Month: February 2011

Kyocera Echo dual-screen Android phone looks awesome

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2011
Category: Smartphones, Qualcomm, Android

Last month I filmed the awesome dual-7″-screen LT-W prototype from NEC, already then was it really fun to have an idea of how cool dual-screen web browsing can be and to imagine other apps such as email that can become more useful when used over 2 screens. I really like the idea of the pocketable dual-screen convertible Android touch screen device. Typing mode may not be as fast as with a hardware keyboard, but some really interesting dual-screen applications can be imagined. I’m definitely saying Thumbs up for the innovative design, perhaps their next one can have even less screen bezel in between the two screens to make it more seamless as one big foldable touch screen.

This video was published at: blog.laptopmag.com

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Alcatel One Touch and Archos partner up for low cost Android Tablet and Smartphone combined data plans

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2011
Category: Tablets, Smartphones, Opinions, Texas Instruments, MWC, Archos, Android

Alcatel One Touch is one of the makers of cheap Android Smartphones such as the Alcatel OT-980 which is sold for only £99 on pre-paid plans in the UK. Alcatel One Touch is a brand of TCL Corporation, a $16.7 Billion valued Chinese consumer electronics company.

Alcatel One Touch’s partnership with Archos would enable an easy sharing of data from a low cost Android Smartphone using a ‘’One Touch Connect’’ button to share the 3G data automatically with the Archos tablet over a mobile WiFi hotspot. This may be a one-click process, and the carrier may be able to limit access of that WiFi hotspot only to the Archos tablet through Mac address filtering and not as a totally open or encrypted WiFi hotspot for use with other devices.

The idea is that one affordable subscription plan include the voice and data through the low cost Android smartphone as well as the low cost yet high-end Android tablet. This way, consumers don’t need to subscribe to more than one package. I think it can be expected that Alcatel One Touch will present a new range of cheap Android Smartphones at Mobile World Congress next week with this One Touch Connect mobile hotspot functionality built-in.

Here is expectation/guess/suggestion for a pricing model which I think would make this kind of offer a sure hit:

Pre-paid only, no contract: $299 for the basic 3.5″ capacitive Alcatel-OT Smartphone and the latest Archos 7″ capacitive tablet, both are on pre-paid and no contracts are needed, pricing for pre-paid should be below $30 per month for something like 300 minutes or unlimited use of voice and 3GB to 5GB of data per month to be used on the Tablet and the Smartphone. The 3GB monthly data hotspot may be open for other devices as well if the carrier wants to allow it. For example $10 to $20 extra per month it could open up the mobile hotspot to any other device and increase monthly limit to something like 10GB per month.

Phone alone on pre-paid no contract should be $149. Tablet alone no contract needed would be $249.

6-month contract, then pre-pay: $249 for the Smartphone+Tablet package, $30/month for unlimited voice/data to use on both devices or more. $50 early termination fee, lowered $5 each month.

12-month contract, then pre-pay: $199 for the Smartphone+Tablet package, $30/month for unlimited voice/data to use on both devices or more. $100 early termination fee, lowered $5 each month.

18-month contract, then pre-pay: $149 for the Smartphone+Tablet package, $30/month for unlimited voice/data to use on both devices or more, $150 early termination fee, lowered $5 each month.

24-month contract, then pre-pay: $99 for the Smartphone+Tablet package, $30/month for unlimited voice/data to use on both devices or more. $200 early termination fee, lowered $5 each month.

What do you think of the idea to use a cheap Smartphone mostly for voice and basic apps and tether it with a larger screen Tablet, use all on one same low cost voice+data plan, and even have this work for pre-paid plans?

France: Archos has 22% Tablet marketshare

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2011
Category: Tablets, Opinions, Texas Instruments, Archos, Google, Android

According to French market analyst GfK, Archos is now the second biggest tablet maker on the French market, far in front of Samsung (4%), Toshiba (3%), Huawei, Viewsonic and others. Sure enough Apple has the biggest market share with 67%, but I think that’s mostly due to Apple having more cash for manufacturing and distribution. If Archos had been able to spend more money producing more units and having better stock availability at all resellers and never run out of stock during these past 3 months, then I think Archos would probably be number 1 in market share, even in front of Apple.

Source: archoslounge.net

As I run the biggest Archos fansite community at http://forum.archosfans.com and I have been publishing the earliest and most popular video reviews of Archos products for over 6 years, publishing the earliest and most popular videos of Archos full Tablet line such as the 70 Internet Tablet, 7 Home Tablet, 101 Internet Tablet, 32 Internet Tablet, 43 Internet Tablet, I may be biased. But I am sure that if all stores had enough Archos in stock to satisfy the demand for tablets over these past 3 months, Archos would sell even more than Apple.

What matters to the consumer is the value proposition. What features they can get for what price. Archos newest Gen8 Android tablets are about half the price of the iPad and provide more features.

Legalizing piracy and enabling better content creation through a Global Licence

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2011
Category: Opinions, Google

I was at this workshop at Lift11 where we brain-stormed the http://dontmakemesteal.com project which has been gaining media attention during these past few days on wired.com, heise.de, rawstory.com, gigaom.com, sueddeutsche.de, news.ycombinator.com and more. I was on the team in charge of writing the pricing model for this manifesto.

Here is what needs to happen for piracy to dissapear:

Everyone pays $5 per month to access everything. Everyone is then allowed to watch, download, stream any movie, tv show, music, ebook, blog post, download, install and use any application.

This has been called the Global Licence by French socialist party in 2005 when they tried to pass it through the French Parliament (but the law was then cancelled by Chiraq’s Government). I was since then a strong supporter of the Global Licence model and I even campaigned through video-blogging 450 videos for Segolène Royal’s presidential election campaign in 2007 in France to try to get this law passed in one major European country, which would likely then trickle over to be the standard online content law, the copyright/piracy fix for the world, a foundation allowing for the creation of much better content and a solution allowing for development of much better technological solutions to more easily consume all the best content.

The Netflix model may seem great on the surface, but the reality of a technology provider having to sign content distribution deals with all the content creators in the world is just not a sustainable model. There will be plenty of content creators who will have demands that Netflix cannot meet, and that means a lot of content is then not going to be available in certain markets. Having many separate and closed subscription plans is not a sustainable model.

The only true solution is a Government mandated blanket licencing pricing and redistribution model, thus the global licence tax, where everyone pays a small tax to legally access all contents.

$5 per month paid by everyone in the USA and Europe means $60 Billion per year in revenues through this model, that is probably largely enough to finance great content creation. The redistribution of this wealth would happen through decentralized and multiple measurers of popularity and quality of content. For example, Google can measure exact popularity and quality of YouTube videos, last.fm can measure how many times people listen to songs, Razorback and other p2p statistics systems can measure popularity of files on p2p networks. More such models of measurement of popularity and quality/ratings can be implemented once having such more precise statistics and ratings will be demanded.

The advantages of this model:

– The money can be distributed directly to content creators, skipping all intermediaries. The content creators thus are in control of their budgets, content creation is thus less influenced by the intermediaries.

– Technology providers can focus on providing better technologies instead of having to worry about acquiring rights for content. Technology providers can sell or monetize their solutions based on the cost of bandwidth and storage rather than having to monetize through complicated models.

– Consumers don’t have to think about where they can find which content based on who has the rights to distribute it. Consumers can just make a search for what they want, and they can download or stream it through any number of technology and solution providers.

Mobino, a new mobile payments system demonstrated at Lift11 Geneva

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2011
Category: Smartphones, Exclusive videos, Lift

Mobino is a new way to pay for things through the mobile phone, through any cheap voice-only mobile phone as well, using voice prompts when dialing the payment system, and using a pin code to authorize the payment.

Steven Schuler of Ball State University at Lift11 Geneva

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2011
Category: Other, Exclusive videos, Lift

Steven Schuler is the Sr. Assoc. Dir. Emerging Technologies at the Ball State University, Indiana. He tells us about the methods used with the students of that university to create Android and iOS applications and doing other projects in the real world. It’s the philosophy of learning by doing, the students are actually hired by real companies to have some real world IT experience before they graduate.

Latest news from CERN LHC at Lift11 Geneva

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2011
Category: Other, Exclusive videos, Lift

Tara Shears of CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) gives us an update on the Large Hadron Collider, one of the biggest science experiments in history. They are ramping up the power of the accelerator in 2011 and 2012 to find the Higgs Boson, they are creating and capturing antimatter and she explains how the 3000 particle physicists at CERN can collaborate on research.

You can watch Tara Shears keynote presentation at Lift11 here:

You can watch my 4 CERN LHC Atlas videos as well, those are still relevant even though I filmed those in 2007:
CERN LHC ATLAS Tour
CERN LHC ATLAS GRID
Interviews with Engineers at the CERN LHC Atlas
CERN LHC ATLAS Control Room

TI OMAP5 28nm ARM Cortex-A15 sampling second half 2011 already

Posted by Charbax – February 7, 2011
Category: Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments just announced OMAP5430 for smartphones (14x14mm with DDR2 PoP memory) and the OMAP5432 (17x17mm with DDR3 memory) for mobile computing usage, includes 2x up to 2Ghz ARM Cortex-A15 cores, 2x Cortex-M4 for general purpose computing and real-time control, C64x DSP, 5x faster graphics processing using SGX544MPx, 1080p60fps all codecs or 1080p30fps in 3D, can output up to 4 screens including 1 HDMI, it has TI’s M-Shield Security system which includes ARM Trustzone Hardware Support, USB 3.0 host, Sata 2.0, SDXC Flash. Designed for easy porting of software from OMAP4 to OMAP5, for more information visit http://ti.com/omap5

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Robert Scoble about Quora, Groupon, Android, Davos, Tablets and Apple at Lift11 Geneva

Posted by Charbax – February 7, 2011
Category: Web, Exclusive videos, Lift

Robert Scoble is one of the most influential bloggers on the web, he gives us an update and explanation on Quora, Android vs Apple, his Davos videos and more.

You can watch Robert Scoble’s pretty cool Lift presentation about the current status of Silicon Valley startups and tech companies in following video. Scroll forward to timecode: 1 hour 1 minute for Robert Scoble’s keynote (if anyone knows how to embed this video with deep link for starting at that time code, please post in the comments):

googleartproject.com – this is why we need Quad HD screens and projectors

Posted by Charbax – February 1, 2011
Category: Projectors, Displays, Opinions, Google

Here’s a new project from Google, to digitalize all the worlds art from all the worlds art galleries and make it freely available in ultra high resolution online: http://googleartproject.com

Picasa, YouTube and now also Google Art Project, all cloud services that are ready for Quad HD and beyond!

The usage scenario is something like this, have a slideshow of your favorite art from around the world displayed in Quad HD resolution in your living room sub-$1000 46″ Quad-HDTV.

Anyone with a 3megapixel photo camera or higher creates photo content suitable to be viewed on a Quad HD screen.

Anyone filming with upcoming RED cameras or other consumer camcorders to come that record 2K, 3K, 4K, 5K or more, all those deserve to be seen on Quad HD screen, and can be streamed from YouTube even!

Screen and Projector industry, please take this advice: Give up on 3D as soon as possible and make us some Quad-HD, 4K2K screens and projectors at the same cost as 3D!!! All it takes is a new faster processor to process the higher resolution!

Here are some of the Quad HD screens I saw at conferences during the past few years, every time I see content on a Quad HD screen, I am blown away:
JVC 4K2K Camcorder and TV at CES 2011
Samsung 3840x2160p 82″ LCD HDTV at CeBIT 2008
JVC 4K2K HDTV and Projector at IFA 2008

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What to expect from Mobile World Congress

Posted by Charbax – February 1, 2011
Category: Opinions, MWC, Google

After the awesome CES last month, I expect an even better Mobile World Congress, from February 13-18th, I will post at least 50 videos here on http://ARMdevices.net showing you the best ARM Powered devices shown at that show. Here are some of the fascinating topics that I expect to film:

– Samsung’s ARM Cortex-A9 Orion processor with ARM Mali-400 graphics in Samsung Galaxy S2, Samsung Galaxy Tab2. Is it a 32nm process design already?

– Freescale to show first i.MX6 ARM Cortex-A9 reference board or even announce actual devices using it?

– Texas Instruments OMAP4 in actual products, more than just RIM Blackberry Playbook. I expect several phones and tablets will feature the 1Ghz OMAP4430 to be released by end of Q1 and they will probably show and announce devices with 1.5Ghz OMAP4440 for later availability.

– Google shows Honeycomb. Not just videos as they did at CES, but they actually allow everyone to play around with the UI. They should announce Google Music, an expansion of Google Voice for worldwide free VOIP usage. Honeycomb should bring open Google Marketplace for all tablets, for all devices, even laptops. I am hoping Google even announces Honeycomb for Rockchip, Telechips, MSM7227 as well. Honeycomb may be synchronized with the launch of Google TV on ARM as well, or at the least, Honeycomb Google Marketplace should work for Google TV screens. First showing of Chrome OS for ARM Powered laptops would be appropriate as well, full hardware acceleration demonstration for HD web browsing on all the ARM Cortex-A9 processors would be appropriate.

– Texas Instruments nHD Pico Projector could be demonstrated in several upcoming smartphones. Adding a built-in projector will be one of the coolest features of a modern smartphone.

– ST Ericsson U8500 ARM Cortex-A9 ready in Nokia’s next generation smartphone and tablet devices running Meego. But I also expect Nokia to announce and show a whole range of Android devices which I expect have been under development for a year.

– Nvidia to launch Tegra 2 1.2Ghz 3D edition with full 1080p all codecs high profile playback, faster multi-tab HD web browsing processing and they’ll announce and show some Tegra3 stuff as well.

– Qualcomm MSM8660, 8260 to be launched in range of new smartphones and tablets. This is Qualcomm’s big Dual-core Snapdragon processor design push. It may be huge and Qualcomm may dominate Dual-core smartphones as well.

– Marvell 628 Tri-core demonstrated in devices. May be the appropriate timing for them to show demos? Marvell in any case is powering the best example of ARM Powered laptop in OLPC XO-1.75 that should be shipping mid-year, and they certainly have some ambitious Marvell Armada XP ARM Powered server projects going on.

– Rockchip’s partners launch more RK2918 devices. Suitable for low-cost ARM Cortex-A8 tablet designs.

– New Telechips TCC8803 ARM Cortex-A8 designs for other low-cost tablet designs.

– It would be nice to test some Windows 7/8 ARM demonstrations. Microsoft can do a good job porting all the apps and fixing up all the necessary drivers. Let’s see what they have! It would be a nice surprise, but I don’t expect Microsoft to precipitate things too fast.

– Motorola releases Atrix 4G and Xoom by the show start. First Tegra2 phone that does it all and first Honeycomb tablet, so it will be fun.

– HTC releases their next generation Android phones and a tablet. It’s their replacement for Nexus One/HTC Desire/Droid Incredible. My wild guess is it could be based Qualcomm MSM8660 dual-core and include a HTC Tablet as well.

– RIM Blackberry demonstrates support for Android apps on the Playbook tablet. This way, they skip the need to start a whole new app marketplace from scratch.

– HP launches WebOS devices. Let’s see what it can do. I think HP will probably have to use Android though eventually. Hey, competition is always nice, but sometimes when a good open-source platform is free, everyone can just as well contribute to that same ecosystem and if anyone thinks they can make things better, they can fork it or demand the improvements implemented at the level of the Open Handset Alliance. HP did a beautiful ARM Powered laptop before in Compaq Airlife, I’d like to see them upgrade that with Qualcomm MSM8660 Dual-core platform and Honeycomb software.

– I’ll be looking for any demonstrations of platforms such as the Broadcom BCM2157 to enable cheaper Android phones. Sub-$100, how soon, how good.

What do you expect from Mobile World Congress? What would you like me to film in priority? Which questions should I ask to whom? You can also send me tips on what I should film at MWC to my email: charbax@gmail.com Do you agree or disagree with any of my expectations? Post in the comments.

Android has already won

Posted by Charbax – February 1, 2011
Category: Opinions, Archos, Google

The smartphone OS wars are not about functionality or design, they are about the business model. Consumers or tech blog reviewers don’t get to chose which smartphone OS wins and looses.

Today, the carriers decide

The main reason Android dominates today is that carriers pay about $200 less per customer on an Android phone compared to an iPhone (about $400 vs $600). The other aspect of Android that carriers like is the customization of it to make more money on extra services. For example, Google provides the carrier with a share from app sales in the Google Marketplace. Carriers can pre-load the devices with apps for on-demand music and videos and other services. Apple does not give carriers any share of revenues from the App Store or iTunes.

The actual bill of materials and manufacturing cost of today’s high end Android smartphone or iPhone is less than $150. Amazingly, the average US smartphone consumer pays above $2400 for his smartphone on contracts, for example, Verizon’s Average Revenue Per User is $105/month. ARPU is lower in Europe, and much lower in developing countries. The carrier economic aspect of Android winning is only how things are today. Even as there is competition with very good high end Android smart phones provided to the market by Samsung, Motorola and HTC, consumers still pay about the same for these phones as they would with an iPhone.

When the carriers loose control

Things are going to change fast. Soon, the carriers will loose control of the smartphone market, and Android will dominate even more.

As 20 Android smart phone makers compete, there are to be $99 Android phones sold unlocked directly to consumers, such as the Chinese Huawei or ZTE Android phones, there will be alternatives to carriers voice services such as the new VOIP centric version of Google Voice which has become an integral part of Android in Gingerbread.

The next phase of Android means consumers will have choices such as the Archos 28 Internet Tablet at $99, no contracts needed, to do SIP/VOIP/Skype calls on WiFi-only, and depending on the region of the world, there are sub-$20/month even sub-$10/month data SIM cards that will be used to get Data-only experiences of Android. White Spaces could also provide for worldwide free wireless broadband for these devices if setup using the http://fon.com model.

While bloggers analyze smartphone differentiation, fueling a feature war on blogs among constantly improving Android super phone specs, in which new models are represented as destroyers of the ones released the previous week, the fact is brands that sell most don’t do it on features, they do it by negotiating the strongest deals with the carriers. If you look at the US smartphone market, it really doesn’t matter which high end Android phone consumers buy, they all cost basically the same $2400+ after those compulsory 2-years in contracts. The consumer only really gets a choice once devices are sold unlocked through all retailers. Then, prices for these devices will have a meaning and the best value for feature will clearly win. So if you thought it was fun with all these Android phones coming out through carriers this past year, you haven’t seen nothing yet compared to what will happen once phones are sold unlocked directly to consumers.

The next billion sub-$100 Android smartphones

Android smartphones can thus soon be $100 unlocked instead of $2400+ on contract. We are talking about a 24x cheaper Android experiences for the consumer. At that point, the consumer gets to choose who wins the smartphone war. This is happenning. It doesn’t matter what Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia and others do. When there are $100 Android phones in every super market, competitors don’t get to keep a market share if they don’t also provide the devices unlocked for $100 with no contracts needed. You think Apple is looking forward to loosing their 300% profit margins on the iPhone?

What carriers will do to try to keep control

The only ways carriers will try to retain control on their trillion dollar industry will be to block VOIP on cheap wireless data plans, buy out and close down any pre-paid carrier competitors that are offering services that are too cheap on any given market, campaign against unlicensed use of the 700Mhz spectrum for White Spaces, block the licensing of 3G/4G modem technologies in cheap unlocked devices, do anything they can to limit competition in the wireless carrier business. Hopefully all these attempts at keeping control will be defeated by strict regulation and government policies.

The smartphone industry is moving too fast for any Government to regulate it, much too fast even for carriers to adjust and protect themselves against the auto-disruption that is inevitable. Everyone is racing and trying to keep the flow of money going their way for as long as possible.

[I originally wrote this on 16th December 2010 to be published on another blog, but since it wouldn’t get published there as is, I decided to post it here, your turn to say what you think in the comments.]