Results for archos

I was on Twit!

Posted by Charbax – December 10, 2011
Category: Tablets, Smart Glass, Web, Other, Opinions, Rockchip, Texas Instruments, LeWeb, Archos, Android

You can see me starting at 9 minutes 45 seconds time code in following Twit Live video recorded at LeWeb 2011, I’m interviewed by Leo Laporte and Sarah Lane! This video features some of my talk about Switzerland legalizing piracy, France implementing the global licence to legalize piracy, Archos, my headmounted Kopin Golden-i computer, live stream and augmented video-blogging system.

Source: recorded video on Ustream.tv

I’ll post the YouTube embed if Twit and LeWeb release it separately on YouTube.

Rockchip RK2918 runs Ice Cream Sandwich

Posted by Charbax – November 29, 2011
Category: Tablets, Rockchip, Android

Rockchip is showing Ice Cream Sandwich running on their 1Ghz-1.2Ghz RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 processor with the Vivante GC800 GPU. This may be one of the first demonstrations of Ice Cream Sandwich running on an ARM Cortex-A8 processor?

Thus expect some Ice Cream Sandwich firmware updates for the cool devices like the $149 Arnova 7 G2, $179 Arnova 8 G2, the $199 Arnova 10 G2 and the recently announced Arnova 9 G2 likely to be sold below $249 with a 9.7″ capacitive IPS touch screen, thus bringing nice single-core Ice Cream Sandwich tablet experiences for the low-cost market.

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Ice Cream Sandwich on the Tegra3 powered Asus Transformer Prime

Posted by Charbax – November 22, 2011
Category: Tablets, Nvidia, Android

Nvidia just released this video demo showing Ice Cream Sandwich running on an Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime (click to pre-order for $499 on Amazon). It will be awesome to see if a full Chrome browser can be run on top of Ice Cream Sandwich for when a device like this is used in ARM Powered Laptop mode and using the HDMI output and USB/bluetooth keyboard/mouse in ARM Powered Desktop mode.

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

Posted by Charbax – November 17, 2011
Category: Tablets, Texas Instruments, Android

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

List of my ARM Powered devices used for video-blogging:

Posted by Charbax – November 14, 2011
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, Wearables, Smart Glass, Reviews, MediaTek, Texas Instruments, Marvell, ARM TechCon, Archos, Pixel Qi, OLPC, Kopin, Android, Ubuntu, Windows

Andy Frame is interviewing me on ARM’s official YouTube Channel about my ARM Powered devices used for video-blogging and live video streaming from consumer electronics trade-shows.

List of devices featured in this video:

– Headmounted Display: Kopin Golden-i, OMAP3530 based, provides SVGA screen at eye-level for real-time monitoring of an IRC chat for asking better questions
– Headmounted Logitech c910 Webcam connected to the ARM Powered One Laptop Per Child XO-1.75, Marvell Armada 618 based, live-streaming the webcam video feed to http://ustream.tv (an optimal Headmounted computer, maybe Motorola’s next version, can include the webcam and Android based software to live-stream the video to any live video streaming service built-in)
– Archos 101 G9, OMAP4430/OMAP4460 1Ghz to 1.5Ghz tablet, similar specs as in the Galaxy Nexus but in a 10.1″ tablet form factor. Starts $269 unlocked no contract for 8″. This is probably my favorite high-end tablet at the moment. I’ll post my full video-review of the Archos 101 G9 in the next few days.
– Archos 70 Internet Tablet, OMAP3630 1Ghz single core, released about 13 months ago. I use this tablet every day as 7″ tablets fit in any jacket pocket. Thus I mostly use this for checking emails, web browsing, watching video, playing games, using apps when I am outside. I am looking forward to upgrade this to a dual-core 7″ tablet.
– My $87 FG8 Android Smartphone, it’s my main smartphone for the past 7 months since I found it in Shenzhen China. It supports Dual-SIM cards (so I can use my home and foreign SIM numbers at the same time, or use voice SIM and data SIM at the same time), has a decent 3.5″ capacitive touch screen, uses the wildly popular in China Mediatek MTK6516 ARM9 processor. I’m looking forward upgrading this to a Galaxy Nexus (because I am eager to try Ice Cream Sandwich) or to a newer faster 3G-capable sub-$100 Android phone.
– ZTE MF61 T-Mobile USA 4G HSPA+ Hotspot, $50 for 3GB/month pre-paid, $141 for the device, no contract.

Latest news from Texas Instruments at ARM TechCon 2011

Posted by Charbax – October 27, 2011
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, Set-top-boxes, Exclusive videos, Texas Instruments, ARM TechCon, Android

The OMAP5 ARM Cortex-A15 processor is taped out, they are about to show impressive samples soon, they will then be tweaking and optimizing it before release in commercial products within about a year. OMAP4 is being launched in the Motorola Razr and in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus phones, each more awesome than the other. Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0 works awesomely on OMAP4, Honeycomb 3.2 tablets like the Archos 101 G9 are being released now, TI is also looking forward to power products such as Laptops that run Chrome OS, Ubuntu and Windows 8.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS

Posted by Charbax – September 24, 2011
Category: Cameras, Exclusive videos, IFA

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

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

Find more information here

Arnova 10 G2 for $129 or $99 with 1 or 2 year Philly Newspaper subscription

Posted by Charbax – September 17, 2011
Category: Tablets, Opinions, Rockchip, Archos, Android

The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News are doing a special promotion that can interest people living in Pennsylvania USA and would like to save on getting their daily newspaper and at the same time can be tempted by the combination of a subsidized Arnova 10 G2 Android Tablet for $99 or $129 depending on the length of the digital newspaper subscription that is signed.


video source: technicallyphilly.com

I first reported on the Arnova 10 G2 back in April when it was first announced. It is an awesome value device with a capacitive screen and the new Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 processor that can run at up to 1.2Ghz. It’s more powerful than the Apple A4 in the iPad1 and iPhone4, it’s more powerful than the Samsung Hummingbird processor in the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Samsung Galaxy S. Yet, the tablet is now being released named Arnova 10 G2 with a retail MSRP pricing probably between $199 and $229 (to be confirmed in the coming days).

Sure there has been some delays for this capacitive RK2918 tablet, I do not know why. Maybe Archos spent a few months selling the RK2818 tablets before ramping up production capacity and perhaps also having Rockchip try to have Honeycomb working on it. But more likely, Rockchip will try to use Ice Cream Sandwich directly for those, depending on the compatibility and ease of porting of that next version of open source Android with these ARM Cortex-A8 tablets released now.

This makes sense. The idea of the $99 10.1″ capacitive tablet is awesome. Here are some of my suggestions though for Philly to make this work in the most positive way:

– The $10/month subscription needs to include unlimited free access to all the worlds newspapers and not just the 2 newspapers. The economics are that people will not necessarily read more articles if they get access to more content.

You have to think big. I know it may be hard or impossible for the people of the Philly newspaper to reach out to all the other newspapers of the world and agree on some kind of Netflix-pricing to include full access to all the newspapers.

The idea is that you make it more attractive to more people inside and outside of your target market to want to subscribe to this idea. You write content in English. I think it makes no sense to limit yourself to a limited geography. You can write regional news in your current edition, but you can partner with all the other newspapers and let people read those other newspapers if they want.

Make the cake bigger together with others and your slice of the much bigger cake will be much bigger than your small cake.

Logically, the digital access subscription does not have to exclusively be consumed on that tablet. I guess that any other device can login and access that subscription plan. Simply build on your current Android app, and simply let it search and access the real format newspapers from all the other newspapers that you can partner with.

Here is Philly’s calculation and the customers options today:

– $199 or $229 is the unsubsidized Arnova 10 G2 price likely going to be when released within a few days from now.
– $99 with 2-year $10/month subscription = Total $339 for the Arnova 10 G2 with the 2-year digital newspaper access = $229 Tablet and $55/year digital subscription
– $129 with 1-year $13/month subscription = Total $285 for the Arnova 10 G2 with the 1-year digital newspaper access = $229 Tablet and $56/year digital subscription
– No tablet digital subscription price today = $3/week = $156/year
– No tablet normal paper newspaper by mail subscription price today = $7/week = $364/year

This can be a huge success for Archos and for newspapers but they have to continue on this plan and they need to pick up the phone and make some national and international agreements with all the other newspapers, join forces, subsidize Awesome ARM Powered Android Tablets to make people understand the value of technology and of the content.

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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.

Samsung Galaxy Note, testing out the HD Super AMOLED screen

Posted by Charbax – September 2, 2011
Category: Tablets, Smartphones, Exclusive videos, IFA, Android

This screen really is amazingly awesome. 5.3″ HD Super AMOLED, 1280×800, amazing and awesome colors, in a huge form factor that still can fit in any pocket.

Here are some comparative pictures showing it next to the Archos 70 Internet Tablet, the Archos 43 Internet Tablet and the Samsung Galaxy S2. You can click on the images to see the full size.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, Super AMOLED Plus, 1.4Ghz Dual-core, Honeycomb 3.2 with TouchWiz UI

Posted by Charbax – September 1, 2011
Category: Tablets, Exclusive videos, Samsung, IFA, Android

Wow, Samsung can make 7.7″ Super AMOLED Plus screens and this new tablet of theirs is thin and quite light. Not the lightest 7″ tablet 335gr as the Archo 70 Internet Tablet released last year is 300gr. Also, while it’s thin and light, they did make it slightly wider in size which seems to make it harder to fit it in all the jacket pockets, that’s too bad. But, the design is not final, maybe before they release it they manage to cut a few millimeters off the bezel to make it fit in jacket pockets. This tablet runs Honeycomb 3.2 nicely but with some TouchWiz UI customizations, this is no vanilla Android.

Pictures of it next to the Archos 70 Internet Tablet:



Pricing speculations on cheaper Samsung Galaxy R, Tegra2 4.2″ Super Clear LCD Smartphone

Posted by Charbax – August 14, 2011
Category: Smartphones, Opinions, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, Android

Arguably, the Samsung Galaxy S2 is the best phone in the world today. Samsung now also brings what looks to become a lower cost similar smartphone experience using the Tegra2 Dual-core 1Ghz processor instead of the 1.2Ghz Dual-core Exynos and using an LCD touch screen instead of the more expensive and harder to manufacture Super AMOLED Plus screen.

I played with the Samsung Galaxy S2 for a few days as I was able to borrow it during Computex, it’s a very impressive phone, the screen is amazing and the processor for now seems unbeaten in terms of performance (until 1.5Ghz Dual-core OMAP4460 devices start coming out next month).

In Europe, I cannot find the Samsung Galaxy S2 sold below 458€ and in the US it seems to cost $629. Clearly, that’s very expensive. But I guess, many people still consider that the normal going rate for high-end smart phones?

What is really the true manufacturing cost for Samsung on the Samsung Galaxy S2? My guess is they spend less than $200 to manufacture each phone (which is probably a bit higher than Apple and other LCD based Android smart phone makers pay per phone). Which means they are making upwards 200% profit margin on each phone. Sure enough, Samsung spends extra on making the Super AMOLED Plus screen, which they also are in the process of using their new multi-billion dollar Super AMOLED Plus factory to try to ramp up mass manufacturing to keep up with demand. But I guess that’s just how things are for getting a Samsung for now. I’d find it cool if they decided to sell the Samsung Galaxy S2 for $250 unlocked or 250€, it may allow them to not loose money and gain huge market share as they increase their mass manufacturing even much further, but that may be too disruptive for the whole smart phone carrier business model yet.

Anyways, Samsung may save with Galaxy R compared to S2 (according to my pure guess) about $20 on the LCD, and perhaps about $10 on the processor and other electronics that come with the Tegra2 package. A $30 savings in Bill of Material, may translate to upwards $100 cheaper retail price. So I expect Samsung will sell the Samsung Galaxy R below 399€ and below $499 as unlocked. I do not consider the carrier subsidized pricings as I consider those more expensive, they can sometimes add up to $2500 over the 2-year contracts, which I do not consider a pricing advantage over buying the phones unlocked and then using cheaper data and voice SIM cards in there.

What do I recommend geeks who want the best regardless of the price? If you can’t wait, get a Samsung Galaxy S2, don’t look too much at the price tag, consider all competing big brand Android phones cost about the same. If you can wait, maybe in 1 or 2 months, the rumored Samsung Nexus Prime might be coming with Ice Cream Sandwich. I do not know if the rumors of a 720p Super AMOLED Plus 4.3″ screen are realistic, or if Samsung will use the 1.5Ghz Dual-core OMAP4460 or perhaps overclock their own Dual-core Exynos platform to 1.5Ghz. I would not be surprised if the rumored Nexus Prime is more or less the same as a Samsung Galaxy S2, with very minor design changes and it just running vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich, just like the Nexus S is a copy of the Samsung Galaxy S1 and the Nexus One is a copy of the HTC Desire. The OMAP4460 Ice Cream Sandwiches might be used by LG, Motorola and other companies which may have more history in working with Texas Instruments, but who knows, maybe Texas Instruments is doing huge efforts to provide attractive package deals to all the device makers and that they all feel they cannot afford to miss the non-exclusive TI OMAP4460 based opportunity.

TheInquirer recently quoted analysts saying that Samsung has now overtaken Apple and has become the worlds biggest smart phone maker.

Samsung might have sold more smartphones than Apple and Nokia during April, May and June

With phones like the Samsung Nexus Prime, Galaxy R, cheaper Galaxy phones (2, 3) targetted at pre-paid and developing countries (including focus on BRIC, Brazil, Russia, India, China), the new Super AMOLED Plus factory being ready for increased mass production, Samsung’s rise in smart phone market share is likely to only increase. Consider that with just Samsung’s Android smart phones, there are more sales than the iPhone, consider how much more Android smart phones sell overall compared to iPhone when all the other many growing Android smart phone makers are put together. I think it is not ridiculous to expect a 1/4 ratio in daily sales to be demonstrated pretty soon, likely before Christmas, regardless of how many current iPhone owners decide to upgrade to the iPhone5.

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Bodhi Linux for ARM project now on Kickstarter

Posted by Charbax – July 28, 2011
Category: Tablets, Software, Texas Instruments

Jeff Hoogland posted this project on kickstarter.com for developing an alternative embedded Linux OS for ARM Powered tablets:

We want to provide an elegant, fully open Linux based operating system that is a viable alternative to Android and Meego for mobile touch screen devices. Competition stimulates market growth and produces better products over all for consumers. An open development model means no surprises or lock downs that will hurt end users. It also means developers can more easily get involved and contribute to what we are creating.

We are starting with Debian as our base and building our interface on top of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFLs). It will be optimized for touch screen devices, but the interface will still be practical for devices controlled by a keyboard and mouse. We have an ever growing team that is dedicated to producing a quality product.

Here’s a video demo of Bodhi Linux current version running on the Archos 70 Internet Tablet that can be legally-rooted for installing alternative multi-boot software.

Find out more about this Bodhi Linux project at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/560221218/bodhi-linux-for-arm

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.

ShiZhu Technology shows Pixel Qi Tablets at Computex 2011

Posted by Charbax – June 3, 2011
Category: Tablets, E-readers, Exclusive videos, Samsung, Computex, Pixel Qi, Android

Check out how ShiZhu’s new Pixel Qi tablet series perform outdoors and indoors against other regular LCD based new Android tablets such as the HTC Flyer (with an anti-glare coating) and the Archos 70 Internet Tablet, you can see how the Pixel Qi screen is much more readable outdoors. This tablet is based on the Samsung Hummingbird Cortex-A8 processor. They are releasing also a 7″ and they can provide them in several different designs.

Honeycomb source code to remain closed until Q4? Who has access now?

Posted by Charbax – May 11, 2011
Category: Opinions, Google, Android

Who in the industry has access to Honeycomb 3.0 and 3.1 source code today? We were hoping for Google to announce 3.1 being open sourced around Google I/O but now it seems Google might not provide any Honeycomb open source code before Ice Cream Sandwich in Q4 this year?

Also watch the Android team’s response to Android being 100% open source (including all the drivers) (at 16m20s time code)

I understand the gigantic work involved for Google to write all the code, implement the programming APIs and everything else involved around Ice Cream Sandwich. Regardless of how quickly Google put together Honeycomb for tablets to have something ready at Mobile World Congress in February, I think it would just look wrong if for some reason we only have $500+ Android tablets based on Tegra2 made by a handful of priviledged companies somehow having any type of Honeycomb software on them for another 6 months. Given the amount of companies (nearly 375 of them filmed here), small to medium sized, who are investing their futures in making Android tablets, Tegra2-Honeycomb-exclusivity-until-Q4 would probably be quite scandalous. This is what I am expecting must be happening right now secretly with the Honeycomb 3.0 and 3.1 source code behind the scenes:

1. All “serious” tablet companies using all the major ARM Processors do have access to Honeycomb now, or will get access very soon. By “serious” company, I could mean the companies in which Google can trust not to leak the source code. That could mean that these “serious” Android tablet companies need some kind of a track record of being serious with this market.

2. Google should be transparent about which chip provider does have access to Honeycomb source code today, and which chip provider will get access soon. I believe all chip makers from at least ARM Cortex-A8 performance and upwards should be allowed to work on optimizing any current Honeycomb source code to work and timely be shipped with all the tablets that do get released with those specific chips in them. I do not believe that a Tegra2-only club for Honeycomb would be taken with a smile from the rest of the industry. All chip providers that have tablet makers showing products on the market and showcasing them at all the “serious” tradeshows today, including AmLogic, Freescale, Marvell, NEC/Renesas, Qualcomm, Rockchip, ST-Ericsson, Samsung, Telechips, Texas Instruments, VIA, all those should get that access and be able to ship Android tablets with Honeycomb in Q3 this year.

I’ve sent some of my Google contacts some questions regarding the actual status and plans for Honeycomb’s source code and support on the variety of ARM chip providers, while I am waiting for their reply, I wouldn’t know for sure what the actual happenings are behind closed doors before, during and after Google I/O in terms of officially supporting Honeycomb 3.1 on other platforms than just Tegra2.

Google needs to officially confirm that they are working with these ARM processors to support Honeycomb 3.1 in Q3 this year and I think that most Android tablet fans would be totally happy and satisfied:

– Freescale i.MX53 Cortex-A8 1Ghz
– Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8 1Ghz
– Samsung Exynos 4210 ARM Dual Cortex-A9 1.2Ghz
– TI OMAP4440 ARM Dual Cortex-A9 1.6Ghz
– Marvell Armada 600
– Qualcomm MSM7227 ARM11 600Mhz 45nm with Adreno
– Qualcomm Snapdragon 8255 1.5Ghz 45nm
– Qualcomm Snapdragon Dual 8620 1.5Ghz
– Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz
– Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz
– NEC/Renesas EV2 ARM Dual Cortex-A9 533Mhz
– AmLogic ARM Single Cortex-A9 800Mhz

If Google has been and is cooperating with at least each of these SoC platforms, then I think we have no problem.

But if on the other hand, it somehow turns out that most of these alternative SoC vendors are somehow locked out of the Honeycomb party until finally getting source code access in Q4 and maybe not being able to release actual tablets with that code before Q1 2012, well then I think there will be some very angry people around the worldwide Android tablet industry.

Given the relatively big level of secrecy from all SoC vendors involved, I would like to interpret that as a clue that they must all be silently and cooperatively working closely with Google ever since before even the Motorola Xoom was released last February. And if they didn’t all have access already before last February, then hopefully they have all quietly gotten access or are getting access by now.

Google announced that over 100 Million Android Smartphones have been sold thus far. If 80% of those are sold on 2-year contracts generating revenues at an average of $1200 per phone over the 2-year contracts (in the US for example that number is most often higher than $2000), then that could mean Google’s Android has a huge influence on a global revenue of potentially more than $120 Billion, possibly over $80 Billion of which have been generated just in 2010 alone, with 2011 global Android industry revenues possibly clinching upwards twice as much as Smartphone growth is more than doubling every year. The Android Smartphone may be a $160 Billion industry in 2011 alone. Over $250 Billion in 2012 maybe. We are not talking peanuts. And with all analysts saying Tablets are the post-PC interface, Google may feel some type of pressure from the big guys of tech, not only the manufacturers but also the carriers (who are touching most of those huge Android related revenues), so it can be understandable that Google does things very carefully around Android, and to bring Android’s market share from 40% to over 80% in the next few months, Google may want to focus on top level secrecy in all of their cutting edge Android developments.

While I can understand that, and as a huge Google fanboy I want them to dominate over everything, but let’s see if we can get more informations on Honeycomb openness and the industry’s access to Honeycomb now under this Google I/O conference. I haven’t yet watched the Google Executives Q&A with Andy Rubin where some of the Android openness questions are answered, if anyone has the link to that video or any other related sources of informations please post those links in the comments.

If you are an industry insider and if you would like to tell me any secret information about the status of Honeycomb in the industry related to 3.1’s likelyhood to work on any or all of these SoCs during Q3 this year, you are welcome to contact me at charbax@gmail.com and if you want I can keep your name secret if you allow me to report here on your info.

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Latest Android Tablet/Smartphone Trends out of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, at 3 tradeshows

Posted by Charbax – April 22, 2011
Category: Top Video Lists, China Sourcing Fair, HKTDC Electronics Fair, Shenzhen Electronics Fair, Geniatech, Android

Following is my summary and my top-20 videos filmed during 10 days spent in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, at 3 tradeshows, filming, interviewing, uploading and posting 97 videos from the Shenzhen Electronics Fair (April 8-10th), China Sourcing Fair (April 12-15th) and HKTDC Electronics Fair (April 13-16th). With all those many videos posted, it can be hard for you to look through all of them to find out which are the best. That is why I now always summarise my best videos in a post in the Top Video Lists category. Many awesome new ARM Cortex-A9 tablets and cheap smartphones were shown.

New major ARM processor trends from the Shenzhen and Hong Kong tradeshows and markets:

Based on the overwhelming amount of new videos filmed related to those new processors, I added 3 new Chip provider categories to ARMdevices.net:

– AmLogic, I filmed 9 new videos: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] (in order of most to least interesting), it’s a new low-cost Single-Core Cortex-A9 processor, clocked at 800Mhz for now, it can be found in the first sub-$100 Cortex-A9 tablets (resistive). The performance of these are likely better than 1Ghz Cortex-A8, but I will test this on my Kinstone AmLogic tablet sample (that I bought for $130 (850 renminbi)) and report in my upcoming second part video-review soon.

– Mediatek, I filmed 10 new videos: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10] (in order of most to least interesting), this low-cost ARM9 processor seems to win big in the Chinese made emerging Android smartphones market. It’s absolutely amazing how cheap some of the Mediatek MTK6516 based Smartphones are being sold at, I bought a $87 FG8 Mediatek MTK6516 based Android Smartphone (that looks similar to a HTC Desire with its casing design). With Mediatek’s upgraded ARM11 3G-enabled MTK6573 Smartphone processor coming up, they may again make big wins in the Chinese smartphone market and bring sub-$100 maybe soon sub-$50 Android smartphones to the worldwide (not only emerging) mass market. Amazing.

– NEC/Renesas, I filmed 7 new videos: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] (in order of most to least interesting), about 2 years ago, NEC Electronics and Renesas merged and out of that merger is coming this new NEC/Renesas EV2 ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-Core 533Mhz processor, the SoCs based on it are very low priced. Consider this to be the Japanese ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-Core entrant. Some of my reports claim that a nice capacitive tablet design based on this processor can be sold in bulk for as little as $110, $125 or $135. I bought a sample from Livall.cn for $171 which I will soon video-review further.

My top-20 best Shenzhen/HongKong April 2011 videos:

1. Archos 7c Home Tablet, RK2918 Capacitive, Archos are building amazing value tablets based on the Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz processor, with great capacitive touch screens, and they are bringing that to the definitely sub-$200 price range. As I am probably the biggest Archos fanboy in the world (I’m the admin and founder of http://forum.archosfans.com), I found it super fascinating to meet their expert staff and visit their Shenzhen headquarters.

2. Arnova 10 capacitive RK2918 to be released in May, at possibly $229 MSRP, for this 10.1″ capacitive Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz tablet, it’s hard to find better value 10″ tablet. Consider this kind of price is for a product that will be massively available at all retail stores in Europe and the USA, that price is the retail price, including all import taxes, fees, margins and everything. I believe Archos can make huge sales of their new Arnova line, especially now that they are able to bring ARM Cortex-A8 performance and nice capacitive screens to these entry-level priced devices.

3. Best of Shenzhen: $87 Android 3.5″ capacitive phone, MTK6516 FG8, that is my initial video review of my new FG8 $87 Android Smartphone. Mediatek MTK6516 based, with Android 2.2 Froyo and a 3.5″ HVGA Capacitive touch screen. This is amazing to see how cheap the Android smartphones are getting. Check back for my further video reviews coming up to show the performance and features of this cheap smartphone platform.

4. Shenzhen Behind the Scenes 1: Hongda Factory tour, a fascinating look inside of a small Shenzhen consumer electronics factory. That day they are manufacturing Intel Atom based netbooks, the day before they were making cheap Freescale i.MX51 based tablets for utopiacn.

5. Geniatech explains their AmLogic Cortex-A9 Single Core Set-top-box, an interview with the product manager on this sub-$100 AmLogic based set-top-box, watch this to get an idea how the potential upcoming Google TV on ARM based set-top-box makers are planning their global sub-$100 ARM Powered Set-top-box market entry.

6. $95 Cortex-A9 Tablet Review, Kinstone KS-UMD070A9, my initial review of this sub-$100 (bulk, resistive) ARM Cortex-A9 AmLogic 800Mhz Single Core tablet. I’ve got the review sample right here, so I will post a further full video review with benchmarks, video codec tests and other speed tests as soon as I get the time, check back for that.

7. Shenzhen Behind the Scenes 3: Richtechie.com, Freescale i.MX51/53 PCB designer, have a look behind the scenes at a PCB designer in Shenzhen. This PCB design house makes Freescale i.MX51 motherboards and they are working on their upcoming i.MX53 based PCB designs. They work with utopiacn.

8. Archos at the Shenzhen Electronics Fair, not much news in this video, it’s just interesting to see how Archos has a big booth at the Shenzhen Electronics Fair and uses it to do sales of their devices towards growing their sales in the Chinese mainland market.

9. Catwalk girls show Tablets and Smartphones in Shenzhen, just fun if you would like to see how the Tablets and Smartphones are the center of the trendy topic at the Shenzhen Electronics Fair.

10. NEC/Renesas EV2 ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-Core 533Mhz in videos with Livall.cn, Gaia, Ebot, Quality Industrial and TAL Electronics.

11. Rockchip Rk2918 in a Set-top-box, this could power a sub-$50 ARM Powered Google TV Set-top-box.

12. Honeycomb at the Rockchip booth (just keyrings for now..), once you get Honeycomb on the Rockchip RK2918 (could be happening by Google I/O on May 10-11th?), that could create the most explosive disruptive mix for the tablet industry. Also check-out my video of the Rockchip RK2918 based laptop which could also provide great value for an ARM Powered laptop running Chrome OS or Honeycomb.

13. Review: $120 Hero H2000 MTK6516 Android Froyo Powered iphone4-copy, my initial video review of my new $120 iphone4-clone that seems to run Android 2.2 super smoothly on this 3.5″ HVGA capacitive touch screen Mediatek MTK6516 based Hero H2000 smartphone. It’s probably manufactured by Karasnn.com.

14. Epudo Telechips Cortex-A8 tablets, the new Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz processor may be reaching stability for Android Gingerbread support. Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz Gingerbread also featured in videos with Digilink and huashiguang.

15. MID123.com Hummingbird Gingerbread Tablet, Gingerbread seems also to be reaching stability on the Samsung ARM Cortex-A8 Hummingbird processor platform.

16. Karasnn.com Hero Android MTK6516 Smartphones, interview with one of the potentially leading Mediatek MTK6516 based Android smartphone makers.

17. Meizu M9, $380 Android phone with Retina Display, interesting to see a 3.5″ Retina Display and the Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8 1Ghz processor in this new Meizu M9 phone. At $380 unlocked it’s expensive, but surely less expensive than an iPhone while having pretty similar hardware performance. Meizu has several stores in the Shenzhen electronics market area, they seem to be a relatively big smartphone brand in China.

18. Trend Technology (HK) Ltd does Android Tablets, discussion with an insider how to get those tablets made and distributed.

19. Performance test on AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 Android Set-top-box, testing the performance doing web browsing and more on this AmLogic development board. It seems fast!

20. Ramos booth tour, featuring Ramos W18, 9.7″ capacitive ARM Cortex-A9 AmLogic Android Tablet, Ramos has nice new products. Also check my videos of the Ramos T8Pro and Ramos V70/T11Pro/T11AD.

While in Shenzhen, I filmed following 5-part series of videos showing a bit of the Behind the Scenes of Shenzhen, the capital of the world for consumer electronics manufacturing:
1: Hongda Factory tour
2: utopiacn, Apad Android Tablet maker
3: Richtechie.com, Freescale i.MX51/53 PCB designer
4: Walking around the Shenzhen smartphone market
5: 3Gnet Factory Tour

Flying back from Hong Kong to Copenhagen using the excellent and cheap airline Qatar Aiways, they can provide free stop-over in Doha (that can be booked using their Multi-city online booking feature), also check these 3 videos that I filmed, they are not very tech related, but they show the atmosphere in an interesting Middle-eastern Golf country:
1. Arrived in Qatar
2. Walking the Souq Waqif, the Corniche and checking out the Doha skyscrapers at night
3. Desert Safari with Arabian Adventure Qatar (includes a fun Video-review of the NEC/Renesas based dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 533Mhz capacitive 7″ tablet from livall.cn)

Arnova 10 capacitive RK2918 to be released in May

Posted by Charbax – April 14, 2011
Category: Tablets, Exclusive videos, Rockchip, Shenzhen Electronics Fair, Archos, Android

Here’s the Arnova 10 with capacitive touch screen and the RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 processor. At around $229 MSRP it could possibly become one of the best value 10.1″ ARM Cortex-A8 capacitive tablets on the market. It’s thin, uses most of the nice design features of the Archos 101 Internet Tablet released in October 2010, but removes the kick-stand (to lower cost), replaces some of the metallic design features with plastics (to lower cost), removes HDMI output (I need to let them confirm this, perhaps that was just removed on the prototype). This device uses the new 1.2Ghz Rockchip processor, with 1080p video codecs support (possibly all codecs at up to over 30mbitps high profile playback), new better graphics performance, but most importantly, this awesome 10.1″ tablet may be sold around $229/229€ at retail MSRP (with capacitive and rk2918), and there is a good chance Rockchip should be getting access to the Honeycomb source code soon (comon Google, give it to them sooner rather than later! (I have no idea if Rockchip has Honeycomb yet or not, I will try to interview Rockchip again about Honeycomb at China Sourcing Fair tomorrow)).

I am the new Editor in Chief of Engadget

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

Bestselling author Steven Carter with celebrit...

On the phone with Arianna Huffington

I just got off the phone with Arianna Huffington. She likes what I do and has asked me to be the new Editor in Chief at Engadget.com effective immediately.

I told her I will do it under one condition, that they agree to rename Engadget.com to ARMdevices.net, all visitors going to the previous Engadget.com will be automatically redirected to the more future-proof ARMdevices.net brand instead.

Under my command, the site will only feature Benchmarks and Funny Videos. I believe that snarky news items are a waste of time. Any Engadget editor who owns an iPhone, who knows someone who owns an iPhone or who has been in an Apple Store during the previous 6 months will be fired.

100% of the posts will be ARM related, 10% of which will be Archos and ARM related, as I believe Archos is the best company in the world. Any negativity towards Google will not be tolerated, let them close Honeycomb and ban emulators if they want!

If anyone has a problem with this, you can send me an email.

Here I’m being interviewed with Arianna Huffington at the announcement event this morning here in Davos:

Honeycomb source code and CDD delayed

Posted by Charbax – March 24, 2011
Category: Tablets, Opinions, Archos, Google, Android

Businessweek reports that Google has decided to delay Honeycomb source code release.

The search giant says the software, which is tailored specifically for tablet computers that compete against Apple’s iPad, is not yet ready to be altered by outside programmers and customized for other devices, such as phones.

“To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs,” says Andy Rubin, vice-president for engineering at Google and head of its Android group. “We didn’t want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut.”

Rubin says that if Google were to open-source the Honeycomb code now, as it has with other versions of Android at similar periods in their development, it couldn’t prevent developers from putting the software on phones “and creating a really bad user experience. We have no idea if it will even work on phones.”

Here is my opinion on this:

As long as Google releases the full Honeycomb source code within a month or so from now, and hurry up to confirm (even sooner) that the updated Compliance Definition Document for Honeycomb will open up to allow many more smaller manufacturers (such as Archos, Rockchip, Telechips, ARM11 and many other small tablet makers) access to the full Google Marketplace (that can provide filtering), then all will be good.

My expectation is that Google is working to make sure their Honeycomb source code release supports all types of hardware, not only including cheaper ARM Cortex-A8, ARM9, ARM11 tablets, but also optimize things for Laptop use (see Asus Transformer, how awesome would Honeycomb be on devices like Toshiba AC100!), and also they might try to coordinate the Honeycomb source code release with the first open source release of Google TV thus making all those devices Set-top-box ready when HDMI output is used on any HDTV.

One can expect Google to synchronize full open source release of Honeycomb, Google TV and Chrome OS by the Google I/O conference coming up on 10-11th May or before.

What is your opinion on Google’s Honeycomb source code and updated CDD release delay? You can write in the comments.