Time was when you couldn't get an ARM development board without paying large sums of money, now it seems everyone and his dog is selling them. But even in amongst the plethora of Raspberry Pi's and Beaglebones and so on, VIA's APC (for Android PC) range of boards stands out because its Neo-ITX form factor fits in a standard (for PCs) Mini-ITX case (at 170mm x 85mm it is exactly half the size of the 170mm x 170mm Mini-ITX).
The APC range was launched in mid 2012 with the 8750 — a WonderMedia Prism 8750 SoC running at 800MHz with VGA and HMDI display ports, four USB 2.0 ports, one microSD slot, one 10/100 Ethernet port, audio-out/mic-in ports, 2GB NAND Flash and 512Mb DDR3 SDRAM, at a $49 price point. Android 2.3 rounds out the spec. And all this for a price of £39.99, $49.
Things stepped up in mid-January 2013 with the announcement of the Rock and Paper models for availability in March. the Rock is best described as a redesign of the 8750, using a newer, more powerful WonderMedia Prism 8950 (ARM Cortex-A9), the 2Gb flash is now 4 Gb, there's moer I/O options, and it's got Android 4.0 ICS instead of 2.3. The Paper model is basically the same as the Rock but in a compressed recycled paper case, made to look like a book, and with an aluminium strip to hold the ports, which are all on one side of the board. Paper also loses the VGA output and one of the USB ports, but is priced at $99 to the Rock's $79.
If you want to know more, VIA has created an entire website devoted to the APC range,
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