A synchronized cloud based content browsing and streaming system that works across set-top-box, laptops both ARM powered and Intel powered, and on Toshiba’s new Tegra2 based Android laptops and tablets.
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I will post 50 videos of the best ARM Powered devices at the IFA consumer electronics show
Posted by – August 30, 2010
Category: IFA
Subscribe to this blog, cause I will be bringing you the best videos of the best ARM Powered products to be shown at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin on September 2nd to 8th, here is the RSS feed: http://ARMdevices.net/feed/
Marvell powered pogoplug/sheevaplug community gets Amahi software applications platform
Posted by – August 24, 2010
Category: NAS
Marvell is developing awesomely cheap network attached storage and home cloud computing terminals called Pogoplug and Sheevaplug. Those are most often $99 or cheaper, based on open source hardware designs, manufactured by several manufacturers, they are probably the cheapest most cost effective ARM Powered NAS and media streamer home cloud computing solutions. You can buy one of those, plug them to your electricity, connect them to the web using ethernet or WiFi and run some Linux software on it from an SD card and access and do stuff such as hosting and media streaming with the files on a USB hard drive or flash drive.
Amahi is now releasing an open source software, with components from Fedora for ARM and a bunch of other stuff. It can run free software such as web-chess, gallery, wikis, blogging software, groupware that can be installed in a one-click install process. You might not really be able to do this kind of easy one-click Applications marketplace thing using some of the more expensive NAS devices on the market by companies like Synology, Qnap and Netgear.
Source: http://blog.amahi.org/2010/08/11/amahi-for-the-marvell-plug-computer-released-get-yours-free/
shanzai.com: HeroTab RK7 Android 2.1 Tablet unboxing
Here’s a new Telechip TCC8902 based Android tablet that can output 1080p video in some limited way. It is still unclear what if any 720p and 1080p video playback limitations Telechips might have. Playback of 1080p MKV H264 high profile with DTS audio at very high bitrates using HDMI output might not be totally smooth. Web browsing isARM11 powered which makes it slower than the ARM Cortex A8 and A9 tablets that are coming out for more expensive prices.
This video was released at http://www.shanzai.com/index.php/bandit-gadgets/tablets/1665
PocketBook to release 5 new e-readers
Posted by – August 21, 2010
Category: E-readers
The worlds third most popular e-ink device maker (after Amazon and Sony) is PocketBook Global (recent merger of PocketBook and Netronix). PocketBook has been releasing nice unlocked and open e-ink readers for a few years now, here Pocketbook’s new generation of e-readers is to be released on the worldwide markets around November, which they will demonstrate at IFA in Berlin on September 3-8th in Berlin, at which I will be making sure to film extensive video coverage from on this site.
Amazon’s $139 WiFi 6″ e-reader accelerates the expansion of the e-ink market and I don’t think it will hurt competition. The e-ink e-reader market is expected by some analysts to achieve sales of 15 million units this year, up from 5 million units last year. It’s a market in full boom. Those e-readers make people read again in times of TV and Internet distractions. Google Editions very likely will provide an alternative source of revenues for alternative e-ink e-reader makers to also be able to subsidize their devices based on content sales, I don’t think the Kindle store has to be the only e-book store in the world that can subsidize an e-reader hardware ecosystem. PocketBook also has their own BookLand.net content store with tens of thousands of e-books available. And the alternatives such as PocketBooks have attractive hardware features that Kindle doesn’t have such as not being locked into Amazon’s DRM walled garden, with a more open embedded Linux user interface, wacom touch screens are awesome and unlocked 3G/wifi/bluetooth and more really can be very great features for an expanding e-ink e-reader market.
PocketBook 603 Pro:
6″ e-ink with Wacom touchscreen, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, 2GB built-in, battery for 14000 page turns
PocketBook 903 Pro:
9.7″ e-ink with Wacom touchscreen, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, 2GB built-in, battery for 7000 page turns
PocketBook 602 Pro:
6″ e-ink screen, WiFi and Bluetooth, headphones, 2GB built-in, battery for 14000 page turns
PocketBook 902 Pro:
9.7″ e-ink screen, WiFi and Bluetooth, headphones, 2GB built-in, battery for 7000 page turns
PocketBook IQ:
Android 2.X on a color 7” TFT touchscreen (resistive?), WiFi and Bluetooth.
Those e-readers are based on Linux software which PocketBook announces as Open Source and they say there are already a lot of user-made apps and games. Here’s an application suggestion which I would recommend for PocketBook or the Linux open source community around it to create:
– Integration of Chrome to Phone functionality.
Hopefully that functionality can be extracted from Android 2.2 and included into an application to run on PocketBook’s embedded Linux OS. If this requires Android 2.2 and cannot be installed easilly enough on any other embedded Linux, then hopefully Google will release a version of Android for e-ink e-readers soon enough, which PocketBook could thus integrate. Another feature in Google’s Android for e-ink e-readers is I think the integration of Google Editions in a multitude of e-ink e-readers to compete with Amazon. This way, Google can also pay such third party device vendors a share of the profits then made on e-book and article sales.
I think it would be awesome if one could wirelessly beam any website, any article, properly automatically reformatted to be read on the e-ink e-reader. This would make these connected e-ink devices I think perfect companion devices with any laptop for people who like to read a lot. Google has I think open sourced the whole Chrome to Phone functionality since a few days ago.
ARM Powered Google TV, how soon?
Posted by – August 20, 2010
Google needs to announce the ARM Powered Google TV to compete with the rumored Apple iTV. Google TV could be sold for less than $99 using ARM instead of $299 using Intel.
Here’s a recent demonstration of Google TV showing its integration with Dish Networks services as reported by Engadget.com:
What hardware requirements will the ARM Powered Google TV have? ARM cortex A9 with DDR3 at the minimum for fast HD 1080p resolution browsing and interfaces? HDMI input and output (pass-through)? IR-blaster?
My guess is that there could be 2 different versions of Google TV for ARM Powered devices:
1. The full version: with full integration with existing cable/satellite box (HDMI in/out and IR blaster) plus same functions as the basic version.
2. The basic version: that only does the IPTV, Internet-only and media streaming features.
Using ARM, the Internet-only basic Google TV version could be sold at or below $49 while the fully backwards compatible with cable/satellite channels Google TV experience could be sold at or below $99.
I don’t think Google has signed any “exclusive” partnerships with Intel, they have a partnership for sure, just as Google has a partnership with Intel powering the more than a million Google servers that are out there. Intel feels left out of the whole Android ecosystem, so they are the ones who have been most desperate to at least be a part of the Google TV initiative. I think it’s more about Google waiting for the next generation ARM Cortex A9 to be ready to support full HD 1080p interfaces smoothly before they announce ARM support. Early next year, Google TV will be open sourced anyways, so by that time all the ARM vendors will have it.
Smooth-Stone ARM Powered Servers to disrupt cloud computing server market
Posted by – August 16, 2010
Category: Servers
ARM Powered Servers could be cheaper and consume less power and still provide the same performance as Intel. Smooth-Stone is developing some specific ARM processors and system on chip hardware configurations for use in servers to power cloud computing. Smooth-Stone has just announced that they have raised $48 Million from investors including ARM, ATIC (owner of Globalfoundries and part of AMD), Texas Instruments, Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners.
Smooth-Stone will make it possible for data center managers to increase the density of their computer resources while significantly reduce need for power, space and cooling. At the same time, Smooth-Stone technology will contribute to the reduction of the CO2 footprint of the data center in a significant way.
In a previously announced project, Marvell is also working on Server specific versions of their Marvell ARM processors. This is going to be fun!
My guess is that these new ARM server processors may be based on ARM Cortex A9, come at as little as very small 28nm process size, come with many cores for server-optimized parallel processing. More speculation:
Server chips won’t need the graphics and signal processors that most high-performance ARM chips have (as the latter are targeted at media applications), but may need larger caches and MMUs capable of addressing more than 4GB of physical memory. Even if ARM has only 4GB logical address space, you can let different processes have different 4GB chunks of a larger physical memory.
What specific hardware configurations and SoC designs do you think these ARM Servers should include? What do you think the power consumption will be for a given performance level compared to Intel? What do you think the price difference will be between an ARM Powered server-park and one powered by Intel? You can post in the comments.
Source: http://www.smooth-stone.com/smooth-stone-48m-funding/
Found via: techmeme.com
Net Neutrality logic
Google owns the most servers of any one company out there. Literally, it is rumored to be in the millions. Youtube streams out more than 2 billion video views per day. If an average video view is 30 megabytes, that means Youtube uses at least 60’000 Terrabytes of bandwidth per day. As I am not sure where to find the current estimate of global bandwidth capacity to all home Internet lines, let us compare that with the current reported trans-atlantic bandwidth capacity at around 10 to 20 Terrabit/s, that means a maximum bandwidth between Europe and the USA of 108’000 Terrabytes per day. 2009 price per trans-atlantic 10Gbit/s was $14’000 per month. If Google had to transfer half of Youtube’s daily bandwidth over the atlantic, that would cost $11 Million per day in bandwidth costs. Obviously, that scenario would be totally impossible.
The only way Youtube can provide up to 1080p and even 4K video to everyone, for free, on demand, is by cleverly distributing all the most popular videos on many, hundreds, maybe thousands of sort of caching servers that deliver the Youtube videos to every ADSL, Cable, Fiber to the home users around the world. What Youtube does, is that it tries to deliver the video from a Youtube cache as close to the user as possible. Most likely, that for the past years already, Google has been negociating with all the worlds major ISPs to build those Youtube caching servers right onto the local fiber optic backbones and server centrals of every major ISP.
This means, Google already has had to pay ISPs and major backbone providers for preferential access to its contents. This is the only way Google can provide a service that is fast enough for everyone to experience full bandwidth and fast buffering on all these high quality videos and have it all work smoothly in prime time, and when everyone wants to watch the same popular videos.
I’d like bloggers who critisize Google for it’s stance on Net Neutrality to consider that Youtube may account for about half of current global web bandwidth consumption excluding peer-to-peer like BitTorrent. And that Youtube’s share of global bandwidth consumption can only increase fast as Google TV comes out. What I think is the core issue we have to consider, is that it would be the worst if ISPs somehow because they might be more interested in staying with the status quo, that they may prevent an expansion of web video distribution by limiting the way high quality videos can be distributed freely on-demand to everyone.
While I think it is important to make sure startups don’t have any barriers to present their new ideas and new technical solutions to the web, I also think it is kind of logical that a startup won’t be able to afford distributing HD quality video as smoothly as Youtube does it, a startup cannot afford to buy thousands or even millions of servers and install them on every ISP and backbone around the world. AS once the cache server is embedded directly onto the ISPs backbone, that bandwidth, no matter how much it is, costs very little for the ISP to provide, at least compared to a scenario where the ISP would have to fetch all that data from the other side of an ocean.
I want to see a scalable solution that basically allows Youtube to expand even much further and provide even higher quality. It would be great if 720p 2mbit/s HD, 1080p 4mbit/s HD and even 24mbit/s 4K was streamed at full speed to every user. And imagining a scenario where a larger and larger share of everyone’s 5 hour daily TV watching did stream on-demand from the web. This means that the current 60 Petabytes/day that Youtube consumes today could turn into 6000 Petabytes/day within months.
As for Net Neutrality on wireless networks. I have often tried to ask Telecom companies how much bandwidth there really is in those base stations. The answer I kind of got, was that the bandwidth is not much, maybe only in the tens of megabit/s per base station. So obviously, it may not really matter what generation is used, be it 3G, 3.5G, 3.5G+, 4G/LTC, WiMax, as soon as more than 2 or 3 people start to want to have several megabit/second in an area of a neighborhood or so, the technology just won’t be able to handle it all. So for sure, I think Wireless networks need to be regulated. Especially as there isn’t really enough bandwidth for everyone to stream video on 3G nor LTE networks. Most importantly, I want to see regulation enforce that bandwidth for VOIP usage may not be blocked or down-graded compared to the exact same quality of the bandwidth used for “normal” voice calls.
The only solution to the bandwidth limitations of wireless networks, is to install smaller base stations closer to every user, so called micro-cells, also called Fem2cells. I believe the best spectrum that we should all install those base stations for would be the 700mhz white spaces spectrum, that is why I would like to hear someone say that it would be possible to build a FON.com like network using unlicensed and free to use White Spaces 700mhz. Everyone would install a $20 White Spaces micro-cell routers onto their home wireline ADSL/Cable/Fiber connections, sharing the bandwidth into their neighborhoods, using one same browser based access authentication system worldwide, that will provide enough wireless bandwidth for everyone to do whatever they want.
An upcoming era of revolutionizing $99 set-top-boxes
Posted by – August 12, 2010
Americans watch in average 5 hours of TV every day. Imagine a revolutionary $99 set-top-box which you add to your living room. This one increasingly brings more and more content from the Internet to the HDTV. This one even improves the experience of regular TV channels by overlaying search features and better targeted ads (which can finance better TV content).
Engadget is reporting on the rumored $99 Apple iTV set-top-box. It will basically be like an iPod Touch, without the screen and with an HDMI output and a remote control. It’ll have the latest Apple A4 processor which is based on the Hummingbird 45nm ARM Cortex A8 processor (similar to the one used by Samsung in the Galaxy S) designed by Intrinsity before they were bought by Apple. As usual, I don’t expect Apple to include support for many video and audio codecs and a proprietary iTunes synchronization over the network is more likely than support for the Samba and Upnp local file sharing standards.
The idea here is that by using the optimal ARM processor of the market, a very powerful yet very cheap set-top-box can be made. One that brings full 720p web browsing to the HDTV, but also re-designed and optimized graphics accelerated user interfaces to the HDTV, basically smooth interfaces for Youtube and other video-on-demand sources, to thus be watched directly on the HDTV.
I’ve video-blogged about Android based set-top-boxes such as the $50 design by Webia Technologies and Bonux and the $129 (retail target price) one made by Keenhigh mediatech. Both can run the latest Android 2.2 software (when available) with full 3D graphics acceleration even though their processors are likely ARM9 or ARM11 based.
As Google goes along partnering with Intel to release Google TV soon, I expect the Intel based designs to be sold at $199 or likely above that. I think it would be nice to know how soon the customized Android software that represents the Google TV disribution would also be optimized for use on cheaper ARM Powered solutions. As Android on those cheap prototypes looks great, it would be good for those devices to know they can rely on a Google OS optimized for use with a remote control and optimized for easy access to revolutionary HDTV features. Including the support of Youtube in HD quality on all those cheap boxes.
The basic hardware features needed for full Google TV support on cheap ARM Powered set-top-boxes I think are HDMI input and output (pass-through) for overlaying features to contents from existing Cable/satellite set-top-boxes as well as the IR blaster to control that other set-top-box. But for Internet and media streamer features only, all that is needed is just a Google TV for ARM software release.
Advanced video games coming to Android devices
As the Nintendo 3DS might come with 3G and smartphone-like features, it is also about to be the time for the smartphones to include button layouts that are optimized for advanced 3D video games. As the OpenGL ES 2.0 3D rendering is getting so advanced with the latest ARM processors, all it takes to experience advanced video gaming decently on phones is game pad buttons on each side of the screen. While capacitive touch screens and accelerometers provide the start of an idea that gaming can work on these devices, to get the best possible experience, it is just a hardware issue relating to the hardware design.
Gaming emulators seem to work great on Android, it is to be seen if Nintendo will be bold enough to offer legal access to all its old games at fair prices to licence and download legally directly from within an official Nintendo game console emulator to be released in the Android market place. I think that the best pricing strategy that they could provide is $5 subscription pricing renewed each month that the games are played offering unlimited access to all Nintendo games on the specific supported platforms. Hopefully all Nintendo game console games emulated up until Nintendo 64 and Sega Dreamcast would be supported this way.
Another very interesting possible development, is that the portable gaming device will have so powerful graphics acceleration that it will actually be able to function as a HD video games console when connected using HDMI to the HDTV. Whether the latest portable ARM powered devices are able to render 1080p video games at full frame rates using HDMI to a HDTV, that is to be seen, but the development might be approaching that possibility. At least current hardware definitely might output Wii level quality graphics to any TV using the TV output. So the portable Android gaming device might not only compete with the Nintendo DS and the PSP, it might also compete with the Wii, XboX and Playstation 3.
Engadget is reporting on a rumor that Sony-Ericsson is preparing a 1ghz Snapdragon powered Playstation smartphone with Android 3.0 onboard. It is to be expected that Sony may want to keep exclusive access to their own games to be released for that new Android gaming platform. The slide-out gamepad design from under the device that is shown in Engadget’s mockup design, instead of the keyboard, is probably an okay solution for gamers.
I would like to see someone build a good elastic design for a wireless bluetooth gamepad accessory that can be strapped to each side of any smart phone or tablet of any size and shape and have good gaming buttons push inwards to cover as much of the screen bezel as possible. Even to snap into 4:3 gaming mode and 16:9 gaming modes as the user prefers. Thus a solution to nicely transform any Android device into an advanced video gaming device. The design below is not exactly good enough design for this idea, please let me know in the comments if you know any better design:
Archos 32 is a sub-$149 ARM Cortex A8 Android 2.2 iPod Touch competitor
Posted by – August 11, 2010
Archos has always been at the forefront of embedded ARM innovations in portable gadgets (full disclosure, I am also the webmaster of ArchosFans.com and Forum.ArchosFans.com). Archos newest generation 8 line of devices is to be announced and released within a month or two from now, which are to include at least 5 tablet sizes, with Android 2.2 compatibility, based on the new Texas Instruments OMAP3630 45nm ARM Cortex A8 processor, same as in the Droid X and Droid 2, to provide even more advanced OpenGL 3D acceleration and improved video decoding and encoding features.
So as at least 5 different skews or sizes of Android tablets are to be released by Archos from 2.8″ to 10″ with planned pricing between $100 and $350 unlocked and out of any required contracts. This is why I think that this new series of Archos Android tablets is probably to be the cheapest ARM Cortex A8 based Android tablets to be available broadly on the market thus far.
This new Archos 32 (8GB), to be priced at and below $149, comes with a 3.2″ 400×240 WQVGA touch screen, WiFi and Bluetooth, composite video output, USB host, support for all video codecs including Mpeg4, H264, WMV, Mpeg2 and more at up to 720p and 12mbit/s bitrates and including audio codecs support such as Mp3, Flac, WMA and Ogg Vorbis. It is I think basically placed as a cheaper alternative to the iPod Touch, using the latest Android and being more opened in the way it interoperates with Windows, Mac and Linux machines not requiring synchronization through a software like iTunes, but connecting as a standard USB mass storage device.
While it would be best for these Archos Android tablets to receive the permission from Google to come with the Google Marketplace pre-installed on them, it may be that Google might still not allow it. Though it is then also very likely that users of the product will easily be able to find a Market4Archos.apk file on the Internet to easily install the full Google Marketplace, Gmail and other Google Apps experiences to this device exactly as if the feature was pre-installed officially. I am still confident that Google will soon expand Google Marketplace to many new types of devices, not only to $500+ Android smart phones, but also to Tablets, Laptops with the Chrome browser icon and Set-top-boxes.
Find more pictures and more descriptions at: ArchosFans.com
You can discuss this at: Forum.ArchosFans.com
Source: fcc.gov
Found via: liliputing.com
Texas Instruments licences ARM Eagle series
Posted by – August 10, 2010
Category: Texas Instruments, Archos
Texas Instruments has had their awesome OMAP3430 series on the market now for around two years in the Archos 5, Archos 5 Internet Tablet, Motorola Droid, Palm Pre and with their new 45nm OMAP3630 version in Archos Generation 8, Droid X, Droid 2 and a bunch of other products to come. The ARM Cortex A9 based OMAP4 is to be expected in products for a bit later, maybe starting next year with amazing 1080p encoding and decoding and with extremely fast multi-core ARM processing built-in.
Building on its rich heritage of collaboration with ARM, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) today confirmed that it was the first company to partner with ARM in the conception and definition of the next generation ARM® Cortex™-A series processor core (also known as “Eagle”) to be announced later this year. TI intends to use the new processor to further strengthen and extend its future OMAP™ platform offerings.
Now, Texas Instruments is the first processor maker to announce that they are licencing ARM’s next generation named the Eagle platform, possibly reaching products within a couple of years.
“We are thrilled to know that our customers will be the first to leverage the new ARM processor core’s far-reaching innovations via our industry-leading OMAP products. Successful mobile industry achievements revolve around the ‘high-performance, low-power’ mantra, and we believe the results of our collaborative effort echo the importance of this must-have balance.”
The names may be ARM Cortex A10 and Texas Instruments OMAP5 series.
What do you think may be the improvements for this ARM Eagle platform? Higher performance quad-core 3ghz 28nm or 32nm High-K Metal Gate processors at even lower power consumption and lower prices? ARM Cortex A8 does 2DMIPS per Mhz (2’000DMIPS at 1Ghz), ARM Cortex A9 does 2.5DMIPS per Mhz (6’000DMIPS at dual-core 1.2Ghz), how high is Eagle going to go? Is it A9 is 3x faster than A8, and Eagle is 8x faster than A8 solutions when running well multi-threaded code? Does Eagle go as high as 15’000 DMIPS on a quad-core design? You can discuss this in the comments.
Source: ti.com
High School students get the OLPC XO-1.5 HS Laptop with new keyboard
Uruguay has already given one laptop to every child between 6-12 years old. Now they want to give laptops to older students too from 12-15 years old. For this, OLPC has installed a keyboard that is more suitable for older kids:
Remember that OLPC is full at work on OLPC XO-1.75 which is a Marvell Armada powered OLPC laptop, which may also get a 8.9″ touch screen. And that OLPC is also full at work with Marvell to release the XO-3 tablet design by next CES.
As you can see with the hundreds of videos at my other video-blog http://olpc.tv, OLPC is a huge success wherever it is implemented. The ARM based versions that are coming, hopefully also using the newest version of the Pixel Qi screens, should allow for a significant lowering of the manufacturing prices and a much lower power consumption.
Source of this video: olpcnews.com
Android now leads US smart phone sales, increased by 886% from last year
Posted by – August 2, 2010
According to market analytics company Canalys second quarter 2010 smart phone sales report, Android is the fastest selling smart phone platform in the USA between April and June 2010, with 34% of the sales in the US market, in front of Blackberry RIM who sold 32% of smart phones and Apple iOS who sold 21%.
Canalys’ detailed, globally consistent data shows it is the collective growth of Android device shipments across a range of handset vendors’ portfolios that is most remarkable. With key products from HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG, among others, shipments of smart phones running the Google-backed Android operating system grew an impressive 886% in Q2 2010.
As I posted in my previous post Why are we still waiting for the sub-$250 Android super phones?, this market domination in the USA is reached by the combined Android vendors without them even starting to provide much cheaper Android phones. As in my opinion, the strength of Android is not only the differentiation and increased number of features and choices, I think it is also most importantly the opportunity for competition in the smart phone industry to bring lower unlocked smart phone prices. Once Android super phones are sold below $250 unlocked, and that those can be used for pre-paid plans without long term contracts, I believe that the Android market share will even further increase.
Source: canalys.com
Found via: slashgear.com
Why are we still waiting for the sub-$250 Android super phones?
Posted by – August 1, 2010
New Android super phones are arriving on the market every few weeks, promoted by all carriers and selling twice as fast as the iPhone. We are also seeing a few lower cost Android phones being sold with smaller resistive screens, using slower processors. Specialist sites like isuppli.com have analyzed the Bill Of Material of all those phones and they are saying that even the top of the line of Android super phones can be manufactured for $165 or below. My question is then still, as we are seeing more and more competition in the Android market, when are we going to be able to buy all those Android super phones at below $250, with unlocked 3G and 4G SIM card slots and no obligation to sign up for 2 years of very expensive, often over $2000 of subscriber contracts?
Before the official release of the Nexus One, I had speculated that it may be sold by Google directly to consumers below $200, as I thought that Google wouldn’t be interested in making a profit on the hardware as their strategy is to make a profit on advertising and online services. With probable pressure from manufacturers such as HTC, and from pressure by the big carriers, Google has not been allowed to yet introduce such a disruptive business model to the Android super phone market, at least not yet. It’s the same thing Andy Rubin told me off camera at Mobile World Congress, that Google wasn’t the one deciding what should be the pricing of the Nexus One.
It’s not only consumers in Europe and the USA who I think would be glad to get cheaper unlocked Android super phones, I believe there is a gigantic market available right there to the Android super phone manufacturers if they would aim to provide sub-$250 unlocked Android super phones to the people of developing countries. Each year, over 1 billion phones are bought by consumers worldwide, in fact, mostly in developing countries right now. Those handsets are mostly low cost Nokia phones and the likes. Super phones may be reaching only 100 million units sold each year so far. But that could easily double or triple from one year to the next, as soon as manufacturers decide to sell them at more reasonable cost to the consumers who want unlocked or who only care for pre-paid mobile plans. Most of the world’s nearly 5 billion mobile phone users are using pre-paid plans.
Shanzai.com recently published an editorial analyzing the upcoming wave of sub-$100 Android phones that could be coming based on the new low cost ST Ericsson 416MHz T6719 platform that I filmed in the Acer beTouch E120 and Acer beTouch E130 at Computex. Marvell may also be preparing a lower cost Android super phone platform as demonstrated in the O Phones line of Android super phones that is sold only in China for now. Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Freescale and others surely have some low cost Android super phone platform plans that they must be preparing.
The issue is the conflict of interest that there might be between Android super phone’s current customers, which are the major European and American carriers, and the interest of consumers worldwide to see lower cost Android super phones with less constraints, less obligations and less contracts. Many consumers in Europe and the USA are paying the equivalent of 3 or 4 months rent every year just for their mobile phone contracts, which is insanely expensive when you think about it.
Wouldn’t it be nice if one could get a $250 unlocked Android super phone, with all the latest capacitive screens and fastest available ARM processors, also with 2 SIM card slots, one for eventual pre-paid or subscription based voice/sms SIM card, and the other for an eventual data-centric 3G or 4G service. On top of which it would still have all the WiFi and Bluetooth features, as well as video-chat that works on any network, and fully unlimited and unlocked features of tethering, Mifi function and HD video streaming, also coming on any networks. All that with HDMI output if needed and HD camcorders right there inside. Then also, sub-$125, there would be smaller resistive screens and lower performance ARM and single SIM normal devices but also unlocked and usable for pre-paid plans. Shanzai.com and Visionmobile.com speculate that advanced features can be included on the cheaper Android hardware using Mobile Virtualization.
Virtualization is new to mobile, but established in the data center, fundamental in cloud computing and increasingly popular on the desktop.
Mobile Virtualization lets handset OEMs, operators/carriers and end-users get more out of mobile hardware. It decouples mobile OSes and applications from the hardware they run on, enabling secure applications and services on less expensive devices today and deployment on advanced hardware tomorrow.
Without much of the cheap Android phones yet on the market, already Android is selling twice as fast as the iPhone. Imagine how much faster they will sell once the cheaper Android super phone prices start to be released. Perhaps a bit more competition in this market is needed to trigger this, perhaps manufacturers and carriers will be careful not to cannibalize their huge profit margins in Europe and USA while some of them will launch hundreds of millions of cheaper Android handset options in the developing countries.
I filmed the Augen $99 smartbook 6 months ago
Engadget and a bunch of other blogs have been reporting these last few days about the cool Augen branded Android Smartbook and Tablets that are being released in the US market at affordable $99 and $149 prices by Super Market chain KMart. I just would like to remind my readers that I posted my video review of the Augen Smartbook 6 months ago on January 29th as it’s based on the Hivision PWS700CA and its cool RockChip ARM9 processor that runs Android in this video: http://138.2.152.197/2010/01/29/android-laptop-review-hivision-pws700ca/
and that the Telechips ARM11 800mhz based Augen $149 7″ Tablet that Engadget and plenty other blogs also are talking about seems to be based on the same 7″ resistive tablet hardware design that I filmed 5 months ago presented by MAG Digital at CeBIT 2010 in this video: http://138.2.152.197/2010/03/02/mag-digital-presents-windows-ce-that-looks-like-android-in-a-tablet/
To let you know my opinion. I think it is fantastic that Augen and KMart are promoting such cheaper Android Laptop and Tablet form factors as alternatives to the much more expensive Apple iPad and Intel Netbooks. Archos has also been selling the similarly priced Archos 7 Home Tablet on the worldwide market which I video reviewed 5 months ago, which is now broadly available in many retail and online stores below $200 for the 8GB version (and the 2GB version originally planned at $149, then $179 but for now they are mostly selling the 8GB version). That Rockchip based Laptop and Tablet platform also being upgraded to 1ghz still ARM9 to support newer Android 2.2 versions.
But as we have heard from Canonical developers and from hearsay and off camera chatter by Google people at the Google Q&A at Computex about Chrome OS on ARM Laptops, although the second generation 45nm ARM Cortex A8 with faster DDR RAM and faster I/O performance can be enough, the coming of ARM Cortex A9 platforms may be preferable to achieve the full desktop web browsing experience that most consumers may require for them to consider the ARM platforms as fully usable alternatives in the Intel/Microsoft dominated Laptop market. And the iPad and the whole bunch of smart phones that are currently spread all over the market, those may kind of set expectations at capacitive and ARM Cortex A8 performance at the minimum. So it will be interesting, capacitive touch screen manufacturers allowing, to see how soon and how cheap those capacitive Android tablet designs at full user interface speeds can reach the market. ARM9 and ARM11 resistive tablets are not bad for a start, they can give the consumers and bloggers a taste of what can be done with Android at retail prices below $200 and even below $100. The ultimate goal should be though that we should have full speed ARM Cortex versions of all these devices in all the stores, with the best capacitive screens for tablets or non-touch screens for Laptops, preferably Pixel Qi screens, and available below $200 without contracts, running free Linux based Android or Ubuntu OSes.
New Kindle just $139, first on i.MX508? Google Editions integration?
The new WiFi-only version of Kindle is $139, it uses the latest generation of E-Ink screens, with faster refresh, better contrast. It might be the worlds first e-reader to use the latest Freescale i.MX508 processor, which means the e-ink controller is integrated in the ARM processor SoC, which allows for 21% smaller design, 15% lower weight and significantly lower cost, while improving the processing speed at up to Cortex level to achieve faster refresh rates and optimizing more things such as doubling of battery runtime, faster e-book downloading times, usable web browsing speeds and more.
Sub-$140 connected e-ink e-readers are a big deal. Amazon is already selling more e-books to the Kindle e-readers than they are selling paper books. And consider that Amazon is the worlds largest online retailer of paper books. This e-book revolution has happened in less than 2 years since the release of the Kindle. Since Amazon’s strategy is to make revenues and profits from sales of the content on their closed Kindle platform, it should be even possible for Amazon to further lower the price as needed, thus $99 Kindle shouldn’t be far away. What happens, is that from about 5 million e-ink e-readers sold in 2009, there might be 15 million of those e-ink e-readers sold pretty soon.
Google is coming with the Google Editions E-book system later this summer, meaning next month or so. My big question is this, will Amazon allow Google’s e-book system onto all Kindles through a firmware update? The way for Amazon to allow this to happen would be for Google Book Store to be only complementary to Amazon’s current Book store. Basically, any titles that Amazon has in its store would be purchased through its own store, while google would only provide access to all contents that are not yet in the Kindle store. On those out of print or otherwise unavailable in Kindle Store contents, Amazon would be making a decent share of the revenue through a partnership agreement with Google. The point being that it could be great for Kindle and Google to have a partnership and a new firmware integration. If Amazon does not open its platform to Google, I expect we will see several new e-ink e-readers sold $99 or below from many manufacturers that will be using a special version of Android that Google must be working on to release with Google Editions. As Google will provide revenue sharing for the manufacturers of devices that access Google Editions and other online sources of monetizable contents, expect some type of AdSense for e-readers.
Source for this video: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com
Found through: http://techmeme.com
Can the Android bloatware user interfaces be turned off?
I am an Android fanboy. But I don’t like the different custom Android user interface designs such as Motorola Blur, HTC Sense, Samsung TouchWiz, Sony Ericsson’s nor Acer’s custom user interfaces, I think they are confusing and they are like visual bloatware. Please investigate following:
1. Is there a home replacement in the Google Marketplace that returns the full UI in Android to the default Android UI in all of the different Android phones? If not, then why isn’t Google officially releasing this default Android UI in the Google Marketplace? Does anyone have any contacts at Google to whome they could ask about this?
2. Will that Default Android UI Home Replacement provide a way to have exactly the same UI as on the Nexus One? And without voiding any of the warranties? And without consuming any extra RAM memory or slowing anything down in any way?
It’s very simple, but we need simple and definite answer on this. And we need answers from Google officially. Thanks.
I do understand that the reason for each of these different layers of designs on top of Android is that each of the phone makers feel that they have to differentiate their Android offerings from the competition. That consumers have to think that they are buying a HTC phone and that only HTC phones can do that or look like that. And so on.
But I would rather that the Android ecosystem immitate the Windows world, let all the default desktop user interfaces look the same. Stop confusing the consumers. Let them recognize the true value of the whole Android ecosystem. And phone makers should preferably compete on hardware and features for the prices.
I understand this idea is disruptive to the current Android business plans of each of the companies. But please, could we at least just get a little basic Home Replacement somewhere deep in the Google Marketplace that offers anyone with any Android phone to set it back to the Nexus One styled basic Android UI design?
I’ve been told in certain comments that Launcher Pro and some other Home Replacements were good. But I am looking for a Home Replacement that offers exactly the same UI designs as on the Nexus One. Please let me know in the comments if you know of a near or fully Nexus One UI Home Replacement that is available for any of Samsung Galaxy S, Droid X, HTC Desire, Sony Ericsson X10 or any of the other Android phones, what your experience is with it and on which of the phones.
Having to void warranties on those $500 devices just to get a normal UI is a terrible thing.
Read more at droiddog.com: Hey manufacturers, leave Android alone!
How to test and compare Apple’s iPhone 4 antenna design
Posted by – July 24, 2010
Category: Opinions
I don’t have the iPhone 4, nor any of its main Android competitors (I am considering a Samsung Galaxy S to test Super AMOLED and Hummingbird, but I still think it is far too expensive at 450€ unlocked), nor would I have the time to actually do this type of thorough testing, but here is how I would suggest that it would be best for an independent and trusted media to test the iPhone 4’s antenna. I think it could be much more useful to get the real user testing data than to wait through more back and forth between each of the companies advertising and spin doctors, news conferences, blogger fanboys and other media stunts.
1. Make 100 calls of at least 2 minutes in length with each device, holding it in the left hand. Preferably make the test using people not familiar with the issue at all (ask anyone in the street who have not read the news or seen any pictures of how Apple recommends holding the phone), just ask them to make the phone calls holding the phone with their left hand. Make sure the people are speaking to each other constantly for at least those 2 minutes per call as silent calls may emit less data and generate less dropped calls.
2. Try to test this at different locations, be them central where signal reception is known to be strong as well as places where the signals are known to be weak.
3. When possible, test the different networks. For example, test other Android devices that use the same network as the iPhone 4 as well as testing the Android devices that work on other networks.
4. If possible, try to measure the bitrate and codec, thus quality of the phone calls. Perhaps one company uses lower voice call bitrate, stronger compression, maybe non standard compression technologies which may result in less dropped calls due to bad signal. For example, one phone brand on one network may have fewer dropped calls but also a lower voice call quality.
5. Report how many dropped calls there were out of 100 calls on each of the devices.
6. Launch downloads over 3G of certain different (un-cached) test 10 megabyte files hosted on specific servers. Ask the user to please hold the phone with their left hand and again with their right hand. Measure exact transfer bandwidth differences. Try to download on all the different phones at the same time and at the same location. If possible also compare upload speeds the same way if it is possible to upload something to a same server online using some browser or app based upload functionality.
I don’t think this should only be an issue about the number of bars displayed in closed, open source or hacked mobile phone OSes. This is about calls being dropped or not. And about 3G data transfer bandwidth.
If the iPhone 4 is proven to have significantly more dropped calls when the phones are held with the left hand, then I do think it would be fair for consumers to claim it to be defective and to demand a global recall. And they should be entitled a new one with a fixed antenna or for a full refund. Not within any 30-day usual return schedules, this would have to be valid for anyone having purchased a defective phone within the whole 2 years of the signed contracts. And I don’t think consumers have to be satisfied by just getting a $1 piece of plastic case to cover it.
The secrets behind Microsoft’s new ARM License
The biggest threat to Microsoft’s $62 Billion in yearly revenues and $24 Billion in yearly profits is the possibility that consumers and the enterprise start adopting sub-$200 Linux based ARM Cortex A9 laptops and desktops as the new standard for personal computing in the months to come. There is a high probability that Chrome OS and Ubuntu will turn out to work very smoothly on ARM Cortex A9 processors, so smoothly that most consumers might be satisfied with the experience of web browsing speed and for running basic applications like text editors but even basic video- and photo-editing once those are available on the cloud and powered by advanced HTML5 native code and caching mechanisms.
Microsoft clearly must be seeing this as the biggest threat to their core business and thus is probably preparing a version of Windows 7 for ARM. It won’t run all the .exe files that run on Intel/AMD/VIA x86 processors. But there may be tools for developers to recompile the most important applications and to make new drivers. The challenge is for Microsoft to present such a lightweight version of Windows for ARM in a way that consumers will still pay for the Microsoft Windows OS experience even as prices of those ARM Powered laptops arrive at under $200. The profit margins will be low for Microsoft and this will require for them to implement totally different and bold business models if they want to try to keep the same numbers in yearly revenues and profits to not have their share holders sell their stocks. It would probably be based on Windows CE 7, but since that one looks much like Windows CE 6, it would be all about how they could upgrade the user interfaces to make it look and perform as much like Windows 7 as they can.
Some other possibilities as to what Microsoft may be doing with this ARM Licence:
– To release a new lower cost ARM Cortex A9 powered XboX to compete with the upcoming Google TV platform. 10 years ago, Microsoft launched MSN TV and for years there has been Windows Home Center Edition but it never really was a success like Google TV has the potential to be. Features need to be implemented in a cheap ARM Powered hardware such as HD quality video-on-demand streaming, casual and advanced 3D gaming, lean back web experiences.
– To release a Tablet centric OS to compete with Android and iOS, it would be related to Windows Phone 7 Series and with some features of the ARM version of Windows 7.
– Microsoft may want to design and control their own version of an ARM processor and keep it for their products. Like Apple keeps A4 for their products.
What do you think Microsoft is going to do with this ARM License?
via: techmeme.com
source: arm.com
