Raspberry Pi's rival Gooseberry Board now official

For those prepping to devour the Raspberry Pi or have done so already, here comes Gooseberry Board. Now officially announced, the Gooseberry Board comes in as a rival to the fairly new and popular Raspberry Pi. In an official post, the company announced that they're 'finally ready and confident' about their Gooseberry board release. At the moment, 500 Gooseberry boards are up for release and are available strictly a piece per person. 

GooseBerry Board now offcial

The Gooseberry Board, the company claims is 3x more powerful in processing power, in comparison to the Pi. It further comes with a newer ARM architecture, implying that it can run Ubuntu, which the Pi cannot. The Gooseberry Board, according to the company comes with 512 MB RAM, double that of the Pi. Gooseberry Board, however does not come with a LAN port, but includes Wi-Fi. It also does not come with analogue video, so it cannot be connected to old TV sets. The company adds further, "Only a limited OS (android) is supported as of yet fully, the board however is capable of running other Os’s such as Ubuntu (currently without graphics acceleration). Premade images for Ubuntu are now available and videos of the board running ubuntu and other linux flavours shall be uploaded."

A quick look at the specs of the Gooseberry Board: 

• CPU : A10 1 GHz overclockable to 1.5 GHz  (1.2 GHz highest stable overclock on Android)
• Graphics Processor : Mali 400 MHz
• Operating System : Now Android 4.0 ICS
• Onboard Storage: 4 GB (upgradeable by microSD memory card 32 GB)
• Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n
• Connectivity: AC jack, 1x 3.5mm Earphone Jack, 1x Mini USB, 1x HDMI Out, microSD slot
• Compatible software: Android ICS is the only compatible OS. Ubuntu and Arch Linux are expected in the future.

As per the official website, you need these to get going with the Gooseberry board: 

• Mini HDMI cable to connect the board to a TV or monitor
• Male Micro USB to female USB cable to connect USB peripherals sucha as mouse, keyboard, and USB hub
• Powered USB hub to connect power hungry peripherals, such as External Hard drives, if required
• Micro USB to USB to connect board to computer for using the on-board Nand flash

The Raspberry Pi, as reported previously, is incredibly compact and bundles a whole bunch of features. It is powered by an ARM processor on a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC. It has a 700 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM and the Video 4 GPU allows the device to handle full HD video playback. Even 40 Mbps Blu-ray streams with ease. One of the two models has an Ethernet port and two USB ports, which means you can connect external drives and browse the web. It also has OpenGL support and is capable of some 3D rendering as well. There’s also space for some overclocking.