FXI Technology has introduced a tiny new computer that’s the size of a USB stick — but which has a processor, WiFi, Bluetooth, and HDMI output. All you have to do is plug it into a monitor and pair a mouse, keyboard, or other accessory over Bluetooth to surf the web, watch videos, play games, or do just about anything else you can do with an Android device.
The
FXI Cotton Candy has a 1.2 GHz ARM Samsung Exynos Cortex-A9 processor with ARM Mali 400 MP graphics. It can be powered through the USB port. FXI is showing off the device with Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread — although it can also run Ubuntu Linux or other operating systems.
It has 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, 1GB of RAM, and supports up to 64GB of storage with a microSD card slot.
The whole thing weighs just 21 grams… which is less than an ounce.
The Cotton Candy name was chosen because it’s a
small stick connected to a cloud. The difference is that instead of a pink, sugary cloud, the FXI stick connects to the internet.
While you can connect the system to an external display via an HDMI port, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can also connect the Cotton Candy into a computer’s USB port and launch an Android environment on a Mac or PC. This lets you run Android apps on a Windows or OS X computer, or transfer files between your Mac or PC and the USB stick by dragging and dropping.
FXI hopes to find partners to bring the Cotton Candy to market in late 2012 for less than $200.
