The quickest way to have working tablet would be to adopt existing design and focus on software.

We can wait for such hardware to become available, or try to re-negotiate with some other vendors to provide us with hardware, while at the other side we provide the software.

The hard way would be to try the following approach:
tablet = casing + mainboard + battery + charger + touchscreen + additional extras (gps, gsm, accelerometer, etc...)

Based on some projects I was involved with, case prototyping is expensive, time consuming, and tedious work. Due to the initial costs, it would be advisable to produce such shell that can be re-used/upgraded in future (e.g. enough space to upgrade touchscreen, battery, mainboard, in future).

Designing electronic is non-trivial thing as well. As seen with OpenMoko Neo Freerunner and beagleboard, it takes several iterations until all issues are resolved. Perhaps we should try to cooperate with some other projects (Freerunner gta04 e.g.), so we can reuse their hardware and insert it in our shell.

Software, there is not too say much about it, except that we need a platform that will allow future upgrades.

There are couple of questions that we need to answer:

1. How do we fund such approach?
2. Can we find a sponsor who will be interested to finance the design?
3. Do we have required knowledge?
4. How much would cost the final device?
5. Can we finish it?
6. How much time does it take?
7. Can we perform above tasks in parallel?

Neo Freerunner was a project that was ahead of its time. I still think it has better casing than many commercial phones.

Saw a (singaporean) newspaper insert about this Creative Labs subsidiary the other day, but couldn't remember its exact name til today ...

Let me just post a quote:

"The JAGUAR Family of Android Platforms enable OEMs to meet the growing demand for innovative, next-generation Android Tablets. These modular 7" and 10" reference designs are engineered for Android compliance, are available with enhanced Android 3+ software and leverage the superior performance, low-power and rich-feature set of the latest ZMS-20 and ZMS-40 StemCell Processors."

http://www.ziilabs.com/



And from their inquiry form:

It looks like meego is no more:
https://www.meego.com/
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=77952
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...78R0O220110928

We should concentrate in plain Debian/Ubuntu and add support for Cordia/GTK mobile applications besides Qt/QML applications.

Agreed. In light of recent kernel sources fail + today news, Cordia seems to be dead twice

ho ever, as for hardware, I think the sooner we start process of designing own hardware (quite long and complicated, but very rewarding), the better. We can "adapt" existing device again and again, getting everything scratched by some non-interesting companies decisions. In meanwhile, Open Pandora guys are enjoying their device for ages.

Perhaps is Cordia on top of some Samsung Tizen devices possible...

Technically, it may be possible.

The practical problem is that there is no tizen (spoon). It actually depends on how long (or if) Intel has worked undercover to create meego fork (tizen). I hope zeh will learn something from Intel people.

Strategically, I think it would be a disaster: we've just seen the action of technical steering by a major company. The only thing they care is money and strategic position.

Can we expect open graphic/wireless drivers whenever/if the intel SoC comes out? is 2012 still expected release for these chips? In such case wouldn't that be an easier (but farther and more imaginary) hardware base for a community device?

I've quoted your question for zeh to ask around at Intel Elements.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1098833

Perhaps shop around for a better supplier? Archos for example seem to publish their sources, and the device specs aren't bad either.

Edit: Matthew Garrett has an android tablet GPL compliance summary.