Month: September 2011

Review: N5Zero Tablet, sub-$100 5″ capacitive Android tablet

Posted by Charbax – September 28, 2011

This is my world exclusive review of the new Window88.com N5Zero Tablet. A 5″ capacitive Android tablet to be sold for less than $100 (to resellers). It’s using the Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 Single Core processor at 1.2Ghz, the screen resolution is 800×480, it has 512MB RAM, a MicroSD slot, between 2GB and 16GB built-in flash ROM storage (depending on the configuration, mine has 8GB), no Bluetooth, the graphics are powered by the Vivante Gc800 that does up to 57 million triangles per second and full OpenGL ES 2.0 for fully smooth Flash 10.3 (and soon Flash 11) support, it supports smoothly all the latest Android 3D games, video playback support is 1080p with all codecs but there is no HDMI output.

Most importantly, this cool 5″ capacitive tablet is being sold out of China for below $100 USD! Of course, you have to consider that the low sub-$100 price is for resellers contacting Window88.com and ordering large quantities of the tablet, perhaps 100 pieces minimum, or 500, or 1000, that is to be discussed by interested distributors with the Window88.com people. The final retail price can be a bit higher. In China this tablet is being sold for 699 renminbi on the market, that is $109. But if this tablet gets imported to Europe and the USA, expect a pricing that can be around $139 or more depending on how much margins the resellers want to take.

Rockchip claims that their RK2918 processor has a better performance than the Samsung Hummingbird in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7″, Samsung Galaxy S1 and that it’s also faster than the Apple A4 in iPad1 and iPhone4. That is to be confirmed. Sure enough, this is by far not as fast as the newest Dual Core processors such as the one Samsung promises for the 5.3″ Samsung Galaxy Note, but consider that this Window N5Zero is to be sold to resellers at below $100 and that with software optimizations, with perhaps Ice Cream Sandwich coming, this could be fast enough for many users looking for cheap tablet value worldwide.

Read about more of the specs here: http://window88.com/chinese/pro_show.asp?pid=36&p_name=Tablet%20PC

Canon IXUS 1100 HS

Posted by Charbax – September 28, 2011

12.1 Megapixels, 12x zoom, wide 28mm, Intelligent IS and more, for sale for $329.

Here’s a sample video in 1080p recorded with this camera: On YouTube

Toshiba Thrive 7″ 1280×800 Honeycomb 3.2 tablet

Posted by Charbax – September 28, 2011

Toshiba is expanding their Toshiba Thrive Android tablet series with this new 7″ version with a 1280×800 resolution, Micro HDMI, Micro SD, running on the Nvidia Tegra2 processor. Robert Scoble tries to get the representative to say something about the price, but he can’t say, Techcrunch says that it’s going to be below $400.

Source: Robert Scoble

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Canon IXUS 230 HS

Posted by Charbax – September 28, 2011

12.1 Megapixels, 8x zoom, 28mm wide lens, Intelligent IS and more, for sale for $199.

Huawei Honor 4″ smartphone, 1.4Ghz Single Core, Gingerbread

Posted by Charbax – September 26, 2011

Huawei announces yet another value Android phone. It’s got a 4″ 854×480 capacitive LCD touch screen, a 1.4Ghz Scorpion MSM8255 Snapdragon Single Core processor, 8 Megapixel (with HDR feature), 720p video record, Adreno 205 graphics, 512MB RAM, HSPA+ 14.4Mbit/5.76Mbit, 1900mAh battery, gyroscope, 4GB ROM and MicroSD slot. If they decide to sell this for $199 unlocked (pricing is not yet officially confirmed because the pricing can be a choice by the carriers), this could become one of the worlds most popular smartphones in the coming months.

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Slashgear.com: Archos 80 G9 1Ghz review

Posted by Charbax – September 26, 2011

The Archos 80 G9 for sale at $299 is hereby the worlds most powerful Android tablet, scoring 987, that’s higher than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the Vellamo benchmark:


click for the full size image

Here is their review: http://www.slashgear.com/archos-80-g9-review-video-25182615/

You can discuss this review and video in the ArchosFans forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=57174

Samsung Galaxy R

Posted by Charbax – September 24, 2011

Tegra2 and a 4.2″ Super Clear LCD capacitive touch screen, this smartphone is similar to the Samsung Galaxy S2 but it just has a cheaper processor and screen, so I think it is likely this phone will be about $100 cheaper. But that is to be confirmed.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS

Posted by Charbax – September 24, 2011

This new camera does 14.1 Megapixels, 12x Optical Zoom, 28mm wide-angle capability, Intelligent IS and Smart AUTO among other features, it’s for sale for $233 at Amazon.com.

You can download sample videos and photos here:
Normal video: On YouTube On Google Docs
Slow motion video: On YouTube On Google Docs
Pictures: On Google Docs

Find more information here

How Microsoft can run the x86 apps on the ARM Powered Windows 8

Posted by Charbax – September 17, 2011

When people click to try to install an x86-compiled .exe file in the ARM version of Windows 8, this is what Windows needs to do:

1. Check if the app is already re-compiled and automatically download and install the ARM version from the Windows App Store. This process can be about as quick as installing the application on x86.

2. If the app is not yet re-compiled, it offers the option to run it in Virtualization mode on ARM, served through Windows cloud computing services, well cached and parts can be emulated for near-instant interactivity and instant response within the app, this is clever cloud served virtualization that also runs a bunch of things locally to offer the least possible delay. It’s part virtualization and part hardware accelerated emulation, they can do it. Apps not yet recompiled for ARM can automatically send a notification to the developer encouraging him though a simple one-click feature to recompile and submit the ARM version of every app in the Windows App Store. Users in the enterprise can combine more locally and more dedicated virtualization servers if they need to further lessen lag time or if they don’t trust the cloud for certain confidential apps virtualized.

Michael Angiulo, Corporate Vice President, Windows Planning, Hardware & PC Ecosystem said following:

We will make sure it is absolutely clear where your legacy apps will run. (…) Porting things and whether we open native desktop development are decisions that are either not made or not announced yet.

Source: thisismynext.com

Ubuntu for ARM Powered Servers, to go mainstream within 2 years

Posted by Charbax – September 17, 2011

Canonical is working with ARM and Calxeda to prepare the customized and optimized Ubuntu Server Edition software to run on ARM Powered servers once they are ready.

With Ubuntu Server becoming the de-facto standard for cloud infrastructure and big data solutions, we recognise that power consumption is key to efficient scaling. Building on four years of working with ARM, we are now taking the step of supporting Ubuntu Server on ARM. We expect these processors to be used in a variety of use cases including microservers.

This is a first step and there will be many revisions of processors, hardware designs and of software as the performance and supported server workloads optimised for ARM grow over the next four years. It is, however, a first crucial step towards a new technology and one where yet again open-source innovation leads.

The new addition to the Ubuntu family | First release in October 2011

In October, the Ubuntu Server 11.10 release will be simultaneously available for x86, x86-64 and ARM-based architectures. The base image of the releases will be the same across architectures with a common kernel baseline. The ARM architecture will also be part of the long-term support (LTS) version of Ubuntu Server in 12.04 and other future releases.

Initial development focus and optimisation will be around the most popular Ubuntu workloads of web/network infrastructure and distributed data processing via NoSQL or big data applications where workloads typically use hundreds or thousands of systems.

Source: blog.canonical.com