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ARM Powered Google TV by Samsung rumored by Bloomberg

Posted by – February 25, 2011
Category: Samsung, Google TV

Here’s more backing up what I heard, that the ARM Powered Google TV is coming soon:

Samsung Electronics Co., the largest television maker, may use Google TV software in home- entertainment devices based on its own chips, rather than those from Intel Corp., a person with knowledge of the plans said.

Source: businessweek.com

MWC 2011 Highlights: My best MWC11 videos and the most important topics!

Posted by – February 22, 2011

I filmed and posted 75 videos from this years Mobile World Congress, I hope you enjoy watching some of those! Here are the highlights, the best topics of this show, making this possibly the most awesome trade show ever for ARM devices!

1. The Cheap Android Smartphone revolution
Yuhua Teltech sub-$200 4.3″ Touchstone
ZTE Sub-$200 4.3″ Skate, ZTE showed all the way down to $99 for 3.5″ ZTE Blade
– Huawei showed Sub-$150 Android
– Samsung showed sub-$200 phones such as the Sub-$200 3.5″ HVGA Galaxy Ace, Sub-$175 3.31″ QVGA Galaxy Fit and Sub-$150 3.14″ QVGA Galaxy Mini.
– MediaTek powers Sub-$80 Android Smartphones, that price is boxed in store! (excluding reseller margins): For example the Sub-$80 3.2″ QVGA 2G AnyData ASP320-Q
– ST-Ericsson showed their ARM Cortex-A9 Single Core U4500 platform to power Sub-$100 Smartphones within a year from now! The goal is Nexus One performance, longer battery runtime for Sub-$100 within a year from now!
– ST-Ericsson showed their current Sub-$100 U6715 ARM9 468Mhz range of phones, such as K-Touch W606, Acer beTouch E130, Coolpad W711 and the GHT Maestro, these are selling downwards $100 unsubsidized right now on the worldwide market.
– Alcatel One Touch

These are some of the cheap unsubsidized prices (boxed in store, no contracts needed, excluding reseller margins) for the cheapest Android Smartphone ARM SoC platforms that were shown last week at this Mobile World Congress:
Taiwan based:
MediaTek at less than $100
– Infomax Communication at $80-90
China based:
– Leadcore Technology at $80-105
– Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics at $90-105 (I filmed Rockchip at CES)
US based:
– Qualcomm MSM7227 ARM11 ships in the largest amount of cheap 3G Android phones that are about to sell for as low as $100-120
– Broadcom is planning such solutions also to be priced at $100-120

The Cheap Android Smartphone revolution is a HUGE deal, it means a Billion more people might afford to get Internet access and mobile personal Internet features in the next couple of years or so. And this means a potential HUGE disruption of the carrier/manufacturer Smartphone industry, as more and more European and US consumers are going to choose Sub-$100 Android phones without the need for 2-year contracts anymore, those phones can be used on pre-paid and even using unlimited free VOIP over 3G or LTE data-only services pretty soon.

2. Honeycomb, the first real Tablet OS
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
– Motorola Xoom (Xoom at CES)
LG Optimus Pad
Malata’s upgraded Tegra2 tablets (designs used by ViewSonic, Interpad, Hannspree etc..)
– My Interview with Honeycomb Chief Designer Matias Duarte: He confirms Honeycomb has no minimum hardware requirements, this means, ALL ANDROID TABLETS, even ARM Cortex-A8, even all existing Archos, Samsung, Dell tablets, even 256MB RAM, even the cheaper Rockchip 2808 and 2818, even Telechips, all may be getting Honeycomb firmware upgrades. It’s certainly an important detail to find out how much Google engineers are planning to be involved reaching out to each of these lower cost ARM SoC platform providers in porting the Honeycomb to all these cheaper and already released Android tablets platforms once the Tegra2 devices are out, the source code and the UPGRADED CDD (Android 3.0 Compatibility Definition Document) is instantly released. Honeycomb Holographic UI elements might be disabled on cheaper hardware that have less processor, memory and graphics acceleration. This should happen and get fully explained by Google Engineers within a few days! Honeycomb is not only for $800 tablets.

Froyo for current Android tablets is just as good as iOS on iPad. Since Donut SDK are Android apps supporting medium density screens (= tablets). Honeycomb is simply the first time a high-end ARM Powered tablet OS has really been designed and optimized for tablet use. Playbook and WebOS may look nice and similar, but they have no ecosystem (nobody can compete with open and free), I expect HP and RIM will be forced to simply use and build on Android within months.

3. New ARM Cortex-A9 processors shown for the first time
– Texas Instruments OMAP4430 in LG Optimus 3D, 3D Parallax Barrier is actually awesome for video games! Look for Nintendo 3DS turning this into a big deal in the coming weeks and months
– OMAP4430 in the Blackberry Playbook, watch my video interview with RIM about Android Dalvik Engine support on the Blackberry Playbook
– Samsung Exynos with Mali-400 in Samsung Galaxy S2, it may get all the Atrix 4G features through the Mobile High-Definition Link connector, watch my interview on that
– Qualcomm MSM8660 in HP Touch Pad, watch my video showing 1080p 3D capture and playback on MSM8660
ST-Ericsson launches A9500 ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core with Mali-400 development board for $200
ST-Ericsson launches U4500 ARM Cortex-A9 Single-core with Mali-400 for Sub-$100 Android Super Phones

4. First talk on Quad-core, Cortex-A15, next gen processors, arriving fast!
Texas Instruments OMAP Product Manager Brian Carlson talks OMAP5
– Qualcomm announced Quad-core 2.5Ghz,
Freescale talks i.MX6 Dual-core and Quad-core
Nvidia talks Quad-core, in products in August
ST-Ericsson talks ARM Cortex-A15 and NovaThor
– Broadcom announced ARM Cortex-A15 project

5. HSPA+ and LTE platforms launched
– ST-Ericsson launched Thor HSPA+ and Thor LTE platforms
Verizon showcased LTE, many of the new phones about to support this.
Novatel Wireless launched LTE Mifi

Google Android pins collectors, slides and a flash mob at Mobile World Congress 2011

Posted by – February 22, 2011

Google’s booth at Mobile World Congress was the most action packed, they generated a craze in people collecting Android pins that were spread all over the trade show, many people tried to get as many of the Android pins as possible, on the last day of the show, many people were going crazy exchanging them.

Android Native Code SDK for advanced Game Development

Posted by – February 22, 2011

HyperDevBox is a development company based in Tokyo Japan, developing games exclusively for Android. They are presenting Spectral Souls for Android, the first tactical RPG game for Android and explaining how the Android Native SDK is being used to run native C or C++ code, there is no Java code at all in the game.

Mobile Multi Display system by UMIC-RWTH of Aachen University

Posted by – February 22, 2011

Combine many tablets and smartphones into one big touchscreen. In this demo, 3 iPhones and 2 iPads are combined into one big touch screen. Any other Android smartphone or tablet can also be used. You can find more informations here: graphics.rwth-aachen.de

Metrogroup shows app for retail orders, NFC for supermarkets

Posted by – February 22, 2011

Basically, if you have a store, restaurant, hotel, you can use this smartphone app to order more stuff automatically.

Device Anywhere, testing applications

Posted by – February 22, 2011

Device Anywhere provides test center service for app developers, carriers, service providers to test apps and services accross all the devices using some kind of standard for testing. Basically they make it automatic to test stuff across all devices that people use on the market, to test and see what features may work more or less well.

Verizon launches LTE network

Posted by – February 22, 2011

Verizon is ramping up launch of LTE in the USA, they have LTE dongles for laptops out right now, in this video they show prototypes of devices with LTE that are coming out. They are suggesting 1080p video can be streamed using this network technology.

Acer DX241H, 24″ Monitor, Freescale i.MX51 Powered, comes with Chrome OS pre-installed?

Posted by – February 22, 2011

There is talk about a new version of the 24″ 1080p Acer monitor, the one that comes with the Freescale i.MX51 processor (see it in the video below), to be released with Chrome OS on it instead of that photoframe type of OS that is on the previously released Acer D241H. See my video from CES showing this Acer D241H and imagine it running Chrome OS as demonstrated by Freescale for the past year in other of my videos.

The simple thing is like this, Acer DX241H could simply come with some USB Host ports to connect USB keyboard and mouse, it could come with the slightly faster i.MX53 processor, possibly more RAM suitable for Chrome OS use, and most importantly, it just might be that we are approaching the point in time when Google is ready to unleash Chrome OS devices, ARM Powered as well, and this type of product could be it.

The key is this, you can add Chrome OS using ARM such as Freescale’s ARM Cortex-A8, with WiFi, and all, for just $50 more. The same thing is going to happen with HDTVs, you will be able to add Google TV to those as well using ARM for just less than $50 more.

Source: chromeossite.com
Found via: techcrunch.com

Novatel Wireless 4510 LTE Mifi

Posted by – February 22, 2011

Notavel Wireless is one of the leading makers of Mifi devices for 3G and they are now making LTE based Mifis to be supporting upwards 2-5mbitps upload and 5-12mbitps download speeds or more. The new Mifi has an eink display to show status and comes with more of the built-in applications on the Mifi OS that Novatel Wireless provides an SDK for.

Reuters: ARM CEO Warren East talks about Windows on ARM

Posted by – February 22, 2011
Category: MWC, ARM

At CES last month, Microsoft announced Windows for ARM, recently there has been rumors that Microsoft has over 1000 engineers working on it at full speed to get this released before the end of the year, here’s an interview by Reteurs with ARM CEO Warren East at the Mobile World Congress:

Found via: @ARMMobile on Twitter

Secusmart encrypts voice/sms/data in 2000€ MicroSD

Posted by – February 22, 2011

Secusmart encrypts mobile devices. They encrypt voice calls, sms, email, contacts, the calendar and more by using a special 2000€ MicroSD card with encryption capability on that card and a phone with a modified firmware. They plan to get the price down once they can build cheaper MicroSD cards with built-in NXP cryptocontroller and a hardware accelerator inside.

Tap n Tap Android user interfaces at Mobile World Congress 2011

Posted by – February 22, 2011

Tap ‘n Tap develops applications, user interfaces, to integrate deeply with hardware acceleration, delivering aa complete software stack to provide differentiated Android experiences for companies that want to implement alternative Android based UI on their tablets.

PTPT user interfaces at Mobile World Congress 2011

Posted by – February 22, 2011

ExB Communication Systems GmbH presents the PTPT touch screen interface, a suggested UI to manage “all the information around you”. PTPT stands for people, things, places and time. It’s an Android Home Replacement that will be available in the Google Marketplace next month.

Samsung Galaxy Fit

Posted by – February 22, 2011

An affordable 3.31″ QVGA capacitive Qualcomm MSM7227 ARM11 600Mhz powered Android Smartphone from Samsung. Compact, possibly to be sold below $150 without contracts needed, for example on pre-paid plans.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play

Posted by – February 22, 2011

This one has Playstation gaming controls that slide out, there will be Playstation Suite support meaning it’ll play all kinds of Playstation games that will be added by Sony to the Android platform. This is not the Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 5″ Sony NGP PSP2, but it may satisfy some gamers until that one comes out later in the year. It includes the Qualcomm MSM8255 with Adreno 205 graphics acceleration.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo

Posted by – February 21, 2011

This one also has the BRAVIA engine, Exmor R sensor for good camera quality, also includes a front facing camera for video-chat, HDMI output, but it’s a little bit fatter than the Xperia Arc, also includes the Qualcomm MSM8255 1Ghz processor.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro

Posted by – February 21, 2011

New Smartphone by Sony Ericsson, includes the new BRAVIA engine LCD and has a slide out thumb keyboard. Uses the second generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 8255 1Ghz processor.

Qualcomm MSM8660 Dual-core captures and playsback 3D

Posted by – February 21, 2011

Qualcomm shows 18mbitps 1080p playback but also shows support of 1080p 3D playback and 1080p 3D recording. Is this really what he meant to say, that it not only playsback 18mbitps 1080p 2D, but also records and playsback 1080p 3D as well? Might it be that the 3D 1080p modes are supported only at lower bitrates? Does that mean the Qualcomm MSM8660 Dual-core platform may be the best performing video player and recorder among the recently demonstrated Dual-core processors? Please post your insights, knowledge and resources on this that you can find in the comments.

JKKmobile.com: ARM Powered Laptop built into Macbook by CUPP

Posted by – February 21, 2011

At Mobile World Congress, CUPP was showing some Macbook laptops with a switch that I guess puts OSX in sleep mode and switches over the the ARM SoC platform and Android or Ubuntu on ARM and using the same screen, keyboard and mouse for that.

This video was posted at: JKKmobile.com