BYD Alice Tegra 2 Froyo tablet wants a chance at the market

BYD briefly made a splash with their Snaptop tablet earlier in the year, a demo platform for Qualcomm intended to show what the company's Snapdragon CPUs are capable of. Now the ODM is back with another tablet design, the BYD Alice, but they've jumped ship to NVIDIA's Tegra 2 chipset; Netbook News caught Alice at Mobile Asia Congress 2010, an Android 2.2 Froyo slate with an 8.9-inch WSVGA touchscreen that slots, size-wise, in-between the Galaxy Tab and the iPad.

As well as the Tegra 250 CPU, there's up to 1GB of RAM and a microSD card slot (good for up to 32GB), WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 and a mini HDMI port. BYD also include microUSB, a headphones socket and a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls; inside there's an acceleromater and digital compass, while a light sensor automatically adjusts the display.

BYD reckons the Alice will manage around 8hrs runtime from its 2,200mAh battery, and we quite like the slate's design; there appears to be a kick-stand on the back, too, which is a welcome addition and something not generally seen on larger-screen tablets. Unfortunately BYD has no intention of bringing Alice to market by itself; instead, it's hoping a touchscreen-eager manufacturer will pick up the design and co-brand it.