Interior

Removing eight screws in total gives us complete access to the unit's internals. At this point, we should inform you that installing an internal HDD requires the removal of both the top- and bottom covers. Giada unfortunately didn't bother mentioning anything about the HDD-installation process, but don't worry, we will do so for them.


The mainboard is fairly small but full of features.


The rear side of the mainboard has the 2250 mAh battery and a SIM card slot, which, however, is inactive. We installed an active SIM card there and nothing came up. There is also a mini PCI Express port here.


Here is the connector you can hook the internal 2.5" HDD up to. You have to put some screws on the backside of the mainboard in order to do so. Pass them through these holes to bolt them to the HDD. Giada unfortunately doesn't provide the necessary screws.


The brain of the Q11 is an AllWinner A10 that is based on the ARM Cortex™-A8; it incorporates a Mali-400 GPU. Although it has many interesting features, like HDMI 1.4 support and HD Video decoding of up to 1920×1080 at 30 FPS, we would highly prefer the A31s quad-core chip by the same manufacturer.


The DDR3 RAM of the Q11 consists of four Hynix H5TQ2G43CFR chips.


The USB hub controller is provided by Genesys Logic, and its model number is GL850G.


The flash memory of the Q11: a Hynic H27UCG8T2ATR-BC chip. There is, as you can see, space for another, but that space is unfortunately left vacant.


All USB peripheral devices are controlled by this IC: a CY7C63813-SXC.


A Realtek RTL8723AS module provides WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth connectivity, and an RTL8201CL handles the Ethernet port of the Q11. We would highly prefer an RTL8211E Gigabit IC instead. A little further to the side is a PSF-16211 which, amongst others, provides isolation to the Ethernet port to effectively protect the mainboard.


The power management IC, an AXP209.