Category: Chip provider

vdiscovery makes $45 Infotmic ARM11 imapx210 PCB

Posted by – April 10, 2011

Here’s an interesting interview with http://www.vdiscovery.cn where they explain what else is needed to be added to create a tablet with the ARM Powered PCBA that they deliver based on the Infotmic imapx210 ARM11 processor for just $45 or cheaper depending on quantity.

MID Joyplus shows new Wondermedia, Rockchip, Telechips and Samsung Tablets


MID Joyplus is showing new Wondermedia WM8652 based 9.7″ tablet, a Rockchip Rk2818 10.1″ design and a 8″ 4:3 capacitive Telechips tablet. They still also have the Samsung Hummingbird 7″ for around $150.

Urbetter makes $73 Samsung PCB for Android Tablets

Posted by – April 10, 2011

Here’s a company who makes the Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8 based PCBA for about $73 or cheaper depending on quantity, to put into those nice capacitive 7″ or larger Samsung Hummingbird tablets that are coming out.

MID123.com Hummingbird Gingerbread Tablet

Posted by – April 10, 2011

Samsung Hummingbird based capacitive 7″ tablet runs Gingerbread, more info at http://www.mid123.com

$95 Cortex-A9 Tablet Review, Kinstone KS-UMD070A9


World’s cheapest ARM Cortex-A9 Tablet thus far (single core), it is to be sold at $95 FOB Shenzhen, meaning for orders of at least 500 pieces. Add taxes, import, licences, profit margins and the retail price in Europe and USA may be around $149/149€.

Here are the specs:

AmLogic 8726-M ARM Cortex-A9 Single Core 800Mhz
ARM Mali-400 graphics
Android 2.2 (2.3, 3.0 updates possible, depends on Google policies)
512MB RAM
4GB Flash
7″ resistive (capacitive available for about $30 extra)
WiFi, Bluetooth, Accelerometer
1800mAh battery
USB 2 host/device connector
HDMI output with 1080p full video codecs support (maximum video bitrate to be tested later.. Do you know of online benchmarks for video playback on this AmLogic, please write in comments)
Flash 10.1, 3G Dongle, GPS (optional, requires extra module)

Find more information or contact the manufacturer at http://www.kinstone.net

Szqhsc.com $65 Telechips Android tablet


Cheap Android tablets presented by http://www.szqhsc.com at the Shenzhen Electronics Fair.

Synrgic Dreambook Freescale i.MX515 Android tablet

Posted by – April 9, 2011

Here’s a cheap Android tablet presented by Synrgic at the Shenzhen Electronics Fair.

huashiguang.com Telechips 8803 Cortex-A8 tablet

Posted by – April 9, 2011

Here’s the new snappier ARM Cortex-A8 processor from Telechips running Gingerbread software already, bringing in faster processing speed, still keeping the price below $122 for this one.

Moonse AmLogic Cortex-A9 irobot tablet

Posted by – April 9, 2011

www.moonse.com.cn is showing this 7″ AmLogic 800mhz ARM Cortex-A9 based tablet. Showing some of its impressive Mali-400 graphics capabilities on a HDTV, basically it’s like having a PS3 console in your pocket. They are also making 8″ 4:3 and 10.1″ 16:9 versions as well.

Archos at the Shenzhen Electronics Fair


Archos Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd has a big booth in the middle of the Shenzhen Electronics Fair, there is a lot of interest for Archos and Arnova products in the Chinese market and developing countries. They have of course invited me to their Shenzhen offices tomorrow where I will try to film some awesome behind the scenes videos for you showing how Archos makes things happen here in Shenzhen, I’ll try to film at their factories if possible.

$149 Android Powered iphone4-clone, Sinoteck H2000 Hero


Why pay $800 for an iPhone (or $199 on 2-year $2000 contract), when you can buy an Android version for $149 and not have to pay anything further, other that perhaps a pre-paid plan. This one uses the Mediatek ARM9 460Mhz with DSP, runs Android Froyo. You can watch my Mediatek video from Mobile World Congress, they are one of the leaders in making these lowest cost ARM SoC solutions for Android smartphones, their next generation adds support for 3G networks. This $149 Sinoteck H2000 Hero comes with a 3.5″ HVGA capacitive touch screen, excellent Android implementation by Mediatek, that one is GPRS/GSM only though, Sinoteck also sells a Qualcomm MSM7200A based version for 3G/WCDMA support but for an additional $50.

Here are their infos from Sinoteck International (HK)Co.,Limited. (http://www.bysino.net/):

Android 2.2 GPS WIFI Analog TV Dual Card Quad Band 3.2″ Touch Screen Phone FG8

just 116usd you could attract every pretty girl’s attention

Hot Spots:
– Operating system:Google Android 2.2
– Built in GPS and support voice navigation
– CPU: MTK 6516 600MHZ
– RAM:256M,ROM:512M,extend to 32GB max
– 3.2 inch touch screen;HVGA PX:320*480
– Quadband GSM:850/900/1800/1900 MHZ
– WIFI high-speed Internet connectivity
– Analog TV free
– FM radio
– Language:English/Spanish/Russian/Portuguese/Turkish/Melayu/Indonesia

H2000 3.5″ Capacitance Touch Screen WIFI cell phones Quad Band Android 2.2 TV

just 149usd you could take it travel around the world

Hot Spot:

Internal Memory: 256M
Support Extend Card: 16G
Band: GSM850/900/1800/1900MHz
Service Provide: Unlocked
Display Size: 3.5inch
Screen Resolution: HVGA(480×320 pixels)
Screen Type: TFT
Display Colour: 256K colours
Languages: English,French,Spanish,Portuguese,Italian,German,Bahasa Melayu,Bahasa Indonesia,Turkce,Chinese traditional,Chinese Simplified

W801 SK168 Android 2.2 WCDMA 3G Smartphones Capacitive Screen With Multi-Touch

just 199USD you could do everything you want

* Hotsale Point:
* Google android 2.2 os
* Capacitive screen with multi-touch
* GSM/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA(3G)/
* Qualcomm MSM 7200A CPU, 512MByte ROM/288MByte RAM

Chang Jiang Android 007, $150 Android phone


This is the type of stuff I am looking for. Sub-$150 Android smartphone, with 3.2″ or larger capacitive touch screens, decent looking Android install. This one comes with 3.2″ capacitive and Android Froyo support. Please do some search for this on the web and please post full specs in comments so that I can update this page with the full specs. This one may be based on the Mediatek MTK6516 460Mhz ARM9 with 208MHz DSP.

Meizu M9, $380 Android phone with Retina Display


The price is $380 unlocked (2499 Chinese remimbi) (no further contracts needed, that’s about half the price of the iphone4 without a contract), for an Android phone with a same type of retina resolution display as on the iphone4. I think it uses the Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8 1Ghz processor with 512MB RAM (also sounds similar to the specs of the iphone4). There are actually many Meizu stores all over Shenzhen, I guess Meizu is a major gadgets brand selling here. Do you think Meizu is a bit too obvious at copying Apple’s design?

Here are the specs:

Meizu M9
CPU: 1 Ghz Cortex A8-based Samsung S5PC110
Graphics Processor: Power VR 540 GPU
Audio chip: Texas Instruments TLV320AIC36
Memory: Memory: 512 Mb ROM / 512 Mb RAM
Networks: GSM, GPRS, EDGE, 3G network support: WCDMA, HSDPA and HSUPA with speeds of 7,2/5,76 Mbps (Both schould work in Europe). Only supports the 2100 Mhz band of WCDMA. Check google for info in your country supports the 2100 Mhz band.
Dimensions: 59,8 x 113 x 11 mm
Weight: 123 grams
Expansion slot: Micro SD / TF – No built-in storage, microSDHC support. (Will come with either an 8GB or 16GB TF card)
Display: 3.56″ (49.92 x 74.88 mm), 960×640 pixel resolution, 16 million colors
Operating System: Android 2.2 Modified by Meizu(Includes English language), Android 2.3 will be released in the next firmware update.
Camera: 5 megapixels camera, Pictures in 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, Records videos in 720p HD (1280×720) at 30 FPS, No flash in the first version
Battery: 1370 mAh
Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1 / WiFi 802.11b/g/n (Different WLAN module compared to M8, WiFi tethering is supported) / A-GPS / TV-out (via mini USB, no HDMI. Not sure if included in the first version)
Ports: Mini USB 2.0, 3.5 mm audio jack

Android virtualization on TI OMAP4 processors (dual core Cortex-A9)

Posted by – April 4, 2011

A video released by B Labs today, features Android running as a virtualized guest operating system on Codezero® Embedded Hypervisor. Codezero® Embedded Hypervisor is a multicore virtualization solution for ARM Cortex-A9 processors and Linux based operating systems from B Labs.

Codezero is a multicore capable hypervisor that runs the Linux operating system in paravirtualized fashion. Codezero runs Linux applications, as well as Linux kernel guests in user mode, with memory protection, and requiring no hardware virtualization support. Due to the hardware protection mechanisms and capability based security, Linux guests run in full isolation from each other. Core partitioning, memory partitioning, network virtualization, and RTOS support are some of the other features offered by Codezero.

Qualcomm’s next generation Snapdragon behind the scenes

Posted by – April 1, 2011
Category: Qualcomm

Last year, they invited us into their top secret R&D centers, now here’s a look into how they train their engineers to build the next generation Snapdragon processor:

Google/Microsoft/Apple should pay for the Humans to Mars Direct 2016-2021 mission

Posted by – March 31, 2011
Category: Opinions, IBM, Google

A Humans to Mars mission might cost as little as $30 Billion. Google has $40 Billion in the bank, Apple has $50 Billion in the bank, Microsoft has $80 Billion in the bank. Intel has $50 Billion in the bank. IBM has $100 Billion in the bank. HP has $110 Billion in the bank. Dell has $30 Billion in the bank. Cisco has $70 Billion in the bank. Oracle has $50 Billion in the bank.

Google should announce tomorrow that they invest $5 Billion in the Mars Direct 2016 mission (3 years ago, they made fun of the idea in the Google Mars Mission April 1st joke), $2.5 Billion now to Space X to develop the heavy-lift within 3 years. Google would publicly ask Microsoft and Apple to join in and each also invest $5 Billion in this. They can argue for it to their shareholders by saying 1) they can monetize the new patents that come of it 2) they can get each 1/3rd of all the advertising that can comes out of 7 years of live HD video streaming of the whole project. The number of years that this project will be under development, then launch and the 2.5 years of travel for the first crews. The live HDTV broadcast can be sent all over the world, they can recoup their investments just from the TV and live streaming advertising.

So now you’ve got $15 Billion from private US tech companies. The other $15 Billion can get paid like this, $3 Billion from EU, $3 Billion from China, $2 Billion from India, $1 Billion from Brazil/Japan/South Korea, $3 Billion from the US (Obama can do his Mars speech) and $3 Billion from the oil-rich Middle-east. The project would be an international technological collaboration, like the CERN LHC project, instead of a race.

Here are some of the reasons why I think US Silicon Valley companies should get bold and announce the financing of a major mission to send humans to Mars with 5-10 years:

1. These tech companies want to attract more scientists and engineers. The big investments means they can for example expand their R&D and combine it more with NASA.

2. These tech companies made unreasonably large amounts of profits these past few years and decades. If they all agree to spend the same large amount on this mission, that would not place one in disadvantage against the other in terms of how much of their cash is being spent. They owe it to society to give back at least for the scientific enthusiasm that it would generate for the world.

3. Those are basically investments in educations and universities. By those being US investments they would invest in US universities, all the Government has to do would be to open up for that H1B visa for all scientists and engineers from China and India coming in to work on that project.

4. The US army spends $1 Billion per day, for the price of just 4 days of war, they can fund their share of the worlds biggest scientific project, and arguably such a project can help to bring peace, as Humans can think bigger, look up to space, and think about life instead of fighting meaningless wars over limited natural resources.

Why am I a long time supporter of the Humans to Mars project and member of the Mars Society?

– I believe it’s worth looking for fossils or proof of previous life on Mars, would explain a great deal about why life appeared on Earth. This is the most fundamental question for Humans and should be the most important question to try to answer.

– Just the work put into the project will bring us new technologies to solve our Energy and Pollution problems.

– It will help solve our political problems, would be the strongest message for peace.

– Robots on Mars are awesome, but in 1 day, a Human Geologist on Mars can walk around and look through as much ground as the Mars Rovers did in the last 6 years. The only way we can realistically look for proof of life on Mars is by sending Geologists on the ground there and have them look for fossils and other proof over the period of 1 and a half years, which is the minimum time they would have to stay there anyways before being able to fly back to the earth, then it takes 6 months each way.

What do you think about the idea to send Humans to Mars as soon as possible? And why couldn’t the richest tech companies and billionaires not pay a significant part of it to get things going much sooner than politicians and their 4-year election cycles care to invest in on the longer term.

$20,000 OpenWorld Contest to design best app for STM32 ARM Cortex-M3

Posted by – March 30, 2011
Category: ST-Ericsson

Register now to win $20,000 in cash prizes for mobility applications based on STM32 ARM Cortex-M3 MCU developed on the EvoPrimer platform from STMicroelectronics.

http://stm32circle.com/ contest registration is open for the OpenWorld design contest promoting development of technologies for human-assistance applications. OpenWorld is a technology promotion of the “Autonomie” project – a collaborative industry-research consortium for the development of integrated electronic technologies that facilitate access to public spaces and services for the handicapped.

$20,000 in cash prizes will be awarded to participants with innovative and useful electronic applications designed to assist people, with any of a variety of disabilities or limiting medical conditions.

The contest is sponsored by project memebers, STMicroelectronics, ST-Ericsson and Raisonance.

Google’s Android speech-to-speech voice translator gets impressive

Posted by – March 22, 2011

I didn’t know it could already understand and speak more and more languages. Check out Eldar Murtazin doing a bunch of speech-to-speech voice translations on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone from Russian to English, Russian to French and Russian to Finnish. Are you impressed? I am. Google is constantly improving the speech-to-speech voice translation, eventually understanding all accents and speech styles and pitches, it may be that Google can learn from each users voice (when the user is recognized or logged in) and become better at understanding every persons speech, which may also get applied to YouTube videos and thus generate always better subtitles that also can be translated in every other language automatically.

Eldar Murtazin also claims Samsung may be preparing a separate Tegra2 Super Clear LCD based Samsung Galaxy S2 with product number i9003, thus could not only be cheaper than the Exynos 4210 Super Amoled Plus i9000 version, but could also possibly help Samsung supply enough of these new SGS2 to the market while Samsung’s big new Super Amoled Plus factory may not yet be totally ready for mass production of their screens (last year, Samsung announced that the new Super Amoled Plus factory would not be ready before June this year), and also while Samsung’s production of their new ARM Cortex-A9 Exynos 4210 may not yet be at full production capacity thus Samsung can use Tegra2 which is probably being manufactured at faster speed.

Source: mobile-review.com

Nuvoton NuMicro Cortex-M0 MCU explained

Posted by – March 7, 2011

The NuMicro Family is Nuvoton’s new 32-bit Microcontroller product line shown at Embedded World 2011, based on the ARM Cortex-M0 processor with rich peripherals to offer additional features and connectivity capability. Besides the NUC100, NUC120, NUC130 and NUC140 series, the new series the NuMicro M051 series, includes the M052/54/58/516 to supply for the worldwide 8-bit/16-bit microcontroller demand with a higher performance in a 32-bit microcontroller. The Nuvoton Cortex-M0 development kit costs only $20, that sounds cheap for developers to get into experimenting with those kinds of processors.

Toradex shows Tegra2 computer on SO-DIMM form factor

Posted by – March 4, 2011

This may be the most compact Tegra2 fully featured box PC computer thus far. They use 256MB RAM DDR2, 1GB flash storage for 99 euros, they’ll also do a slightly higher end version with 512MB RAM and 4GB flash storage version soon. The cheapest board and box could be made for less than 50 euros more. Thus the idea is a sub-150 euro Tegra2 box PC all included and it being slightly larger than a box of playing cards, just big enough to accomodate the connectors.