be stocking the tablet later this year.