Category: MWC

JKKmobile.com: Android MWC 2011 booth tour

Posted by – February 20, 2011
Category: MWC, Android

I participate in JKK Mobile’s Android Smoothie tasting:

This video was posted at: youtube.com/jkkmobile

Marvell Kinoma, virtual platform for developing applications

Posted by – February 20, 2011

Kinoma play is showcased on Android devices, it’s running all the apps on pure ARM processor with no need for graphics acceleration, it can come with more than 50 applications built in.

Sub-$100 Android Smartphones shipping right now powered by ST-Ericsson U6715

Posted by – February 19, 2011

The 468Mhz ST-Ericsson U6715 ARM9 processor includes current support for Android 2.1, to be upgradable to Android 2.2 in around a month, they use tricks like a Virtualization layers on top of Android to speed some things up for the user experience on this low end hardware. Yet, the experience is very impressive considering the potential $100 unlocked retail price for these Android smartphone devices such as the K-Touch W606, Acer beTouch E130, Coolpad W711 and the GHT Maestro, they can all include 3G support and good battery runtime.

3D capture and playback on the ST-Ericsson U8500 platform

Posted by – February 19, 2011

ST-Ericsson U8500 can capture 720p 3D at 30fps and 1080p 2D at 30fps. Here’s a demo of the 3D effect captured using 2 cameras and displayed on a 3D HDTV.

Augmented Reality on the ST-Ericsson U8500 platform

Posted by – February 19, 2011

ST-Ericsson are showcasing their performance for augmented reality, tracking at 30fps and rendering at 60fps. There are more and more applications for augmented reality and the new ARM Cortex-A9 processors such as the ST-Ericsson U8500 that includes Mali-400 graphics make this even more usable.

Wholesale Applications Community (WAC)

Posted by – February 19, 2011

WAC is a consortium of carriers, manufacturers and software solutions providers trying to bring some alternative application marketplace and interoperability for apps on different embedded OS platforms. The apps are written using HTML, CSS and Javascript and once the apps are sent to WAC, they can be distributed wholesale on all the different carriers and gadget makers alternative marketplaces.

FON WiFi backhaul used for 3G/4G carriers

Posted by – February 19, 2011

FON is the largest WiFi community in the world, with 3.5 million WiFi hotspots that are all sharing the same login system. 3G and 4G carriers are very interested to use FON as a bandwidth backhaul thus to hand people off to the FON WiFi network as often as users walk by any compatible hotspot at home and outside. In this interview, I ask FON what kind of plans they may have for doing this with other spectrum such as White Spaces, improving the automatic connection of devices to this network and adding more throttling and bandwidth management features and experiment with different ways for users to roam and pay for that bandwidth.

App: Endomondo sports tracking community

Posted by – February 19, 2011

http://endomondo.com is a sports tracking system, that works on all the major smartphone platforms, and includes an online community, to compare running routes, compare running performances, in any city, you can see an overview of all the people that are running right now, it can also include real-time speech synthesis to read up comments or comparing your running speed with someone else you want to beat in the community.

HTC Desire S and HTC Incredible S

Posted by – February 19, 2011

HTC’s replacement for their best selling HTC Desire phone, which was released also under the names Nexus One and Droid Incredible. It features HTC Sense 2.0. The HTC Incredible S has a slightly larger 4″ Super LCD and slightly better cameras. Those are using the Qualcomm MSM8255 1Ghz single-core processor.

HTC Flyer Android Tablet

Posted by – February 19, 2011

HTC’s first Tablet, it’s got a 7″ 1024×600 capacitive touch screen, it’s 420gr, 1GB RAM and runs a 1.5Ghz Qualcomm processor. HTC implemented some kind of special external stylus feature that allows for scribbling on top of a snapshot of the screen, so one can scribble on top of anywhere within Android, but the actual integration of that touch screen handwriting technology with the Android apps is still to be seen, and the stylus has to be slotted in an external leather case.

HTC Wildfire S

Posted by – February 19, 2011

HTC’s new lower cost, more compact Android Smartphone, the Wildfire S includes a Qualcomm MSM7227 ARM11 600Mhz processor, 512MB RAM.

ST-Ericsson U4500 to power sub-$100 ARM Cortex-A9 smartphones!

Posted by – February 19, 2011

The idea is to provide better than Nexus One like performance early 2012 in low cost Android smartphones that could be sold by then for as little as below $200 even at below the $100 price point. ST-Ericsson U4500 is a single core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, that could be clocked at around 600mhz to achieve a similar performance to the 1Ghz Nexus One that was released early 2010. The idea is to bring that level of performance to potentially hundreds of millions of more people. Also check out my video on the ST-Ericsson A9500 development board to be released around May this year.

Nvidia shows project Kal-el Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9

Posted by – February 19, 2011

Nvidia Kal-el is now sampling, demonstrated here at Mobile World Congress 2011, to be in commercial products already in August this year. Nvidia goes on showing the first Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 sample, getting those samples to their partners and planning for commercial launch by August this year already. This is impressive stuff, web browsing speed is doubled.

ZTE Skate 4.3″ Android Smartphone

Posted by – February 19, 2011

Comes with a nice 4.3″ capacitive touch screen, and is designed to potentially reach a sub-$200 price point when sold unlocked and/or on a pre-paid plan.

HP Touch Pad WebOS

Posted by – February 19, 2011

HP bought Palm to use WebOS as their upcoming proprietary platform for HP branded phones and smartphones. Here’s a demonstration of that OS.

30 more MWC videos to be uploaded starting tonight

Posted by – February 18, 2011
Category: Opinions, MWC

The Mobile World Congress press center closed 4PM on last day of the show (yesterday), and closed 7PM on each show day, making it nearly impossible for me to upload all my videos during the show, as I was constantly filming interviews and product demos from 8AM to 6PM each day, when show floor closes. I wish conferences like MWC would consider closing their press rooms, media centers at much later time, why not keep those open until 10PM or even later. I met many other video-bloggers complaining very harshly about them not being able to publish their videos during the show. We can’t find any fast upload speeds at hotels or any other place around Barcelona, and it’s the same in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Berlin, Hannover, conference organizers need to understand videos require a lot of upload bandwidth and that can only be found at press rooms, and thus they need to spend a 50€ or whatever is necessary to pay a security guard to keep that media room open until much later. Otherwise, the conference simply isn’t getting half as much video coverage published to the web as it could be getting. Conference organizers have to consider we video-blog in HD, and HD video files can be very large and thus require 10mbit/s or faster upload speeds for it to be workable. I met many other video-bloggers at MWC who simply gave up even trying to get their videos uploaded during the show. What is the point in organizing a conference if video-bloggers don’t have time to upload the videos with all the informations and news from all the exhibitors of the conference?

Except from the unfortunate early closing media center, this Mobile World Congress was probably one of the most awesome, most action packed conferences that I have ever video-blogged since I started video-blogging at CeBIT 2004. Look forward to many more videos to be posted here starting tonight.

Freescale talks i.MX6 ARM Cortex-A9 platform at Mobile World Congress 2011


Freescale announced their ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-Core and Quad-Core processor platform. Here´s an interview with Freescale about their performance and features.

Dialog Semiconductor real-time 2D to 3D conversion

Posted by – February 16, 2011

This is the first real-time 2D to 3D video conversion in silicon presented by Dialog Semiconductor at Mobile World Congress 2011, it may be useful for the upcoming glasses free 3D screen devices that are coming out. I am not sure though how they analyse the video to “guess” the 3D features in the images, do they analyse each static image or do they process frames before and after to determine 3D space based on the motion?

ST-Ericsson A9500 ARM Cortex-A9 Development Board

Posted by – February 16, 2011

This is the SKY-S9500-ULP-CXX aka SNOWBALL, the ST-Ericsson ARM Cortex-A9 development board, they put in there all the memory and everything needed to hack together end user products. It will be sold for about $200 from around April or May, it runs Android, Ubuntu and Meego thus far. You can find more information at http://igloocommunity.org

Blackberry Playbook to get Android Dalvik engine support?

Posted by – February 16, 2011

Here’s an interview with Blackberry about the Playbook, topics include the QNX software, the potentiallity for Android apps support through integrating the Dalvik engine, productivity apps on tablets, and a brief history of Blackberry and where it’s going.