Engadget.com: Qualcomm S4 MSM8960 development platform tablet

Posted by Charbax – November 19, 2011

This is the new Qualcomm S4 MSM8960 Krait development platform with the Adreno 225 GPU, on a pretty high-end tablet development kit, with a 1366×768 capacitive screen, 13 megapixel camera, 3D camera, 2megapixel front-facing camera for 1080p video conferencing and a bunch of other new sensors, fingerprint reader, an MHL connector, full sized SD card slot and more.

Source: engadget.com

Qualcomm also announced a new bunch of their Krait S4 ARM Processors due to arrive in Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops and more starting early next year:

The Krait CPU is the next generation of Qualcomm’s micro architecture and is purpose-built from the ground up for significant mobile performance and power management advantages leading to enhanced user experience and better battery life. The Krait CPU is an essential part of the Snapdragon S4 class of processors. Today, Qualcomm announced several new S4 chipsets, including the MSM8660A, MSM8260A, MSM8630, MSM8230, MSM8627, MSM8227, APQ8060A and APQ8030. These are additional chipsets to the previously announced MSM8960, MSM8930 and APQ8064. Snapdragon S4 MSM processors include Qualcomm’s leading-edge wireless modem technologies, including EV-DO, HSPA+, TD-SCDMA, LTE FDD, LTE TDD and Wi-Fi® standards.

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Why I’m looking forward to video-blog at the LeWeb conference in Paris December 7-9th

Posted by Charbax – November 19, 2011

LeWeb in Paris is one of the few web conferences in Europe every year where all the top most influential US, European and worldwide bloggers attend. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, LinkedIn, Ustream, Renault, CNN are sponsors, some of the most hopeful upcoming European Startups compete, all look to get most of the bloggers and industry insiders attention. Leo Laporte and the Twit.tv crew have a live show coverage on a stage in the middle of the event, Michael Arrington and the whole Techcrunch.com staff is there including MG Siegler, Robert Scoble takes pictures and blogs from the front row. Om Malik and his staff from GigaOm.com attend every year, Gade Rivera of Techmeme.com hangs around, this is the conference where I first met Chris Pirillo, Steve Gillmor and Kevin Marks (I don’t know if they will attend again this year). As you can see in the conference program, featured on the stage are going to be keynotes and discussions with Eric Schmidt, Marissa Mayer, Yves Behar designer of the OLPC, Niklas Zennstrom (Skype/Kazaa founder), JP Rangaswami, the CEOs or top executives at Twitter, Virgin Galactic, Foursquare, Deezer, Instagram, Flipboard, Airbnb.

For updates and links to info on how to win tickets you can follow LeWeb on twitter

So if you are interested to attend this conference you can register to attend at LeWeb.net and you can look forward to my video interviews to be posted here on ARMdevices.net from the conference around December 7-9th. I’ll try to video interview all the company representatives and bloggers that I listed here, if you have any questions that you would like me to try to ask to any of them, please post them here in the comments or send me an email at charbax@gmail.com

Ice Cream Sandwich works on ST-Ericsson Nova A9500 ARM Cortex-A9

Posted by Charbax – November 19, 2011

Using a small modification to ICS to use software GL from Vishal Bhoj, Linaro engineer Mathieu Poirier was able to get ICS running on the Snowball board. This may be the first demonstration of Ice Cream Sandwich running on another SoC than the OMAP4?

FXI Cotton Candy, Exynos 4210 computer in a USB stick

Posted by Charbax – November 19, 2011

Norwegian FXI Technologies is showing their new Exynos 4210 ARM Cortex-A9 based computer in a 21 gram USB stick form factor. It has HDMI output, it powers from USB, has a built-in MicroSD card slot, WiFi and Bluetooth. It’s to be released next year.

Video by: booredatwork.com

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E Ink is giving away E Ink watches (US residents only)

Posted by Charbax – November 18, 2011

E Ink is giving away 4 E Ink wrist watches worth $195 every Tuesday until the 13th of December on their Facebook page. All you have to do is “Like” the E-Ink page on Facebook and enter your name, email and click to let it grab your Facebook contact info. E-Ink wrist watches are pretty awesome, I got mine since June 2010 that I wear every day, I only had to install the batteries once in the beginning and it’s still running on the same small wrist watch battery. It’s nice to be able to change the design of your wrist watch, have it display the date and all in a very sunlight readable way. It’s just cool to know you’ve got an E Ink e-reader type screen on your watch. Check out this video where I show my E Ink wristwatch:

Here is more information about the $195 Phosphor E Ink watch that you can win on the E Ink facebook page: http://www.phosphorwatches.com/E-Ink-Digital-Hour-Clock-Watch-Stainless-Steel-p/70510565280.htm


A couple video reviews of that watch: 1 2

Liliputing.com: Google Marketplace works fine on the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet

Posted by Charbax – November 17, 2011

Liliputing.com just posted this video showing how nicely the full Google Marketplace can be made to work on the $199 Amazon Kindle Fire. For the next step, I expect Amazon will update it to Ice Cream Sandwich, and when they do, I expect Amazon to pre-install the full Google Marketplace and all the Google Apps, just because that’s what is better for the consumer. And I think Amazon will figure out that it’ll actually increase their own content sales in terms of revenue per tablet to simply fully unlock the Kindle Fire.

It still doesn’t have HDMI output, kick-stand, MicroSD card slot, USB host, webcam, legal Mpeg2/AC3/DTS codecs up to 1080p legally either.

Source: liliputing.com

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich running on the OMAP4 Pandaboard

Posted by Charbax – November 17, 2011

Texas Instruments released this video showing that Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 now already boots fine on the OMAP4430 based $179 Pandaboard which you can buy at http://pandaboard.org. I expect that we might see Desktop-optimized user interfaces and a full Chrome web browser soon, maybe with Android 4.1 or 4.2. As I also think it’s important for every ICS smartphone to turn into a “desktop mode” when using the HDMI output and when a keyboard and mouse are detected.

ZiiLABS ZMS-20 playing 1080p High Profile

Posted by Charbax – November 16, 2011

ZiiLABS released this video demonstrating 1080p high profile level 4.1 H.264 with CABAC, deblocking and 8×8 transforms. Played on the ZMS-20 based JAGUAR platform.

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

Posted by Charbax – November 15, 2011

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

NewGadgets.de: Samsung Galaxy Nexus Hands-On

Posted by Charbax – November 15, 2011

This is obviously the best phone ever released. I’ll try to get it soon so that I can test Ice Cream Sandwich and film my own video-reviews. Until then, check it out here:

Source: newgadgets.de