Results for pixel qi

What Google’s Motorola R&D may be working on…

Posted by Charbax – December 22, 2012

The Wall Street Journal has an article out talking about the Google X Phone project and its technical challenges. I think that Google Motorola has a lot of work to do. Here are some of the projects that I expect Google to be investing in at Motorola to move Android forward in terms of R&D hardware spending, how Google may be trying to control and influence worldwide components supply for the next months and years of mobile devices development:

1. Dominate worldwide sub-$100 phone market. Target the sub-$200 Android phone market too. Target all world countries, not just rich countries. This is how Motorola “easily” can get to scale and thus get to control smartphones components supply.

2. Design devices that merge Android with Chrome OS and Google TV. That means re-engineer and re-think Motorola’s Laptop Dock, Desktop Dock, Entertainment Dock, when you dock Android 5 thus switches to Chrome OS or Google TV depending on what you want on the external display.

3. Design flexible phones using rubber-like and leather-like materials. As soon as flexible screen suppliers are ready (not just Samsung’s flexible AMOLED), have designs ready to use the new form factors.

4. E Ink phones, be it like the Motorola Fone released in 2006 with an E Ink display, the new E Ink phones use Android. Can be E Ink only Android phones and Android phones where just the backside is an E Ink display.

5. Integrate DLP pico projector technologies in new phone concepts that project something like a 20″ touch-screen display onto any table. Thus design kick-stands, mirrors, lenses that facilitate that.

6. Google Glass, headmounted computing is going to be the new normal next year. Optimize the Motorola headmounted computer to fit every usage, design it so everyone wants to use them.

7. Wearable computing. Android Bluetooth wrist watches, Bluetooth headsets that merge into clothing for voice calls. Make every user feel like they are James Bond.

8. Mass market White Spaces modems and routers, small and low power enough to be included in every new Android smartphone and tablet. Cheap enough so that every ADSL/Cable/Fiber connection install a White Spaces router to quickly cover the whole world with free wireless broadband for everyone.

9. Mass producing Pixel Qi LCD based smartphones, tablets and laptops, for sunlight readablility and to extend battery life significantly.

10. New $100 ARM Powered Tablets for productivity. New $100 ARM Powered Laptops for productivity. Google and Motorola can take over some of the role of the One Laptop Per Child. These new devices are for the worlds children to use to make the world a better place.

Motorola “X Phone” Rumored As 2013 Android Heavyweight (pocketnow.com)
Google and Motorola building their own ‘X-Phone’ according to reports (androidcommunity.com)
Google and Motorola finally working on “X Phone” and tablet (phonearena.com)
Google and Motorola working on the “X Phone” to take on Apple and Samsung (mobilesyrup.com)
Motorola And Google Are Working On An ‘X Phone’ According To WSJ Rumor That Kind Of States The Obvious (realzahed.wordpress.com)
Google said to be building powerful “X” phone with Motorola (phandroid.com)
Google, Motorola plotting a so-called ‘X Phone’ to take on the iPhone and Galaxy S III (bgr.com)
Google Prepping “X Phone” To Compete With Apple (valuewalk.com)

Category: Opinions, Google
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How I think that the ARM Powered Chromebook is a big deal for the industry

Posted by Charbax – October 21, 2012

Category: Laptops, Opinions, Samsung, Chrome OS

I’ve been talking about ARM Powered Chrome OS for years now here on this blog (2, 3, 4, 5, 6). So you can imagine how happy I was to hear that Google and Samsung are launching the ARM Cortex-A15 Exynos5250 Powered Chromebook now today on Monday for $249!!! Here are some of the points that I think one can consider for how the ARM Powered Chromebook is a very big deal for the industry:

1. Chrome on ARM gets optimized, to use full hardware acceleration. It’s important to have a web browsing experience on ARM in a 720p, 768p, 1080p resolution that be satisfactory to most users.

2. Chrome OS on ARM gets open sourced, means here’s an OS to run on all ARM SoCs, this means that the $89 13.3″ and $75 10.1″ ARM Cortex-A9 Powered laptops, even single-core using VIA WM8850 for example, can soon ship with Chromium OS pre-installed.

3. Full Chrome on Android, with all plugins (including Flash, Java, etc), extensions, full tabs support, user interface for mouse and keyboard. This means a merger of Chrome OS and Android. The Chrome experience on Android should be as good as on a pure Chrome OS device. You can even have resume and boot-to-Chrome as a choice on Android, if you are using a device where you just want to use Chrome and that you may not care much about the rest of Android.

4. Gives a new purpose to ARM Powered Laptops, HDMI Sticks, Set-top-boxes and more. You can get a sub-$100 HDMI Stick to use as a Chromebox on your HDTV or PC Monitor. If you’d like to use the HDMI stick in Entertainment mode, it should be able to switch to Google TV mode.

5. Chromebooks are now sub-$250. This makes them very attractive to a majority of new Laptop buyers worldwide. I think that Chrome OS is going to dominate as the main OS for laptops and desktops worldwide. Though for that to easily happen, 13.3″ ARM Cortex-A15 Chromebooks need to be sold for well below $200, the 11.6″ ones should be sold towards below $150.

6. Combine the ARM Powered Chromebook with an 11.6″ or 13.3″ Pixel Qi screen, also wait for eventual full hardware optimizations to be automatically added to Chrome OS on ARM to take advantage of the Mali-T604 GPU and much else deep level ARM Cortex-A15 optimizations and you could have a battery life on your super thin ARM Powered Chromebook above 20 hours. This is game-changing for a super thin laptop.

7. Chrome OS forces App Developers to think Web First. That means better quality web apps. Expect high-quality online video-editing, photo-editing, word processing, FTP, programming and even gaming to work awesomely on the Web pretty quickly. That means web apps with full offline support, full cached acceleration for instant web app load times regardless of connection speed, Web GL for full GPU advanced 3D gaming including streaming of game info, remote 3D rendering and streaming of the highest quality 3D games, once all app developers think first about how to use the web to improve their apps, that brings the worlds best apps to everyone.

8. Upgrading the PC/Laptop is redefined. Consumers won’t need to think about upgrading their PC/Laptop, unless they find one with a nicer design and style, with a different screen size or screen type which they may prefer. Upgrading a PC/Laptop for faster performance is going to be less and less of a reason for people to upgrade their computer. The most important specification is going to be battery life and screen technology. That is, if one can expect all web apps to load instantly on the ARM Powered Laptop, with unlimited simultaneous tabs opened smoothly at the same time, which is something we can expect on this ARM Cortex-A15 Chromebook.

9. You may think that this ARM Chromebook may not have yet an optimal performance. Consider that the web browser is perhaps one of the most advanced and complicated application on a PC/Laptop. Chrome on x86 is 50x faster than Internet Explorer was on x86 just 3 years ago. ARM Cortex-A15 is all new, so is Chrome on ARM, expect tons of optimizations to be beamed over the next weeks and months to come, as Google, Samsung and open source Chrome project engineers fully optimize the software on ARM.

10. You may think that the quoted 6.5 hours battery life on this initial ARM Chromebook may not sound like a whole lot. Consider that the power consumption governors may be cranked up to the maximum power consumption by Google and Samsung to prevent any slowdowns before Chrome for ARM gets optimized. As ARM optimizations are fully integrated in Chrome OS on ARM, you can perhaps expect this ARM Chromebook to magically suddenly be able to last more than 10 hours on the same thin and light battery.

Let me know in the comments if you have any other informations about how optimized Google and Samsung have made Chrome OS on ARM yet, if Google has announced much more about their plans to open source Chrome OS on ARM, if it’s already open source, what you think we can expect for Chrome OS on lower power cheaper ARM SoCs such as RK3066, VIA 8850, Allwinner A10 and other processors that can be used in making much cheaper ARM Powered Chromebooks. Write also in the comments how many ARM Chromebooks you plan to buy, you are welcome to use my amazon link!

Category: Laptops, Opinions, Samsung, Chrome OS
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My Google I/O (June 27-29th) predictions

Posted by Charbax – June 26, 2012

Category: Smart Glass, Opinions, Google

1. Nexus Tablet, 7″ preferably with Pixel Qi LCD to merge Tablets with E-readers. Keyboard dock for Chrome productivity.

2. Android Jelly Bean launched, feature major new features and integrates Linaro code talked about in my video Linaro improvements to Android 4.0.4 performance on the Pandaboard TI OMAP4430 platform for speed optimizations. Most important feature I think is the merger of Smartphone, Tablet, Google TV Set-top-box, E-reader, Chromebook with final fully optimized Chrome on Android on ARM, full Desktop/Laptop level Chrome on ARM Android browsing.

3. Google upgrades Cloud Computing platform to support and host php/mysql web apps such as wordpress, phpbb, mediawiki, Google hosts it for free with unlimited bandwidth when AdSense is used on every page.

4. Google Entertainment System (GES) is launched. It’s a layer to turn all Android HDMI/MHL devices and Set-top-boxes into full home console gaming machines that can rival Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft as home consoles. Consider Google to launch the Google Entertainment System for $49 with HDMI out only and up to $99 with a full Google TV HDMI input/output and IR blaster functionality. It’s ARM Powered, it’s powerful enough to replace your Desktop computer outputting a full Chrome browser on your HDTV/Monitor and using Bluetooth or RF keyboard/mice. It includes the new RF signal to manage Android@Home, thus turning your home into an intelligent connected platform. Consider it a sort of Nexus device to show how Google TV should be done, to show home Android@Home should be done, to show how Android can be used to challenge home consoles, to show how ARM Powered Chromeboxes should be done and to show how the Google Android Hub system for WiFi, White Spaces should be done.

5. Google+ launches major Recommendation/Personalization functionality. Consider the web will no longer be the same. You’ll have a totally new experience of web content through a new version of Google+ that is able to provide automatic streams for you based on the items you +1. Finally, the + in Google+ is going to be making full sense. Finally the +1 button is going to be used and everyone will instantly understand the meaning of using the +1 button, it is to teach Google what you like and have Google show you better content automatically. It’ll be absolutely revolutionary. A totally new way to surface quality on the web. You don’t need a lot of followers, you don’t need to be famous, you don’t need to be viral, soon after you post quality/original content on the web it can automatically reach the deserved audience. Who circles who will make less and less sense. HD Google+ Hangouts (up to 1080p high bitrates) are added as an enterprise on-demand perhaps paid feature.

6. Google may open up Android development process after Jelly Bean. Consider it Google opening up nightly Android advancements to the rest of the world and taking in more upstream suggestions for Android improvements from the open source community in General. As part of Google’s anti-fragmentation effort, Google can announce real-time collaboration in the development of future versions of Android, so new versions of Android reach more devices sooner using over-the-air upgrade systems worldwide. Expect Google to announce Android’s total daily activations number to be well above 1.5 million if all Android devices are included in the count, meaning not limiting the count to Google Certified devices, but also include all Chinese devices sold not only in China, also sold in India, Brazil and worldwide. Google can announce that Android tablets daily activations also have overtaken the iPad since December 2011, again if all Android tablets are included in the count, also including the millions of non-certified Chinese Android tablets such as the $55 Android ICS tablets featured in my video: $55 AllWinner Boxchip A13 Tablet Factory Tour

7. Google Project Glass to be released before the end of the year. It’s not just the Google reference hardware, it’s more importantly about a software layer on top of Android optimized for Augmented Reality usages to be used hands-free using any heads-up microdisplay including the Kopin Golden-i that I filmed and that I have been using since October last year: Motorola Kopin Golden-i at CES 2012 I think it’s just a layer of new APIs for Android apps to function well in a hands-free headmounted mode, using Google Voice Actions for voice-commands, using the accelerometer, compass, and all other usual sensors and thus simply providing an optimized Android Home Replacement and APIs for that. The first Google Glass compatible devices can be released from $199 to $499 before the end of this year.

8. Google’s Self-driving car system should be targeted as sub-$2000 add-on that can be added to any car. Just add some sensors and cameras to the roof of your car, and insert some electronics to the driving system of your car, and it should be turned into a Google Self-driving car. Google can announce partnerships with several major car makers to include the self-driving car functionality as a sub-$2000 option to several car models, to be shipping before the end of the year.

9. $199 ARM Powered Chromebooks launched. imagine it as nice as an Ultrabook, but for $199, running a full speed Chrome OS on one of the latest ARM processors, for example TI OMAP4470, Tegra3, Exynos4412, HiSilicon K3V2, Qualcomm S4, and more. 20-hour battery life. 100% security using ARM TrustZone. Speed is way faster than Intel Atom Chromebooks, browsing speed is comparable to any $1000 Ultrabook.

What else are you expecting from Google at I/O this year?

You can discuss this thread on Google+: https://plus.google.com/106075758531242552855/posts/Sx8ttoic3NJ

Category: Smart Glass, Opinions, Google
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I’m in Shenzhen and Hong Kong this week!

Posted by Charbax – April 7, 2012

Category: China Sourcing Fair, HKTDC Electronics Fair, Shenzhen Electronics Fair

I’m video-blogging 3 conferences this week, Shenzhen Electronics Fair (April 10-11th), China Sourcing Fair (April 12, 15th) and the HKTDC Electronics Fair (April 13-14, 16th). http://ARMdevices.net is the place to be, in the coming days I will post over a hundred videos of the latest upcoming Chinese Android devices, such as the coolest most affordable newest Android smartphones, tablets, ARM Powered laptops, set-top-boxes, e-readers, http://ARMdevices.net is the website to go to to get the most extensive coverage of the status of those technologies out of Shenzhen and Hong Kong China!

As last year, I’ll try to provide you with some behind the scenes videos showing how the factories, electronics markets, PCB design houses, that is, if I find some companies who invite me in for filming.

Let me know here in the comments of any awesome Shenzhen company that you think I should visit today, tomorrow, on the 9th, and let me know right here and to my email charbax@gmail.com if there are any awesome Chinese companies that you think I should video-blog in priority at the 3 upcoming conferences.

Here are some of the topics I expect to find here and film:

– MT6575 qHD 4.3″ ARM Cortex-A9 ICS smartphones, sub-$140? (also 3.5-5″ at variable pricing)
– MT6573 WVGA 3.5-5″ ARM11 ICS smartphones, sub-$80?
– RK2918 (other?) awesome ARM Powered laptops running ICS and Chrome for Android smoothly today, sub-$80?
– 9.7″ IPS (exact same screen as iPad1/2) Android ICS tablets, powerful Boxchip A10/Rk2918 and faster, sub-$120?
– Super smooth Boxchip A10, RK2918, AmLogic, i.MX53 ICS capacitive 7″ 1024×600 tablets, sub-$70?
– Smooth ST-Ericsson U8500 7″ 1024×600 ICS with built-in 3G, sub-$80?
– RK2918, AmLogic (other?) set-top-box, potentially Google TV ready, sub-$50?
More!

Of course it’ll be awesome to discover all those and much more. Things like flexible E Ink devices may be brewing somewhere in Shenzhen (to be shown already?), can I find some Pixel Qi devices? Which are the other affordable ICS Smartphone, Tablet platforms that are coming out of Shenzhen?

Let me know what you think is coming out of Shenzhen now. Let me know what you know is coming out of Shenzhen now. Give me company names, product names, component descriptions, send me everything and comment, thanks!

Category: China Sourcing Fair, HKTDC Electronics Fair, Shenzhen Electronics Fair
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900,000 Rockchip RK2918 7″ Tablets purchased by Thailand’s Government for Education

Posted by Charbax – March 21, 2012

Category: Tablets, Opinions, Rockchip, Android

The 900,000 Scopad SP0712 Android tablets are going to be delivered before the next semester. The first batch of 50,000 tablets to be delivered within 15 days of the signing of the memorandum of understanding (which may mean 15 days from now).

The price per tablet is $82 and to be delivered by Shenzhen Scope Scientific Development. The Chinese Government had suggested four suppliers be considered for the deal including also Huawei Technologies Co, TCL Cooperation and Haier Information Technology (Shenzhen).

I don’t know if those have capacitive screens, what the battery life is going to be.

I think it’s crucial for the successful use of tablets in education for those to include a Pixel Qi LCD screen! Readability and very low power consumption are crucial features for these! Android tablets can become very successful tools for education, but they need to last 20 hours on a battery and not 5 hours! And the screens need to be as readable as paper! And the screen must be usable outdoors!

Not using Pixel Qi I think may be the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful educational tablet initiative! In rich countries, consumers don’t care much, because they always have enough power, they don’t care about reading and they are satisfied just playing video games on the devices, in rich countries, the tablets are just being used as entertaining gadgets for a bit of fun, nearly no productivity happens thus far. If you want to use tablets in education, you really carefully have to think about usability, battery life and productivity.

A $5 keyboard dock design can also be quite crucial for those to actually be usable for productive learning!! A built-in kick-stand I think is also pretty much compulsory.

The Pheu Thai Party promised during its campaigning ahead of last year’s election that, if voted in, it would give a tablet computer to every first-grade student nationwide.

Gp Cpt Anudith said the next step was to draft the agreement and forward it to the Office of the Attorney General for checks. The process would be finished before the end of this month, he said.

Chinnapat Bhumirat, secretary-general to the Office of Basic Education, said: “The G to G contract and MoU agreement are not that different, and the Chinese government will help us deal with the supplier and get as low a price as possible.”

Mr Chinnapat said the first batch of about 50,000 tablets would be sent to Thailand within 15 days of the MoU being signed. A team of 1,000 experts will train 15,000 teachers and supervisors nationwide on tablet use in early May.

According to Rockchip, here are the 3 key points for the Rockchip Tablet solution to win governmental tender projects:

1: RK2918 has the highest cost-performance for governmental tender projects;
2: RK2918 MID has already passed CTS certification from Google both on Android 2.3.5 and Android 4.0.3 version, which is the most important thing for governmental tender projects;
3: RK2918 has its good reputation for its well software-supporting service from Rockchip Electronics among its clients all over the world.

Source: bangkokpost.com

Category: Tablets, Opinions, Rockchip, Android
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Archos G10 xs, Archos Elements and Arnova 50€ announced

Posted by Charbax – March 15, 2012

Category: Tablets, Laptops, Opinions, Rockchip, Texas Instruments, Archos, Android, Windows

Archos had an investors event in Paris today, they showed a teaser video for the next generation Archos G10 xs series:

The keyboard dock magnetic screen protector is awesome. But I’d like them to use the kick-stand and attach the thin keyboard dock like a Laptop in a way there’s a mouse pad that can be used. Archos has always innovated using Kick-stands, I hope they continue and I think using the kick-stand is the best way to make the thinnest, coolest ARM Powered Tablet/Laptop convertible. If possible the kick-stand angle can be adjustable. If you’re in an airplane and the space is limited, you don’t need to use the kick-stand, the tablet can rest against the seat that is in front of you. I think the keyboard should also fit behind the tablet when the keyboard does not need to be used. Preferably in a way so that the kick-stand can also still be used even when the keyboard dock is magnetically fixed behind the tablet.

Archos claims to have technology that makes G10 the thinnest tablet on the market. Something about patented paper-thin steel assembly technology. Archos has always been good at fitting huge battery capacity in extremely thin designs. I hope that Archos manages to make a deal with Pixel Qi and use the 10.1″ 1280×800 sunlight readable screen on this one. That’d provide for 20+ hours of battery life, sunlight readability, Kindle Reader competitiveness for reading and use for education and work, and it’d use much less power thus enabling a form factor and weight in the ultra-light class of 400-something grams for a 10″ tablet. Perhaps best to use Neonode’s IR touch technology instead of capacitive for least reflections and best readability.

For the processor on Archos G10, I think that one can expect either the OMAP4470 1.8Ghz Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 with SGX544 graphics or even the OMAP5430 with SGX544 graphics which can also run upwards 1.8Ghz in frequency or more. It depends if Archos plans to release the G10 already from mid-year or if they don’t plan to release it before the end of the year.

I don’t know if Archos will continue to sell that 3G Stick solution in G10. Maybe there is a way to allow for a modem module of any of the 3G/4G/LTE types to be manually added by the user, under full warranty, in some slot on the back of the device without it having to be through a USB host port. Maybe the multi-mode wireless modems are now so cheap, can even be included on the same CPU dye, that maybe they just included it by default even on the cheapest G10 tablet and provide just an unlocked SIM card slot on the side.

Archos did mention making one Windows 8 on ARM based Tablet/Laptop convertible by the end of the year. I hope they make sure to make it dual-boot the latest and greatest Android also.

Archos Elements brings Google Certified tablets at as low as 100€/$100. My guess is that Archos Elements brings the Rockchip RK30 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 performance and higher capacitive screen resolutions than Arnova at extremely competitive pricing.

The new Arnova with Ice Cream Sandwich are going to be sold for as little as 50€/$50 at retail price!! My guess is 50€/$50 is the 7″ WVGA Dual-touch or single-touch resistive type with an RK2918 512MB RAM and Ice Cream Sandwich. It goes up to 150€/$150 retail price for what I think is probably the 9.7″ IPS capacitive RK2918 1GB RAM and Ice Cream Sandwich tablet. Basically with the new upcoming Arnova G3/G4 you get $49 basic alternative to the Kindle Fire and a $149 better-than-iPad1 tablet. Those are amazing low-priced targets for mass consumer retail Ice Cream Sandwich tablet pricing.

Archos is the top Android tablet seller in the major European markets, about equal to Samsung, in front of Asus, Acer, Motorola, Dell, LG, Toshiba and others. Archos CEO Henri Crohas sees a great opportunity to expand that lead with his company. Archos has announced a 32.9 Million € gross profit margin for 2011 on a yearly revenue of 171.4 Million €. They have announced an agreement to borrow upwards tens of millions of Euros more from one of the leading French banks Societe Generale (in exchange for stock guarantees, probably something similar to a capital increase, basically adding new stocks for cash to be used for the expansion) which Archos can use to further accelerate the mass production and mass distribution of their tablet series in the coming months.

You can discuss this post in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=63964

Archos Teases G10 XS Tablet With Ultra-Thin Steel Chassis (techcrunch.com)
Archos will launch Gen10 premium tablets this year (liliputing.com)

Category: Tablets, Laptops, Opinions, Rockchip, Texas Instruments, Archos, Android, Windows
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Mary Lou Jepsen presents at Google X event: Reading images from your brain’s visual memory

Posted by Charbax – February 7, 2012

Category: Displays, Google, Pixel Qi

At the new Google X event project, http://www.wesolveforx.com/, Pixel Qi CEO and founder Mary Lou Jepsen presents the idea of recording images from the human brains memory. With a bit of investment in the right technologies to record higher resolution signals from human brains, it can soon be possible to record images from human memory. As far as I understand the presentation, you can soon wear some special glasses that have small sensors on your retina, or some sensors on your head, then just think of some images and those can get recorded with high detail and precision. Seeing an image and thinking about that image is the same thing, our brains record every image that we see for ever with great detail and it is soon be possible to read from our brains visual memory.

Category: Displays, Google, Pixel Qi
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CES 2012 Highlights

Posted by Charbax – February 1, 2012

Category: Smart Glass, 4K UHD, Energy Harvesting, Top Video Lists, CES, Geniatech

I filmed 92 videos at CES 2012. Here are some of my Highlights:

1. The Motorola Kopin Golden-i Headmounted computer for wearable computing

Being able to borrow this setup for the past 2 months, among many other that I’ve been able to meet and demonstrate it to, this allowed me to meet Google co-founder Sergey Brin at CES 2012, Sebastian Thrun (Google X, Stanford Artificial Intelligence, Udacity, Inventor of the Google Self-driving Car) and Steve Lee (Manager of Google Maps for Mobile, Latitude and Google X), I was speaking with them for about 5 minutes!

Thanks Robert Scoble for taking this photo! I interviewed Robert Scoble about his CES impressions a few minutes earlier.

I am really lucky to be one of the first few people in the world to be able experiment with this headmounted computer (they have manufactured less than 250 prototypes thus far). That caught the attention of Google co-founder Sergey Brin who approached me and asked me what it was! I got them to try some of the headmounted voice command software demos in the headset, talk about my $199 Archos 70b Internet Tablet with Honeycomb (and ICS later) which Archos claims to have nearly the third largest worldwide tablet market share with their 2 million Android tablets sold in 2011 (Sergey Brin knows Archos perfectly well it seems, Archos has been making Android tablets for over 2 years but has only gotten fully Google certified since using Honeycomb on their G9 tablet generation released 3 months ago).

Sergey Brin and his colleagues asked me if I thought headmounted monocular wearable computing was going to be big, I said yes of course. I consider it can be like the dashboard for ones life. Positionned a bit below the eye, it can provide augmented informations about your surroundings, display your emails, social media updates, search news alerts, chat messages and more, without the need to pull out your phone or tablet from your pocket. Of course for the mass market consumer audience, it needs to be nearly as compact as a bluetooth headset with a retractable micro-display and a priced below $500 to become an accessory interfacing by bluetooth to any Android phone or tablet. I expect this to start becoming huge later this year or soon after. Kopin is working with Motorola Solutions to mass manufacture an industrial version and they want to work on consumer oriented uses. I also expect wearable computing to become huge in the form of intelligent Android wrist watches such as the DVIP Phaeton and the I’m Watch (Casio GB 6900 G-Shock, Sony-Ericsson Liveview and Motorola Moto ACTV also qualify as early attempts)

I wish I had thought to suggest to Sergey Brin and his team when they asked me what was my CES highlight, that I could guide them 20 meters around the corner of the Samsung booth to the Texas Instruments booth that was showing the OMAP5 development kit and the $30 BOM OMAP4 Always Innovating HDMI Stick (similar to the more expensively priced FXI Tech Exynos 4 stick), instead I could only think of telling them that I liked the $75 Eken AllWinner 7″ ICS tablet in the Hilton China hall which was so far away from Central Hall they probably didn’t spend the time to go there.

2. E Ink provided me with a new demonstration of their latest technology in my E Ink On Every Smart Surface video. Featuring the 300DPI 11.5″ E Ink screen, new high-speed stylus on E Ink demos (with the right collaborative text editing and collaborative stylus annotations software, this could be huge!), on devices like the Eton Rukus, E Ink for digital signage. All your local supermarkets may soon be using E Ink for showing prices in stores.

3. All Camcorder companies seem to wake up to the idea of including low power high performance WiFi streaming and upload into consumer camcorders. See my videos of the Sony Bloggie Live, Toshiba Camileo Air10, Canon HF M52. This is awesome! WiFi in camcorders has been on my wishlist of camcorder features since my post of August 2nd 2008 and my updated camcorder wish-list post of January 31st 2010. Finally the camcorder makers are waking up and differentiating! There still are a bunch of features that I would like from these camcorders. High-quality wireless (multi-Bluetooth) and wired external microphones support. 1080p recording and at the same time live WiFi video streaming, Google+ Hangouts live streaming video upload. Automatic resumable YouTube WiFi upload in between takes. Touch screens to edit Titles, Descriptions, Tags right from the camcorder. WiFi upload must be as fast as using a Laptop. But for sure they are on the right track! I’m looking forward to Panasonic’s Sanyo HD3000 level entry into this market, hopefully with all these WiFi features and more!

4. Ice Cream Sandwich on every device! On Rockchip (2, 3), Telechips (2) , AmLogic (2, 3, 4 ) (ICS on AmLogic Set-top-box by Geniatech), Boxchip AllWinner A10 (Cortex-A8), ST Ericsson U8500 (2)

5. Pixel Qi shows latest status. 10.1″ 1280×800 and 7″ 800×480 in mass production, a lot of design wins, big brand products to be announced soon.

6. OLPC XO-3 shown for the first time!, OLPC does it again, this time revolutionizing the use of tablets for education, pricing it below $100 for mass orders, building it sturdy, unbreakable, sunlight readable with a 8″ Pixel Qi, with a solar charger in the screen cover.

7. ARM Powered Google TV has finally been launched! Featuring solutions shown using the Marvell Armada 1500 platform, Mediatek has an ARM Processor for it, LG showed their new ARM Powered Google TV L9 Processor and platform. Sony shows their second generation Google TV, now ARM Powered for cheaper/better and more revolutionary and awesome! I expect we’ll hear about Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, Sharp, Toshiba all will announce ARM Powered Google TV within months from now. By the half of 2012, most new HDTVs will come with ARM Powered Google TV built-in by default! I also expect as soon as the ARM Powered Google TV software is open sourced that we’ll see it run on cheaper ARM Processors that don’t do 1080p60fps, overlays, IR blaster and HDMI input.

8. 4K HDTVs are comming! Yeah! 4K 55″ HDTVs are always the most awesome demonstrations at trade shows and have been for the past 3-4 years! The arguments by supposed home theater experts that 4K is not usable in living rooms are not true! 4K is fantastic, fenomenal technology to have in the home! Just put your 8 megapixel pictures on an SD card, see those pictures on that 4K 55″ HDTV, and be ready to faint, standing up close to the screen the quality is spectacular. Consumers and even professional photographers never get to see the full detail and resolution of their high megapixel photography. Unless you zoom in on pictures, you never get to see more than 2 megapixel of your pictures quality! With a 4K screen in your living room and that you can use as office desktop monitor, the 4K screens are going to be revolutionary. At CES 2012, Sharp claims their 4K-ICC 55″ TV is to be mass manufactured and launched at consumer oriented pricing later this year! Samsung showed a totally awesome 70″ 4K TV. I have a feeling that Sharp, Toshiba, Samsung and others are just about to launch 4K at hopefully way below $10 thousand, hopefully below $2000 soon! If it’s going to be $1999, I recommend everyone save money to get one. As source, all Hollywood movies are already digitized to 4K and that can fit on a regular Blu-ray disc, streamed from YouTube 4K or over 50 4K movies can fit on a 2TB hard drive.

9. Panasonic launches consumer priced HC X900M camcorder with 4K video sensor! But still a 1080p engine for now. The 4K consumer priced camcorders must be very close! My JVC GC-PX10 also has a 4K video sensor! But mine with its Falconbrid 4K processor also is for now only setup to record it to a 1080p (up to 36mbitps) file.

10. Acer shows 10.1″ Iconia Tab A700 1920×1200 Tablet. Purely amazing super high resolution tablet displays and Ice Cream Sandwich works amazingly smoothly on it! Retina Tablet resolution has been achieved! Toshiba seems to want to do lots of weirdly sized HD tablets also.

11. Lenovo shows Tablet Dock MSM8960 Qualcomm Krait Tablet convertible. Qualcomm shows MSM8960 for gaming.

12. iRiver Kibot, the small new robots are cool, basic stuff for now. Within 10-15 years we’ll be having ARM Powered Robots take care of everything in our homes, washing dishes, take out the trash, cook the food, everything else!

13. 55″ OLED screens shown by Samsung and LG. Those are cool for sure! But I expect they are way more expensive to manufacture than 4K LCD screens of the same size today.

14. Freescale launches 2 new skews of their ARM Cortex-A9 i.MX6 processor platform (for E-readers and certain In-Car infotainment segments).

15. New Samsung Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note clones are invading China! Kente shows some examples. Consider that excellent 4.3″ capacitive WVGA 3G-ready Android phones are being sold below $100 in China by now. Check back here on ARMdevices.net during the next few months for a lot of news and coverage on these. Also a cheap new Android phone design by ZTE.

16. Virtualization on Android for Enterprise by VMware, smooth remote desktopping PCoIP protocol on OMAP4 shown by Teradici.

16. LG Spectrum, nice 4.5″ 1280×800 IPS-LCD LTE Android phone! LG for sure plans to play an always bigger role in the high-end smartphones market.

17. The Huawei Ascend P1 and P1 S are awesome looking OMAP4460 1.5Ghz 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus 6.65mm thinnest Smartphone in the world. I think Huawei plans to be a huge player in the worldwide smartphones market. Look for this and much more awesome Huawei Android Smartphones coming out. Their main advantage may be their aggresively competitive pricing. If this phone is sold for $299 unlocked, who wouldn’t buy it?

18. I did my first live Google+ Hangouts On Air from CES, but because of the interference I couldn’t reliably do it at the CES show floor with my headmounted augmented video-blogging system. But I did it every morning on my way between my hotels and the CES showfloor in my series of CES 2012 Monorail Hangouts: 1, 2, 3. I hope to soon do much more impressive things with the Google+ Hangouts On Air features! Expect quality live and on-demand Hangout entertainment from my website at the level of the Hangouts with Barack Obama and Desmond Tutu!

Category: Smart Glass, 4K UHD, Energy Harvesting, Top Video Lists, CES, Geniatech
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Status of Ubuntu for ARM Laptops and Servers

Posted by Charbax – January 24, 2012

Category: Laptops, Servers, Texas Instruments, Ubuntu

David Mandala, Manager of the ARM Team at Canonical talks about the status of Ubuntu Linux on ARM Laptops and Servers, and about their plans for Ubuntu on ARM until 2014 and beyond. Who wouldn’t want to buy an awesome $199 ARM Powered Ultrabook, 13.3″ screen, ARM Cortex-A9 1.5Ghz TI OMAP4460 or 1.8Ghz TI OMAP4470, thinner, lighter than Intel Ultrabooks, 2x longer battery life on a smaller thinner battery (10x with the sunlight readable Pixel Qi), 1GB or 2GB RAM for full speed Chrome and Firefox web browser speeds?

Talking about the status of Ubuntu on TI OMAP3 (beagleboard), OMAP4 (pandaboard), Marvell, Freescale, Calxeda, plans for Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 optimizations by Ubuntu 12.10, ARM Cortex-A15, ARM Cortex-A7, ARMv8 64bit, the imminent inclusion of full hard-float optimization in Ubuntu 12.4 on ARM:

With Ubuntu 12.04 on ARM there is also hard-float support (ARMhf), as previously talked about on Phoronix, and this will mean a huge performance boost for many workloads. Mandala said the performance boost they are seeing is between 5% and 30% improvement for floating-point operations. Also benefiting greatly for end-users is improved font-rendering, web-page scrolling, and other operations from this ARM hardfp support. Other code is also benefiting due to better use of the stack calling convention.

Source: phoronix.com

Genesi’s Hard Float optimizations speeds up Linux performance up to 300% on ARM Laptops (armdevices.net)
ARM Powered Server Calxeda EnergyCore launch video (armdevices.net)
Ubuntu at ARM TechCon 2011 (armdevices.net)
Linaro ARM Linux optimizations status at the Freescale Technology Forum (armdevices.net)
A further update on Linaro status at Computex 2011 (armdevices.net)
Canonical explains the status of Ubuntu on ARM Powered Laptops (armdevices.net)

Category: Laptops, Servers, Texas Instruments, Ubuntu
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Highlights of 2011 on ARMdevices.net

Posted by Charbax – December 31, 2011

Category: 4K UHD, Energy Harvesting, Top Video Lists, Geniatech

I posted 573 videos from 15 tradeshows, with 7.1 Million views on my YouTube channel (doubling my total view count to 14.7 Million), thank you for your 7159 comments, 7397 Likes, thank you for reading my blog, watching my videos, commenting, rating, sending news tips and sharing! Thanks to my 4520 followers on Google+! Since August, I post most of my tech opinions on my Google+. Here are some of my Highlights in ARM Powered devices that I blogged on ARMdevices.net in 2011:

January
Microsoft announces and shows Windows 8 on ARM
All-in-one Motorola Atrix 4G launched
Nvidia announces Project Denver (I think it may be their ARM Cortex-A15 project)
OLPC shows ARM Powered XO-1.75 Laptop
Google confirms ARM Powered Google TV
Pixel Qi shows 7″ and announces 9.7″ and 10.1″ 1280×800
Seco shows pico projector in a lamp concept
view top-20 CES 2011 videos
February
CERN accelerates to 3.5TeV to find Higgs Boson (7TeV in 2014)
Archos has 22% of the tablet market share in France
Samsung Galaxy S2 is launched
Mediatek powers $80 Android smartphones
LG launches first OMAP4430 phone
Google has a giant Booth and dominates at MWC
My interview with Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich designer Mathias Duarte
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 launched
TI talks OMAP5 ARM Cortex-A15
MHL is the new standard for HDMI output through the MicroUSB connector
I ask RIM when Playbook is to get Android apps support
ST Ericsson A9500 ARM Cortex-A9 development kit launched
Nvidia shows quad-core Tegra3
ST Ericsson ST6715 powers sub-$100 Android smartphones
Sony Ericsson Liveview is the first wearable Android wrist watch
view my top MWC videos
Arnova 8 launched
Arnova 10 launched
Asus Transformer Honeycomb laptop launched
March
Nintendo 3DS launched, first mass produced non-glasses 3D portable screen
Shenzhen Ider Sub-$60 Android Set-top-box launched
Zinwell shows $70 Android set-top-box
HTC Flyer with stylus launched
Beagleboard xM launched
TI DaVinci DM816x and DM814x can do 4K2K video playback
Hard Kernel Samsung Exynos 4210 tablet development kit launched
Trim Slice Tegra2 desktop launched
QNX talks about the Blackberry Playbook software
Seco ARM/x86 cross platform modules
Toradex shows Tegra2 on SO-DIMM form factor
My interview with ThePirateBay founder Peter Sunde
I’m interviewed on German Radio DRadio Wissen about my video-blogging
view top-15 CeBIT 2011 videos
view top-6 Embedded World videos
First Archos G9 rumors leak
April
Larry Page starts as Google CEO
Archos at the Shenzhen electronics fair
My review of the $95 Kinstone ARM Cortex-A9 Android tablet
My review of the $87 3.5″ capacitive Android Smartphone FG8, which I still use as my main smartphone today and it works great
Behind the scenes at a little Shenzhen Tablet/Laptop factory
Geniatech talks ARM Cortex-A9 Set-top-box
Karasnn talks cheap Mediatek Android Smartphones
My review of the $120 Android 3.5″ capacitive iphone4-clone H2000
Archos 7c Home Tablet, Rk2918 capacitive shown at Archos Shenzhen headquarters
Hello Kitty booth in Hong Kong
Arnova 10 G2 first demonstrated
AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 set-top-box tested
Ramos ARM Cortex-A9 capacitive tablets booth tour
Rockchip RK2918 in a potentially sub-$50 Android Set-top-box
$125 ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core NEC/Renesas powered capacitive tablet by Livall.cn
Honeycomb keyrings at Rockchip RK2918 booth
My Android Tablet review in the Qatari Desert 2, 3
Archos dominates Hong Kong Android tablet sales
Walking around at the huge Shenzhen Smartphones market, where the worlds cheapest Android smartphones can be found
view top videos filmed at 3 Shenzhen and Hong Kong fairs in April 2011
May
The Chrome OS Team Answers some of my ARM Powered Chromebook questions at Google I/O
Solar Impulse does first solar-powered international flight from Switzerland to Belgium
Google Wallet launched
Samsung Origen Exynos 4210 development kit launched
Pixel Qi shows 10.1″ 1280×800 screen
HD videoconferencing shown on TI OMAP4430
TI talks OMAP4 memory bandwidth
June
ZiiLabs ZMS-20 Dual-core tablet reference designs shown
Android for point-of-sale systems
Cupp computing turns any x86 laptop into an ARM Powered Laptop
Pixel Qi can be solar powered
Shizhu shows Pixel Qi tablets
Walking with Monkeys in the Taiwanese jungle
Qualcomm Dragonboard MSM8260/MSM8660 development board launched
Microsoft shows Metro UI for Windows 8 tablets
view top-20 Computex 2011 videos
My first time flying on the Airbus A380 airplane
iWave Freescale i.MX51/53/27 based PCB designs
Genesi talks ARM hardfloat hardware acceleration
Freescale launches i.MX6 Quad-core processor in tablet reference design
Genesi launches new cheaper i.MX53 based ARM Powered Laptop platform
History and status of Freescale’s Microcontrolers
Freescale i.MX53 development kit
Boundary Devices 12″ i.MX53 Android tablet launched
Linaro status in June 2011
July
My first video of the Archos G9 tablets
August
Google buys Motorola (still processing through worldwide Government regulators needing to accept it)
September
Lenovo A1 7″ Android tablet launched
Toshiba shows awesome 55″ Quad-HD 4K2K screens, I want them to sell it below $1999 now!
Galaxy Note 5.3″ Super AMOLED HD Android smartphone launched, 2, 3
Galaxy Tab 7.7 shown with large Super AMOLED screen, has yet to be released, my guess the screen is too hard/expensive to manufacture for now and they may redesign to fit jacket pockets.
E Ink for credit cards shown
Samsung Galaxy S2 LTE shown, with 4.5″ Super AMOLED Plus screen
Sharp shows 8K4K 85″ HDTV, worlds best TV
My interview with E Ink about the latest news and developments at E Ink
Sony Android tablets P and S launched
Sony PRS-T1 Android E Ink e-reader with infrared dual-touch touchscreen launched
JVC GC-PX10 camcorder launched, has since become my new 1080p camcorder, the JVC Falconbrid processor can maybe soon record 4K2K video at prosumer-prices
Samsung Galaxy Y launched, cheapest Samsung Android phone yet, also see W, Y Pro
Samsung Super Clear LCD compared with Super AMOLED Plus
Huawei Mediapad 7″ 1280×800 Honeycomb Qualcomm MSM8260 tablet launched
3M invests in Pixel Qi
Arnova 10 G2 sold for $99 with newspaper subscription
My review of the sub-$100 N5Zero 5″ capacitive Rk2918 Android tablet
October
Sharp, Toshiba and Sony launch 4K2K Quad-HD TVs and Projectors, mass produce them and sell them below $2000 now, thank you!
Texas Instruments OMAP4460 selected as Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich reference platform for Galaxy Nexus ICS launch
OLPC Summit in San Francisco discuss latest OLPC news in October 2011
Raspberry Pi $25 ARM Powered Desktop launched
I’m Watch Android wrist watch launched
Ubuntu on ARM status in October 2011
Marvell PXA2128 “Tri-Core” tablet reference design launched
Freescale i.MX6 Quad-core Tablet reference design performance demonstrated
ARM Cortex-A7 big.LITTLE announced
ARM Mali Graphics status in October 2011
ARM Cortex-A15 prototype demonstrated
My interview with ARM Inc (USA) President Simon Segars
My interview with ARM CTO Mike Muller at the launch of the ARMv8 64bit architecture, after his keynote
My hands-on with the ARM Powered OLPC XO-1.75
MHL shows the latest HDMI Android features, your smartphone becomes your desktop, your home console and your Set-top-box
November
ARMv8 Technology Preview, a highly technical presentation video
Calxeda EnergyCore ARM Powered server launched with HP Project Moonshot, to disrupt the server market
AppliedMicro X-Gene ARMv8 64bit Server processor demonstrated running on FPGA, a bit more than a year before it’s ready
Mali T-658 announced, PS3 quality graphics in your pocket
My head-mounted augmented video-blogging system demonstrated and explained, 2
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich source code is released, soon smoothly working on every ARM Processor, OMAP4430, ST-Ericsson A9500, Tegra3, Rockchip, ZiiLAbs ZMS-20 more coming..
Samsung announced Exynos 5250 ARM Cortex-A15
December
Archos Home Connect launched, probably best home radio alarm clock
Archos Smart Home Phone, probably best home DECT phone
Ice Cream Sandwich previewed on the Archos 101 G9 Tablet
My first video of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Test driving the Renault Twizy electric car
Archos 101 G9 1.5Ghz OMAP4460 Turbo launched, performance possibly around Tegra3 and priced $200 cheaper
Google Analytics launching social media analytics tools
My interview with Yves Behar, probably the top consumer electronics designer in the world
My interview with MG Siegler, the most influential Apple fanboy number 1
My interview with Gabe Rivera, Techmeme.com CEO, most influential tech news aggregator
I was interviewed for 10 minutes on Twit by Leo Laporte and Sarah Lane!, showcasing my head-mounted augmented video-blogging system and voicing some of my tech opinions

Thanks for watching my videos of 2011, Happy New Year!

Category: 4K UHD, Energy Harvesting, Top Video Lists, Geniatech
4 Comments – Feed

Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich source code released, how soon on every SoC?

Posted by Charbax – November 15, 2011

Category: Opinions, Google, Android

Wow, Google just released the source code for Ice Cream Sandwich in this Google Groups post.

Expect all Gingerbread-capable devices be able to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich rapidly. The question is only how soon each ARM SoC can have it fully hardware accelerated? Who is doing that work of doing all the hardware optimizations? Who is eventually disabling or tuning down certain hardware accelerated advanced user interface features in the software if that hardware is not powerful enough or of lower performance?

As of course one can expect all the latest high-end Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9 processors to support this soon, including all devices on the TI OMAP4, Samsung Exynos 4210, Qualcomm MSM8260/8660, Nvidia Tegra2 and Tegra3, St-Ericsson U8500/U9500 and more. Imagine how awesome it is going to be to see firmware updates upgrading all Tablets and Smartphones using following cheap SoCs to Ice Cream Sandwich:
– TI OMAP3630/3530/3430 ARM Cortex-A8
– Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8
– Freescale i.MX51/53 ARM Cortex-A8
– Marvell PXA618 Single Core
– Qualcomm 8255/8255T Single Core up to 1.5Ghz
– Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz
– Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz
– AmLogic 8726 ARM Cortex-A9 Single Core 800Mhz
– NEC/Renesas EV2 ARM Cortex-A9 Dual Core 533Mhz
– Qualcomm MSM7227 ARM11
– Mediatek MTK6573 ARM11
– VIA 8710 ARM11

and more! Does anyone know how to get a confirmation from each of these ARM SoC providers to get an idea about how soon and if they expect to get full Ice Cream Sandwich support? Who is going to make that work, do each SoC provider, each device maker have to do all the work or is Google contributing a lot of those software optimizations already as part of the open source Android 4.0.1 code release?

How soon can we expect to find some awesome sub-$100 and sub-$200 fully capacitive, fully smooth Android phones, tablets running on the amazing Android 4.0.1? Can we expect them all now to be fully officially allowed to pre-load the full Google Marketplace, having the full Google-supported Tablet features, official tablet services pre-loaded, no questions asked? I expect Google’s new Ice Cream Sandwich Compatibility Definition Document to allow for every one of those SoCs full compatibility, even the cheapest, and not requiring any specific sensors, screen sizes, buttons, 3G features or other to get official Google Marketplace on those.

I expect that we may see Ice Cream Sandwich on all these SoC, even the ARM11 based ones, starting as soon as before the end of the year, or maybe in January or February of next year. I expect all cheap tablets and phones to run the latest Ice Cream Sandwich, all come with the official Google Marketplace legally pre-loaded, regardless of sensors present. I also expect either Android 4.0.1 or perhaps later coming Android 4.1, Android 4.2 to also provide full support for Set-top-boxes, Laptops, E-readers and more. That means, I expect this to provide a full Google TV experience on HDMI out. I expect this to provide a full Chrome browser when outputting a HD output and keyboard/mouse is detected. I expect this to provide the best ever user interface and applications platform for E-Ink and Pixel Qi based e-readers, powering a better reading experience.

Source: techmeme.com

Category: Opinions, Google, Android
2 Comments – Feed

Some of my expectations for Ice Cream Sandwich (to be shown starting October 19th)

Posted by Charbax – October 5, 2011

Category: Opinions

I expect this to be the open source Android OS for:
– Smartphones (from $50 to $600) iphone-killer
– Tablets (from $50 to $600) ipad-killer
– Set-top-boxes (from $50 to $200) ARM Powered Google TV 2.0
– Laptops (from $100 to $600) ultrabook/netbook/macbook-killer
– E-readers (from $75 to $300) kindle-killer
and combinations thereof. We can have 1 device that does it all when using MHL/HDMI output and the Pixel Qi LCD.

This is the first Android OS that is ready to use the latest ARM Cortex-A9 processors that not only run at 1.5Ghz (+50% compared to Tegra2) but most importantly also introduce much faster memory bandwidht (+200% compared to Tegra2).

This means devices with Ice Cream Sandwich can now run a full computer. A FULL ANDROID LAPTOP.

Just a sec here. Google has Chrome OS, brace for it…. I think it might merge now.

Think of the Atrix 4G, now over the MHL Connector, you can dock your phone to any HDMI monitor such as your HDTV, get your Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and your Android phone is now powerful enough to run a full speed 720p or even 1080p Chrome browser.

Laptop makers want to release ARM Powered Laptops without touch screens running Chrome OS only, sure enough, they can do that. But if that Laptop has a touch screen, it can DUAL-BOOT with Ice Cream Sandwich. That is how I see them merge. Basically Android gets a full Chrome browser. And Chrome OS can safely and easily switch to Android mode on ARM Powered devices if needed.

This is the recipe for the ultimate ARM Powered device. Ice Cream Sandwich Powered.

But Ice Cream Sandwich is also less bloatware, a faster user experience, it can run on the cheapest $50 Smartphones to destroy what’s left of Nokia’s Symbian sales in the developing world. It can run on ARM9 like Mediatek, ARM11 like Mediatek and Qualcomm, ARM Cortex-A8 single core processors like Rockchip RK2918 and Telechips 8803, as well as single core ARM Cortex-A9 like AmLogic and low frequency ARM Cortex-A9 like the NEC/Renesas one. But I expect every other ARM Processor to be fully supported. Obviously slower processors may have some UI layers automatically disabled such as having less holographs, less animations, less transitions, so that the OS scales perfectly for every hardware platform and at the same time that it can fully take advantage of the newest fastest performance.

In terms of looks compared to Gingerbread and Honeycomb? I don’t care about the looks, give us whatever the user experience scientists have measured is the absolute best design for a user interface. This is a simplification of the smartphone but at the same time the enabling of new more advanced features for the first time.

Obviously that a Nexus Prime for $529 unlocked with a new 4.65″ 1280×720 Super AMOLED HD screen, with a new TI OMAP4460 or/and a new Qualcomm MSM8660, obviously that is going to be the most awesome reference product for this new version of Android. My question is how much of the Atrix-features for HD web browsing, full Chrome on HDMI output, I wonder how much of that is shown already this October 11th or if the OS is presented for now just as a Smartphone upgrade and that the whole rest of the ecosystem gets added later.

What do you think Ice Cream Sandwich is going to be like?

Category: Opinions
33 Comments – Feed

My take on Samsung at IFA, awesome but perhaps misplaced

Posted by Charbax – September 4, 2011

Category: Opinions, Samsung, IFA

Probably the highlight of this IFA show for me has thus far been the unveiling of the awesome Samsung Galaxy Note (2), Samsung Galaxy S2 LTE and Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 for reasons of the pure awesomeness to see the new high resolution Super AMOLED screens in action (4.5″, 5.3″ and 7.7″) and to get a feeling of the upcoming probable Nexus Prime hardware experience.

There is some talk on blogs about Samsung removing the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 from the showfloor today on http://www.techmeme.com/110903/p15#a110903p15 and this has now become the conspiracy theory here in Berlin around the IFA show.

I do not believe for one second that Apple has any authority over Samsung at IFA, regardless of the bogus lawsuits going on in bogus court rooms in Dusseldorf, Netherlands and Australia. Samsung is paying the IFA consumer electronics show millions of euros for their hall, over many years, Apple never spent one single cent at IFA or at any other trade shows worldwide for that matter. Apple thinks they are too cool to compete in trade shows, Apple does not want people to think of them as a mere competitor in a market.

Here’s what I think Samsung might be thinking right now, and what I have been saying from the first second I saw their latest devices:

1. Samsung is now the worlds leading Smart Phone manufacturer, in front of Apple.

2. Just like Apple, Samsung makes much higher profit margins on the smartphones than on the tablets.

3. Even with the new Super AMOLED factory now in function in South Korea, Samsung can simply not output enough Super AMOLED screens of all the different sizes and types before this Christmas sales.

4. The 7.7″ Super AMOLED screen is awesome and all, but Samsung cannot justify the extra cost of manufacturing 7.7″ Super AMOLED vs continuing to use LCD on Tablet sizes.

5. Samsung needs to make about 50 million Smartphone sized Super AMOLED Plus screens during these next few months, there is no space in their factory to also make 7.7″ such screens, and it basically costs 3x to 4x more to make a 7.7″ Super AMOLED screen compared to a 4.5″ size, cause you can fit upwards 3x to 4x more smartphone sized screens on their manufacturing process.

6. Super AMOLED screens are beautiful to look at, bravo. But the LCD manufacturing process is operating at about 40x larger scale worldwide. Also, advances in LCD screens cannot really justify the cost difference in manufacturing those expensive Super AMOLED screens.

7. The reason Samsung can make Super AMOLED screens today even though I would guess the Super AMOLED Plus screen costs 2x more than the highest-end LCD, is that Samsung is still making $250 profit or more per smartphone when they sell them upwards $500 through carriers and unlocked.

8. My main complaint on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 form factor is that it is too wide to fit normal jacket pockets, I cannot fit it inside of my jacket pocket. That means that it makes it much less likely people will carry it around everywhere, but that it would have to mostly stay at home. While being shown at IFA, the device did have a sticker saying something like “this may not be the final design”, maybe Samsung has figured out from mine and others comments at the show, that if they really want to release a 7.7″ tablet, they may have to consider trying to cut more of the bezel off of the device.

Here are some pictures comparing the my Archos 70 Internet Tablet that I have used every day for the past 11 months because I can carry it everywhere in my jacket pocket vs the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7″ shown at IFA that simply does not fit in jacket pockets so has to stay at home:

While the Samsung Galaxy Note also is fantasticly awesome, my suggestion to technology fans is not to expect that Samsung can manufacture enough of those 5.3″ HD Super AMOLED screens before the end of this year. Also, Samsung may be realizing that it may be very hard to sell the feature of using a stylus on top of a capacitive screen, it may be too hard for them to lower the lag time and increase the accuracy enough to make it usable. In which situations does mass market consumers really want to use a stylus often? I can think of situations such as collaborating in real-time on annotating text, but I don’t think a light emitting Super AMOLED screen is the right type of screen for that usage.

So where does Samsung go from here? My guess is that they will focus as much of the Super AMOLED factory as they can on making 4.3″ and 4.5″ screens for the upcoming Nexus Prime = Samsung Galaxy S2 = Samsung Galaxy S2 LTE = Verizon Droid Prime, etc. This is where they are getting the most profit. And while the Samsung Galaxy Note might come out, and can definitely sell plenty more than Dell Stream 5 did a year ago, I think Samsung is probably going to use LCD for the Tablets that they’ll release before the end of this year. My guess is Samsung may release updates for their 7″ and 10.1″ tablets before the end of this year, and those will likely use LCD and not Super AMOLED.

In the medium term, I guess that AMOLED may be phased out again, but it already cannot be considered a failure in any way, it has provided Samsung with a unique differentiator in their market share gaining activities in the most important smartphone market. By the time AMOLED factories may be closed in 2-3 years, the quality of LCD at that time will have increased so much, with technologies such as Pixel Qi, IPS and FFS, that it will not make sense to make any AMOLED anymore. Most importantly, the profit margins on smartphones will quickly be reduced as the smartphone becomes a commodity, the profit margins will not anymore allow for the price difference that there is between LCD and AMOLED.

Category: Opinions, Samsung, IFA
10 Comments – Feed

Genesi launches new cheaper/better i.MX53 based Laptops and Desktops

Posted by Charbax – June 22, 2011

Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, Freescale, FTF, Ubuntu

Here is the board for now, they are going to launch the new Genesi i.MX53 based Laptops and Desktops around July or August, providing more performance, using lower power, at lower cost. The current Genesi Efika MX Smartbook i.MX51 based laptop is selling for $199, the Genesi MX Smarttop i.MX51 Desktop is selling for $129, they plan for the next generation i.MX53 based Laptop (Smartbook) and Desktop (Smarttop) to be sold for even cheaper. They are also working to combine their ARM based Laptop with the Pixel Qi screen as soon as it’s mass produced.

Also watch my video interview with Konstantinos Margaritis talking about the way Genesi is optimizing Linux on ARM to make it up to 300% faster on these ARM Powered laptops and desktops.

Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, Freescale, FTF, Ubuntu
35 Comments – Feed

My top-20 videos filmed at Computex 2011 in Taiwan

Posted by Charbax – June 8, 2011

Category: Energy Harvesting, Top Video Lists, Computex

I just returned from 10 days video-blogging over 44 videos from Taiwan. Here’s my list of my top-20 best Computex 2011 videos:

1. Pixel Qi launches 10.1″ super thin 1280×800 screen, their first showing of the 1280×800 resolution Pixel Qi screen to be mass manufactured in Q4, they also will mass produce 7″ in Q3, and listen to this video for more talk by Mary Lou Jepsen on the latest status and news on Pixel Qi in the industry.

2. Latest e-ink e-reader news from Freescale, check out the new Android friendly i.MX508 that may be used in the new Nook and Kobo to also use Android as software basis for e-ink e-reader innovation. This video is also featuring the new Acoustic Pulse Recognition (APR) touch screen technology integrated in a prototype e-reader by Tyco Electronics.

3. ShiZhu Technology shows Pixel Qi Tablets, ShiZhu Technology is a big Chinese manufacturer, they can now mass produce Android Tablets with Pixel Qi screens. This video features comparisons of its matte Pixel Qi screen compared with the glossy Archos 70 Internet Tablet screen and with HTC flyer with a matte anti-reflective layer.

4. MHL now in several phones at Computex 2011, the MHL protocol for sending HDMI over Micro-USB is now not only on the best ever smartphone the Samsung Galaxy S2, it’s also now in HTC Sensation, HTC Flyer, Evo 4G and Evo 3D phones and more to come.

5. The whole ARM Powered Tablet or Laptop with Pixel Qi screen can run on a relatively small and cheap $3 1W solar panel, Solar panels could be built-in to the bezel, on the back of tablets or laptops or on a flip-out screen protector to thus be able to power the whole tablet and laptop and charge its battery just from direct or indirect sunlight. This means children in Africa, India, other places with a lot of Sun but little power, could be getting Internet connected ARM Powered devices that can run just on sun power. Pixel Qi is able to demonstrate that this works, but they didn’t have the time to set it up at Computex and the day I was there to film it was half-cloudy in Taipei (it had been raining some of the days during Computex) so perhaps not optimal for filming the actual demonstration. Pixel Qi could be releasing an official video showing pretty soon on their blog proving that this works today.

6. Texas Instruments talks Memory Bandwidth and Desktop Computing performance on the OMAP4430, TI suggests that they may have the fastest memory bandwidth on their OMAP4430, OMAP4460 and on the newly announced OMAP4470 that goes to 1.8Ghz.

7. Cupp Computing turns every Laptop into an ARM Powered laptop with hard drive to SSD replacement module, this is really awesome, it means that all Intel/AMD x86 powered laptops can easily get added an ARM Processor to their motherboards, or added in replacement of the Hard Drive with an SSD, to provide every laptop with the option to run up to 40 hours on a battery on a button switch. Imagine if by a button switch you could automatically resume your x86 work in the ARM version of Windows, thus extending your battery runtime by 10x or more. This could be a great transitional solution from x86 to ARM for people not yet totally confortable with going away from x86.

8. HD Video Conferencing on Texas Instruments OMAP4430, 720p and 1080p SIP and Skype video conferencing is now possible on the modern ARM Powered smartphones and tablets, just amazing.

9. Hands-on with Nvidia Kal-El Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 1.2Ghz (or more) prototype tablet, Nvidia continues their run towards bringing Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 to the market, to be clocked at least with 1.2Ghz maybe more, it may reach the commercial top brand name Honeycomb tablets after August, normally well in time before Christmas. Nvidia has upgraded their graphics and video playback support significantly.

10. ZiiLabs ZMS-20 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9, with ZiiLab’s Stemcell alternative to DSP/GPU for massive multi-threaded computing it seems to run Honeycomb smoothly on their Jaguar 10.1″ and 7″ reference design tablets.

11. Nufront Cortex-A9 (up to) 2Ghz runs Ubuntu 11.4 ARM Edition, they show that they have completed their tablet reference design, now just gearing up for commercial announcements for products using their new powerful chip.

12. Qualcomm says their Dual-core strength is in being asynchronous, Qualcomm’s implementation of the ARM Dual-core is about to reach many of the top most powerful ARM Powered devices. With the HTC Senstation coming out now, Asus Memo coming out later and many other smartphones and tablets in preparation.

13. ZTE Light tablet featuring their 7″ Pixel Qi screen (not yet matte, still glossy on that prototype).

14. Asus Memo, worlds first 7″ Honeycomb, Honeycomb looks great on 7″, even with it only being optimized for larger 1280×800 screens for now. Maybe it is too bad that Asus only wants to sell this with a 3D screen and this expensive looking Bluetooth headset/remote control MiMic thing. I also filmed another 7″ Honeycomb tablet, the Viewsonic 7x using Tegra2.

15. Samsung Origen, the new $199 Exynos 4210 development board, possibly the most powerful publicly released ARM Powered development board, to be sold for $199, featuring Samsung’s latest Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor with Mali-400 graphics, fast DDR3 RAM and other features of fast memory bandwidth.

16. ARM President Tudor Brown Computex 2011 keynote, 15 minutes of his Computex 2011 keynote talking about how ARM is dominating the world.

17. ARM keynote at Computex 2011, Ian Drew is the Executive VP of Marketing at ARM, here’s my recording of most of his keynote speech. Sorry for missing out the first 3 minutes in this video, and my audio volume is a bit low you have to turn up your playback volume to the maximum to hear things clearly enough.Q Which was fun to come right after the Intel keynote. A notable quote from this keynote is this part: “Multiple options is always better than one size fits all”.

18. Qualcomm Dragonboard, $300-$500 Dual-core MSM8660/APQ8060 development board to work on Qualcomm’s Dual-core platform.

19. VIA WonderMedia Prizm WM8710 ARM11 Gingerbread solution, now VIA also has a newer faster DSP-accelerated Gingerbread solution for low-cost Android tablets.

20. ARM Powered Android to lower cost and power consumption of Point-of-sale setups, POSLab shows in this video how they are implementing ARM Powered solutions runing POS software on top of Android to significantly lower the cost and power consumption of Point-of-sale systems to be used by all stores around the world.

Category: Energy Harvesting, Top Video Lists, Computex
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Chris Pirillo says Chromebook just killed the PC industry

Posted by Charbax – May 13, 2011

Category: Laptops, Opinions, Google, Chrome OS

My take on it is that the Chromebook is the first serious challenger to Windows/Mac in terms of being installed in a mass market retail product. It’s the first ever mass market Linux laptop (after the One Laptop Per Child non-profit reaching 2.5 million children with Linux Laptops in the developping world since 2007). It’s the first ever mass market ARM Powered laptop. It can be configured to be the cheapest laptop to make, the safest, the fastest, the thinnest, the lightest and the easiest to use. Chromebook may be the first successful carrier subscription based laptop.

For Chromebook to sell more than Windows, here’s what I think Chromebook needs to be:

– $199 or less in an ARM Powered configuration
– Use Pixel Qi with ARM and you’ve got 30 hours battery runtime in a sub-1kg 11.6″ or 12.1″ super slim form factor
– They should subsidize these in partnership with the carriers to do a subscription model for normal consumers like this:
1. Sell it for $99 or less on a 2-year contract with $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plan
2. Bandwidth upgrades should be max $10/GB, $20/5GB, $30/10GB on-demand one-click
3. They can use carrier billing (thus carrier revenue share) for bandwidth upgrades, for cloud media subscriptions, on-demand, Chrome Web Store web apps and for all Google Checkout based online shopping
4. Provide an optional hardware upgrade once a year with contract extension. Used devices can be resold refurbished.
5. Provide 100GB or more cloud storage and full Google Apps for consumers with the subscription, offer guarantee of available of advanced web apps such as HD video editing (with many or most of the features of Avid/Finalcut), photo editor. And all these web apps must feel near instant to load and work offline, a web app should only need to get reloaded if it detects that there is a new version available. Gmail should load instantly for example.
6. Obviously, Google Voice and Google Music needs to be worldwide. They should also expand with a Google Video cloud storage. Basically they can allow people to upload 20’000 songs and 1’000 movies for free, the reason being, Google only needs to store one copy of each song or movie, and if the upload client (also on Chrome OS) detects that the file you want to upload already exists on Google’s servers in equal or better quality, it should instantly beam it to your account without actually requiring you to upload anything. Google should not care to try to filter out any “illegal” Mp3, Flac, DivX, MKV files. Eventually they can introduce unlimited music/movies subscription plans like Spotify/Netflix but they should aim at being able to include access to everything in those unlimited subscriptions, this might only be achievable through Government regulation of online content subscriptions.

If Google can deliver on those things and quickly, which is what I expect them to be able to do, then I think it’s obvious Chromebook could become the number 1 PC/Laptop OS as quickly as they became number 1 OS in smartphones since the Nexus One was released.

Can we expect to see some ARM Powered Chromebooks (or Chromiumbooks) at Computex in Taiwan at the end of May from all the Taiwanese notebook designers (Inventec, Pegatron, Wistron, Foxconn, Shuttle, Gigabyte etc..) who design upwards 90% of worldwide notebooks?

ARM Powered Chromebooks to be released soon (armdevices.net)
Google ‘Chromebook’ focuses on enterprise push – Computerworld (news.google.com)
Google aims at Microsoft with Chromebooks (ft.com)

Category: Laptops, Opinions, Google, Chrome OS
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Apple to (obviously) use ARM in next Macbook

Posted by Charbax – May 6, 2011

Category: Laptops, Opinions

Apple profits mostly thanks to ARM technology

Semiaccurate.com cites sources, and the whole blogosphere is erupting over the rumor that Apple is preparing to use ARM instead Intel in their next Macbook. Here’s my take on it:

Thanks to ARM technology, Apple has become the worlds second biggest company (valued at $322 Billion) after Exxon Mobil (valued at $411 Billion). Before using ARM, Apple was in near bankruptcy, and then they got the idea to make those ARM Powered iPod. And as the obvious thing in 2007 they introduced the ARM Powered iPhone. The iPhone now stands for more than 50% of Apple’s $70 Billion yearly revenues and the iPhone may actually represent more than 75% of Apple’s yearly $17 Billion profit.

ARM is the best way to make huge profits.

And Apple needs to find all ways to keep making big profits, as their share is priced so high, it can only stay as high for as long as they can find ways to continue to make huge profits.

The iPhone may provide Apple with as much as 334% profit margins. ($150 BOM and $650 average sale price)

The iPad may provide Apple with about 155% profit margins. ($225 BOM and $575 average sale price)

The Macbook Air, while expensive, probably only provide Apple with 64% profit margin. ($700 BOM and $1200 average sale price)

This is Apple’s ARM Powered laptop plan:

Make the thinner, lighter ARM Powered OSX laptop, with a Pixel Qi type screen they could achieve 30 hours battery runtime or more. It would cost them only $300 to make (BOM) and Apple probably thinks they can still sell it for at least $799 that’s a 166% profit margin, nearly 3x more profits for Apple compared to them still using Intel.

The question for Apple R&D is only this one, should they go ahead and use Apple A5 ARM Cortex-A9 (clocked higher than in iPad2’s 861Mhz) with some faster memory bandwidth design, put in there some more RAM and optimize their OSX/iOS mashup software for a release before this years Christmas already? Or should Apple wait for Apple A6 ARM Cortex-A15 and to try and have that ready for mass selling before Christmas 2012 at the latest? How do you think Apple will make that OSX/iOS ARM based OS mashup work for their next Macbook? (post in the comments)

You have to consider, I am not suggesting that Apple will succeed in continuing to keep making so huge profits on ARM Powered devices. I for example believe that the $87 Android Smartphones and the diversity in high-end Android smartphones is a significant threat to Apple’s iPhone profit margins and marketshare*. Though I am definitely sure that Apple will continue to make 100x more profits on their ARM Powered devices compared to their Intel based devices, and that thus Apple is obviously aiming to shift their Notebook line to ARM as soon as possible.

* especially if they continue making design mistakes like the Anntenna not working in left hand and the iOS devices recording your every move for years in an unencrypted cache file any friend/enemy/backdoor-hacker can snoop on over 100 million iOS device users until they manually decide to upgrade with their new 666MB iOS upgrade file.

Acer to focus more on ARM Powered devices (armdevices.net)
Rumor: Apple To Replace Intel Chips With ARM Processors On Laptops? (macstories.net)
Apple Reportedly Looking To Move From Intel To ARM Processors (thenextweb.com)
Apple ditching Intel for ARM in future MacBooks tip insiders (slashgear.com)
Apple reportedly plans ARM shift for laptops (go.theregister.com)
IDC: ARM-Powered Devices, Such As Apple’s iPad Can Be Classified a PC Device (cultofmac.com)

Category: Laptops, Opinions
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Chrome OS laptops pricing speculation/rumors appear

Posted by Charbax – April 21, 2011

Category: Opinions, Google, Chrome OS

Chrome OS devices to be cheap

Neowin.net says sources confirm the first Chrome OS notebooks are going to be sold starting around late June or early July and the pricing might be innovative using subscription model tied with ones Gmail account.

The search giant is planning on using an unconventional form of distribution to customers. Google will be selling the devices as part of a subscription based model with Gmail to customers.

According to our source, Google plans to make the notebooks available for $10-$20 a month per user, and will provide hardware refreshes as they are released as part of the package, and will replace faulty hardware for the life of the subscription. On top of this, Google will make the devices available for a one time payment as a normal retailer would.

Here’s the type of pricing that I am expecting.

At retail without subsidy:

ARM Cortex-A9 Powered Chrome OS notebooks:

– $99 (10.1″, 2GB RAM)
– $149 (12.1″ or 13.3″, 4GB RAM)

Intel Atom Powered Chrome OS notebooks:

– $149 (10.1″, 2GB RAM)
– $199 (12.1″ or 13.3″, 4GB RAM)

Subsidized on 2-year subscription plan:

ARM Powered Chrome OS:
– 10.1″, 2GB RAM, Free with $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plan.
– 12.1″ or 13.3″, 4GB RAM, $49 with $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plan.

Intel Powered Chrome OS:
– 10.1″, 2GB RAM, $49 with $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plan.
– 12.1″ or 13.3″, 4GB RAM, $99 with $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plan.

How the 2-year subscription works:

– The $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plans can easily get more bandwidth added to them through one-click bandwidth increase option in settings at a rate something like $1/100mb or $10/2GB type of increments, such extra bandwidth could be added and be used during a month after being added for example. Bandwidth addicts might spend a lot of money on a lot of 3G/LTE bandwidth this way.

– Google could sell these Chrome OS plans to Gmail.com and Google Apps users. The ARM Powered Chrome OS notebook might get 1 free hardware upgrade/exchange per year (with 2-year subscription contract extension), the Intel Powered Chrome OS notebook might allow hardware upgrade/exchange per year for a $99 payment (with 2-year subscription contract extension).

– Google might include a bunch of online storage with this subscription, for example 100GB, storage space usable for Gmail, Docs, Picasaweb and other upcoming Google Cloud Storage services. All data on a Chrome OS notebook (as well added through SD card or even USB hard drive) can automatically get synchronized with the Google cloud storage services. More storage can also easily be purchased in a one-click process.

– Also part of this subscription system, Google takes a consumers payment informations, either credit card or even direct bank account informations, and provides one-click shopping solution as well across all Google Checkout services. Thus monetizing more online sales and also making it easier for consumers to buy things online.

Things to consider about Chrome OS:

Consider an ARM Powered Chrome OS is super thin, super light, runs 10-30 hours on a battery depending on without/with Pixel Qi, consider also all Chrome OS laptops have larger screens, better keyboards, faster boot, faster web browsing speed, better web apps support, they are safer to use, unhackable, uncrackable, no virus possible, they are easy to replace as all data is synched on the cloud, but still HTML5 web apps will work offline, including even advanced apps like video and photo editing, they can even support all the most advanced 3D games. Consider also Chrome OS laptops can easily manage offline storage, either built-in, even hard drive slot or external USB storage and SD cards.

What do you think Google’s Chrome OS pricing will be like? Post your ideas and suggestions in the comments.

Google To Sell Chrome OS on a Subscription-Based Model? (thechromesource.com)
Chrome OS Notebooks: By Subscription? (technologizer.com)
Google to sell subscriptions to Chrome OS notebooks? (go.theregister.com)
Google planning $20 Chrome OS hardware subscription option? (geek.com)
Google to offer ChromeOS notebooks on subscription plan (teleread.com)
Could A Google Subscription Service For The Chrome Notebook Computer Work? (lockergnome.com)
Chrome OS Nears Release, But Where are the Netbooks? (pcworld.com)

Category: Opinions, Google, Chrome OS
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Sony and Samsung to release ARM Powered Chrome OS notebooks this summer?

Posted by Charbax – March 27, 2011

Category: Opinions, Google

Image via Wikipedia

Yes! Well, I just put this out here, as a rumor. What do you think?

Here’s what I think Samsung is doing, preparing a super thin Exynos 4210 ARM Cortex-A9 based laptop for summer release, running Chrome OS nicely and 10+ hours battery runtime even as it weights less than a kilo.

Here’s what I think Sony is doing, preparing a super thin Nvidia Tegra2 ARM Cortex-A9 based laptop for summer release, running Chrome OS nicely and 10+ hours battery runtime even as it weights less than a kilo.

Best kicker out of all this? MSRP for these should be below $199 unsubsidized for the whole chew-bang. Those could even be sold $99 subsidized yet not even requiring a contract but just using month-to-month 3G/LTE data as a service (for example, just requiring that the user pay the first $100 in data credit in advance, could be enough for 5 months of $20/month/2GB data service packages, using more than 2GB/month on cellular and the user would have to pay more at a rate of $10/GB on demand or just use the Internet over WiFi or Ethernet for free). Include a 1280×800 Pixel Qi screen, and the battery runtime instantly could increase to upwards 30 hours and the whole experience be sunlight readable.

Of course, Toshiba, Dell, Acer, Asus are all also working on this. And all the Texas Instruments OMAP4430/4440, Marvell Armada 610, Freescale i.MX6 and even Nvidia Tegra3 are also going to be among the choices used in these devices.

Obviously, Apple is investing a farm in preparing their first Apple A5 ARM Cortex-A9 powered OSX for ARM Powered Macbook mega-slim, and Microsoft is investing a castle in making Windows 8 for ARM ready on time so they can try to convince ARM Powered laptop makers to just use Windows as a Chrome OS or Ubuntu alternative.

How quickly do you think ARM Powered laptops will dominate the laptop market? Post your opinions in the comments.

Sony crafting VAIOs with Chrome OS, external GPUs and Thunderbolt tech? (engadget.com)
Google ships last Cr-48 laptop ‘for now,’ partner Chrome OS devices still on track for summer (engadget.com)
The Cost of Chrome OS: How About $250 or Less? (technologizer.com)

Category: Opinions, Google
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Archos Gen9 tablets, 1.6Ghz Dual-core, 3G, to be announced in June

Posted by Charbax – March 18, 2011

Category: Tablets, Opinions, Archos, Google

Archos just announced that their revenues are up 44% for 2010 sales compared to 2009 sales, to $118 Million in yearly sales. They also managed to increase their profit margins from 13.5% to 23.3%. In terms of actual profits after R&D, Marketing and other expenses, Archos is about break-even. Archos plans to more than double its revenues and profits in 2011, grabbing about 5% of the worldwide tablet market share expected in 2011 (they captured 22% market share in France for November-December 2010, behind iPad 67% but infront of Samsung 4%, so it should be doable even as tablet competition strongly increases). They plan to do that among other by launching Generation 9 in June (at least show it for the first time), that’s only 3 months from now!

Here are the first few details as reported by bestofmicro.com from what they heard at Archos investors meeting today about the Gen9 tablets (what’s in bold is from the report, the rest of following text are my added speculations and guessing):

– ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core 1.6Ghz, it’s the fastest processor in a tablet ever unveiled thus far. I expect this to be a customized Texas Instruments OMAP4440, but that is only because I guess Archos will continue their long time partnership with TI that they’ve had for over 10 years now.

– New innovative 3G modem. Yup, we’re getting 3G (at least as an option). What kind of 3G? How they implement it? I dunno, it seems they have a new special way of doing it? I hope they do it with some kind of modem module that can be added or swaped, thus making the tablet compatible with all types of cellular networks current and future and making production and distribution easy, anyone think it could be a module? Somehow allowing for space for a standard USB 3G modem on an “internal” USB host could also be a very innovative way to simply add 3G to the devices, the back of the device could “simply” have some space available to insert any standard compact 3G modem such as the Huawei or ZTE 3G usb dongles that anyone can buy everywhere for as little as $20 unlocked.

– 6 sizes from 5″ to 10″. That’s the sizes it seems they are aiming at. It might mean Archos noticed their 7″ and 10″ Gen8 were much more popular and in demand than the smaller sizes, and it might mean Archos is realizing a tablet has to be at least 5″, perhaps they leave the smaller sizes to the Arnova line? I expect/hope all are capacitive, even the 5″ one. Likely sizes are 5″, 7″, 10.1″, other possible sizes (since there are 6 sizes planned), 9.7″ 4:3 aspect ratio, 5.8″, 8.9″, 8″ 4:3 aspect ratio. I also hope Archos and Pixel Qi can synchronize release schedules so Archos can provide Pixel Qi matte capacitive screen option on all these sizes, at least as an option. Would you pay $50/$100 extra for Pixel Qi if Pixel Qi is not yet fully mass produced? One can hope Pixel Qi is fully mass produced in time, and that somehow Archos sees the opportunity in using it accross the line, thus making Gen9 ready for productivity, ready for real reading, ready for outdoor use, ready for use in professional and study situations, ready for serious collaboration on text annotations, ready to be Kindle-killer and iPad-killer all at the same time.

– All are Android, obviously it has to be Honeycomb (source code for Honeycomb has yet to be released in the open by Google, it should be done any day now), can Google finally open up Android and allow value Archos tablets the full Google Marketplace access? I would expect so, that could hopefully allow Archos to be certified. (this is totally up to Google is my guess)

– Archos says they continue to focus on aiming for the medium range pricing. My guess is it likely stays below $300, but if they do 3G, Pixel Qi and if they are first out with OMAP4440, who knows, perhaps the price might sneak up to something below $400. Archos CEO is planning all this based on offering the best possible value they can, my guess is that they aim to stay below $300 for the basic models.

– They continue to make hard drive versions. Reason being hard drives provide much more storage at much lower cost. My expectation is at least some of the 6 sizes will have hard drive options. Capacity can depend on how thick they can accept that hard drive to be, cause 2.5″ hard drives can go up to 1TB as far as I know, but those are probably too fat. So 250GB for sure, 320GB and 500GB again maybe, if the 320GB or/and 500GB are available in super slim mode.

Well that’s all they have teased for us for now. What other features are you hoping Archos is preparing for us in the Gen9 tablets? write in the comments. You can also comment in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=43708&p=337531#p337531

Sources: http://www.archos.com/corporate/investors/financial_doc/ARCHOS_2010_Results_en.pdf, http://www.bestofmicro.com/actualite/28876-Tablette-Android.html

Category: Tablets, Opinions, Archos, Google
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ARMdevices.net

Results for pixel qi

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Chrome OS laptops pricing speculation/rumors appear

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