It's been over six months since we last reported about FXI's Cotton Candy "computer on a USB stick" and although the hardware remains mostly the same, the company has spruced up the product design in time for the launch. The company is in fact shipping its first pre-order units as of now and if you placed an order for a Cotton Candy, then you'll be glad to know that the final units are shipping With Android 4.0.The biggest change is the actual design of the device itself which is now made out of white plastic. At the rear the microSD card slot has been joined by a micro USB port which should make it easier to add thinks like a wired keyboard and mouse, although a USB hub would still be required. The internals remain the same as far as we're aware, namely a dual core Cortex-A9 ARM SoC with ARM Mali-400MP graphics, 1GB of RAM, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
In one end of the device is an HDMI port which allows the Cotton Candy to be attached directly to a display, be it a computer screen or a TV and in the other end is a USB port which allows it to be plugged into a computer and acting as a separate system while being able to take advantage of the keyboard and mouse/touchpad. By default it'll ship with Android 4.0 as mentioned above, but a copy of Ubuntu Linux will also be an option.It's not all good news though, as apparently FXI has no intention of accepting any further orders and the current lot are simply sold as development devices. The company is looking for a partner to work with to try and sell the devices into retail. As far as the pre-orders are concerned, FXI has started to contact those that pre-ordered from Scandinavia first with Europe being second on the list and the rest of the world potentially not getting their units until later in the summer.
The Cotton Candy is an interesting device, but we're not sure if there's a big enough market for it outside of the developer/hobby community. It has some appeal, but as to why you'd want to bring it with you over a notebook on your business trip is beyond us, as you couldn't use it in the airport for one and not all hotels allow you to plug in HDMI devices to their TV's and you'd still have to carry a keyboard and a mouse with you. It's possible we're missing the point here, but as a smart TV upgrade for a "dumb" TV, it might not be such a bad fit, as long as it handles most media formats, which it ought to.Source: Laptopmag

Read more: FXI almost ready to ship the Cotton Candy computer on a USB stick by VR-Zone.com