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WebM might eventually become the main video codec for the web, it’s Google’s open source video codec now being hardware accelerated by ARM Processor vendors such as Texas Instruments here demonstrating WebM 1080p playback on the upcoming OMAP4 ARM Cortex-A9 processor in both Android and Ubuntu:
Source: blog.webmproject.org
Found via: netbooknews.com
Barnes and Noble just announced the NOOKcolor Android based LCD e-reader. I was wondering what ARM processor platform it may be based on and I just received the confirmation that it is TI’s OMAP3621 600Mhz ARM Cortex A8 at 45nm, it comes with POWERVR 3D graphics acceleration, and TMS320C64x+™ DSP technology for multimedia acceleration. Unlike the ARM11 based Pandigital Novel, this LCD e-reader should have enough power to provide some advanced hardware accelerated smooth user interfaces. The point at which Barnes and Noble and TI can develop smooth user interfaces that take full advantage of hardware acceleration will be interesting to see, as the customized e-reader application layers on top of Android that they have been showing on the NOOKcolor surely are interesting. Things like navigating through color magazines could be very interesting. Of course, I am also looking forward to this type of devices using the Pixel Qi reflective LCD screen technology. Also, it sounds interesting that TI provides OMAP3621 fir e-ink e-readers as well, with boasting of double as much battery runtime for e-ink page turns and with advertising of the fact that they want to support customized Android features for e-ink e-readers.
NOOKcolor runs on TI’s OMAP3621 (ARM Cortex™-A8 processor-based) applications processor—a member of the OMAP™ 3 processor family that was optimized for the consumer market. OMAP3621 delivers a robust, multitasking environment required to simultaneously run the eReader’s new feature-rich applications, which exercise the CPU, multimedia and graphics engines.
NOOKcolor represents the very first commercial launch of a reading-centric product using TI’s OMAP hardware and Android software architecture that we announced at CES 2010. And, today’s announcement is a prime example of how the OMAP 3 technology’s power and performance capabilities are leveraged in new consumer markets.
Source: ti.com
I have been secretly testing this for the last week (together with cajl of http://jbmm.fr and Thocan of http://archoslounge.net), it works pretty much awesome. Few optimizations and few bug fixes still to be done before Archos can release this cool firmware update.
Also check my video review of the Archos 70 Internet Tablet in multiple parts: Part 1 and Part 2.
If you are an ARM Powered mobile computing app developer, if you want to prepare OS and apps for TI’s upcoming ARM Cortex-A9 platform, shipping from around the end of November, you can pre-order the PandaBoard now for $174 at http://pandaboard.org.
OMAP4430 Processor (Highlights)
Dual-core ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ with Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) at 1Ghz each. Allows for 150% performance increase over previous ARM Cortex-A8 cores.
Full HD (1080p) multi-standard video encode/decode
Imagination Technologies’ POWERVR™ SGX540 graphics core supporting all major API’s including OpenGL® ES v2.0, OpenGL ES v1.1, OpenVG v1.1 and EGL v1.3 and delivering 2x sustained performance compared to the previous SGX530 core
Low power audio (upto 140+ hr CD-quality audio playback)
ARM Cortex-A9 as in this OMAP4 may be the ARM Processor generation that we have been waiting for to realize full ARM Powered desktop performance in devices such as for Laptops, Desktops, set-top-boxes for HDTVs and other high resolution full desktop user experiences. So this new processor is not only about speeding up Smart Phones, it’s also to start supporting higher resolution larger screen devices and provide ARM Powered full computing as credible challenger to x86. The OMAPvideo YouTube channel is releasing some videos to demonstrate PandaBoard’s setup and performance, here is a video of Ubuntu 10.10 booting on this development board:
At mobile world congress, a TI spokesperson told me after I filmed my OMAP4 demonstrations video, that real-time video encode on OMAP4 is within 2% of x86 based multi-pass encoding. I wonder if that is really true, or if he meant within 2% only for real-time encoding.
Hopefully 1080p playback on OMAP4 is impeccable, so 1080p high profile at very high bitrates h264 and mkv works fine so Boxee type people can’t complain like they complained on video playback performance on Tegra 2 so it isn’t mysteriously replaced with Intel CE4100.
Source: pandaboard.org and OMAPvideo on YouTube
Found via: blogarm.net
Testing some cool features, Dolphin Browser HD multi-tabs, video-chatting, RDP, video-games, I just did a 37 minute VOIP call using SIP on Fring and using my $8/month 1GB/month SIM card in my Huawei Mifi and it works pretty much perfectly. For some reason audio in Skype and in Fring video-chat is still buggy, but I am sure Archos will fix this in a firmware update imminently. Also see Part 1 of my video review of this product.
It has a nice screen, I show it, and I give you my opinions on this e-reader. Sony is bringing a really nice E-ink Pearl based e-reader with a fantastic very sensitive infrared based touch screen. Though I wish it had WiFi and Android software for Chrome-to-Ereader functionality and Sharing and Synchronizing of Annotations and Reading to make Annotations and Reading more useful. It’s cool that Sony promote the “get unlimited ebooks for free from your digital library” concept. With WiFi, though, the integration with unlimited amounts of ebook repositories would be more seamless and probably more user friendly. If all you are looking for is an offline e-reader, with the latest e-ink screen technology, with touch-screen for page turns, dictionary/translator and for annotations and UIs, then this could be a great choice for you.
Also see my Grandmother reviewing this device in my video released last week and my 11-minute video interview with a Sony specialist unveiling it and discussing technical details about it at IFA.
It’s launched now, available in stock at Amazon UK for £126. 128Mb RAM, 2Gb ROM, it runs Windows CE 6.0. If it could run full Chrome OS, at this price, (probably ARM Cortex A9 is needed though) this type of product will be perfect.
The price is likely below 129€ in Europe and below $129 in the USA! USA does not pay taxes on consumer electronics.
Specs:
Processor: Samsung 533 MHz
Memory: 128Mb RAM, 2Gb ROM
Operating System: Windows CE 6.0
Display: 10.2 inch TFT LCD Digital display
Audio: Integrated speaker, 3.5 mm Stereo Headphone Jack
User Interface: Buttons (Power on/off, Reset on/off), LEDs (AC/DC Power, Battery status)
Interfaces/Ports: Standard SD card slot (up to 32 Gb), 3 x USB 2.0, RJ-45, DC-in
Wireless Network: WLAN 802.11 b/g
Battery: 2100 mAH
Dimensions (WxDxH): 182.5 x 270 x 31 mm
Weight: 1.1 Kg
Thanks BenMars for your report from the Hong Kong Sourcing fair!
Source: http://www.jbmm.fr/2010/10/17/hong-kong-5-arnova-art-nouveau/
First unboxing and review of the Archos 70 Internet Tablet, a $275 alternative to the $499 iPad and the $599 Samsung Galaxy Tab. I was amazed by how thin and light it is when I first took it out of the box, at 300 grams, it nearly feels like it’s an empty case without any electronics inside.
The capacitive touch screen on an Archos tablet is cool, I need to get used to that. Hopefully I will learn to type on it as fast as I do with my finger-tips/nails on my resistive screens. My plan this winter is to carry this 7″ Archos Android tablet with me everywhere in the inside of my jacket pocket. In this video, I try to show you multi-touch, web browsing speed, email, facebook, Google Maps Street View, Live wallpapers, video playback, HDMI output and more.
This review model is still running Android 2.1, while Archos is putting finishing touches to their faster and more optimized Android 2.2 firmware, hopefully to be ready in like days or so for when this device and its 101 big-brother actually ships worldwide. As I showed you in my previous video, Google Marketplace works on these Archos Android tablets using the gApps4Archos.apk one-click installation file. All codecs up to H264 high profile high bitrate 720p MKV works even on HDMI output (still to be tested and optimized in firmware). It’s only 300 grams (vs 380 grams Galaxy Tab and 680 grams iPad).
Pictures available at Picasa:
You can discuss this video in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=38513
Watch my video of Windows Phone 7 filmed last february featuring a demonstration of the OS by Windows Phone 7 product manager Erik Helgerson. Smart phones are the new PC, the fastest growing consumer electronics segment, within a year or two, more smart phones will be sold worldwide each year than PCs and Laptops. This is why Microsoft is trying very hard to bring this new smart phone OS, based on Windows CE 7, they seem to be even suing Android manufacturers like Motorola for not using it.
The full Google Marketplace with Gmail, Google Maps now works on Archos new range of Android Internet Tablets, it has been made available as a one-click installation file with the name “gApps4Archos.apk” in the ArchosFans forum by a forum user. In this video of the Archos 43 Internet Tablet, I also feature demonstrations of Skype (these Android tablets can be a perfect as cheap VOIP devices!), Bluetooth speakers, 720p MKV high bitrate video playback with DTS audio and a couple of action packed 3D games on the HDMI output.
Here’s a reminder of the new Archos Android Tablets that this Google Marketplace gApps4Archos.apk installation file works with:
Archos 28 Internet Tablet, 4GB, 2.8″ resistive screen: $99 (2.29x cheaper than iPod Touch!) (available next week)
Archos 32 Internet Tablet, 8GB, 3.2″ resistive screen, VGA camcorder, composite tv-out: $149 (available since a couple of weeks at certain online resellers like Amazon.com)
Archos 43 Internet Tablet, 16GB, 4.3″ resistive screen, HD camcorder, HDMI output: $199 (3x cheaper than Droid X!) (available next week)
Archos 70 Internet Tablet, 16GB, 7″ capacitive screen, front-facing webcam for video-chat, HDMI output: $275 (2.5x cheaper than Samsung Galaxy Tab!) 250GB version for $349 (available next week)
Archos 101 Internet Tablet, 8GB, 10.1″ capacitive screen, front-facing webcam for video-chat, HDMI output: $299 ($200 cheaper than iPad!) 16GB version for $349 (available next week)
Watch my grandmother use this new touch screen Sony e-reader. It’s a product that is suitable for people like her, who like to read lots, who may enjoy having access to all the worlds books electronically on this thin and light device. In this review, after having barely used the device before, she tries to navigate through the menus, open some PDF files, make fonts larger (to not need glasses) and she even does a drawing.
Also see my 11-minute video interview with a Sony specialist unveiling it and discussing technical details about it at IFA.
Sony’s new infrared based touch screen technology is quite awesome, great for UI navigations and for making annotations, provides touch on e-ink without taking away any of the Pearl e-ink’s screens visibility. Too bad though that this PRS-650 doesn’t come with at least WiFi nor with a 3G option, would have made the touch screen more useful if it could interact with web apps and web contents. I want Chrome-to-phone like Chrome-to-eink functionality where a one click in the web browser on my Laptop or Android device, should beam that article over to my Connected e-reader’s reading queue. And then I want annotations to become more useful and collaborative. 10 people working on the same text should be able to wirelessly share annotations in real-time. When I annotate a text, it should automatically be attached as comments to any site using Sidewiki or some other such web annotation standards to interoperate with websites existing commenting systems (post scribbled annotations as comments!). A bluetooth or USB keyboard and a built-in kickstand should provide a setup for full speed text entry.
Here’s a new Marvell powered Android 1.6 tablet design presented by Hanvon at the Frankfurt Book Fair:
This video was released at: newgadgets.de
Samsung already sold 5 million Galaxy S Android smart phones since its June 1st release. Only 4 months since Galaxy S release, and with the imminent release of cheaper Android smartphones such as the Samsung Intercept, the daily rate at which Samsung is selling Android phones may soon overtake Apple’s iPhone. I believe it could be possible that Samsung will be selling more Android smartphones per day than Apple will be selling of iPhones by the end of this year.
One month ago, Samsung’s official smartphone sales target is 25 million units for this year. Apple sold 25.1 million iphones in 2009.
This also means that Samsung has been pretty good at managing its initial manufacturing of the very amazing 4″ Super AMOLED screens in the lead up to the launch of its larger Super AMOLED factory by July of next year. At which point Super AMOLED will be made available to more smartphone manufacturers, maybe outputting as much as 30 million Super AMOLED screens per month.
Samsung Mobile Display plans to spend 2.5 trillion South Korean won (US$2.1 billion) to set up the next-generation production facility. The plant, situated in Tang Jung in the southern part of Seoul, primarily will be used to manufacture three-inch panels used for mobile phones.
Source: koreanewswire.co.kr, reuters.com and online.wsj.com
Marvell has supported OLPC since the beginning, they have thus far provided the WiFi Meshing modules on XO-1 and XO-1.5. Marvell co-invested with Google, News Corp, Novell and the others into the founding of OLPC to bring about the XO-1 which forced Intel and the whole laptop industry to respond with the 100 Million netbooks that have been sold in the last 3 years to limit the effects of OLPC’s potential disruption of the laptop market. Marvell and OLPC have now signed an agreement in which OLPC is to develop XO-3 Tablet(s) based on one of Marvell’s ARM System On Chip processor solutions.
Marvell can justify the investment as an R&D investment in which everything OLPC develops, as all OLPC hardware designs are open source, can freely be used by Marvell’s manufacturing OEM partners to also release commercial tablet products based on these technologies.
OLPC will use these funds to develop the Tablet that can be used for productivity, for constructionist learning as Nicholas Negroponte said at the Mobilize 2010 conference last week:
How do you make tablets a constructionist medium? A medium where you make things, you don’t just consume them. Cause if it’s about kids and learning, it’s not like you feed a goose grain to make the foie gras. You have to make it for kids to use it, to make, to communicate. Whether it’s music, whether it’s text or whether it’s to write computer programs. And it has to be so low power, when it runs out of power you just shake it a little bit and it continues.
These are the challenges that OLPC will work on to implement in XO-3 before the target 2012 $75 release:
Why should children use tablets instead of laptops?
The future of OLPC: it’s a notepad.
The notepad is the oldest tool used by children in the class room. Imagine adding full online and offline interactivity to the notepad. Imagine a magic notepad that can display every page from every book, every image and every video ever filmed. To display low bitrate tutorial videos that work even in black and white mode like the ones of the Khan Academy, even have them be interactive and provided as learning games. The student can annotate all books, take notes and share them. The tablet is not only lighter and could be designed for cheaper, it also is the more usable form factor as an e-reader for reading all books ever written in the world. As Nicholas Negroponte says:
There is no way to justify a paper book. If you’d want to send 10 thousand physical books, you’d have to take every 747 out of service around the planet just to move them from wherever they are being manufactured. Physical books are a luxury.
I wonder if 7″ or 10.1″ Pixel Qi will be used, or both. The 7″ size may be optimal for it to be as light, cheap and durable as possible, it might be better for children to read books on a 7″ form factor than a 10.1″ one. For productivity, I think it should support both touch screen and some cheap $2 USB keyboards/mouse and use its built-in kick-stand. Children can easily carry a $2 keyboard/mouse when they need to be most productive. Maybe a thin keyboard to double as screen protector and which can be clipped onto the back of the device when in tablet/e-reader mode could be a nice design feature, although the screen needs to be unbreakable enough for children not to need worry about carrying the tablet without a screen protector.
For software, I think that OLPC should work with Google and the emerging tablet industry to customize Android for education. Maybe add Sugar apps support on top of Android OS as a secondary app platform “module layer” on top of Android. Basically, Sugar could be a custom UI layer on top of Android for the XO-3 tablet.
Marvell is giving $5.6 Million to OLPC to fund the development of the XO-3 Tablet, with bendable plastic Pixel Qi screen and education-centric customized software, that finalized XO-3 will be ready by 2012 for distribution to schools at a target $75 bill of materials and manufacturing each. OLPC and Marvell will have an early demonstration tablet prototype running Android to show in January at the next CES.
I think that they should definitely go for customizing Android for education. Maybe add Sugar apps support on top of Android OS as a second app platform. I wonder if 7″ or 10.1″ Pixel Qi will be used, or both. For productivity, I think it should support both touch screen and some cheap $2 USB keyboards/mouse and a kick-stand.
Source: xconomy.com
Source: QUALCOMMVlog
It’s shipping to selected few developers starting this month. This is Texas Instrument’s Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9 OMAP4 development board, the successor of the ARM Cortex-A8 OMAP3 based BeagleBoard.org project, they are to launch the PandaBoard.org community now, for powerful embedded open source Linux development. Development of the kind of software that we could be seeing on upcoming ARM Powered laptops, tablets, set-top-boxes, desktop replacements and not only on smart phones!
This type of development board could provide one the worlds fastest and smoothest Ubuntu and Chromium on ARM development platforms yet with high resolution 1080p output and a whole bunch of exciting stuff.
If you are a hard core ARM developer, you can apply on PandaBoard.org to get an early access to this development board.
Source: PandaBoard.org and OMAPpedia.org
Found via: blogarm.net (really cool french blog on ARM related news)
In this video, I try to show you the quality and to demonstrate the value of the Archos 32 Internet Tablet with Android. It’s the 3.2″ $149 8GB big brother of Archos 28 Internet Tablet which is to be sold below $99 with 4GB of storage and a slightly smaller 2.8″ screen, of about the same size as the HTC Tatoo, Sony Ericsson X10 Mini, Acer beTouch 110/120/130. This video shows how the experience is on such WQVGA resolution small screen Android device.
What do you think about this Archos Android WiFi-connected PMP, at 2.3x cheaper than the iPod Touch? Don’t you think it will be a no brainer for mass market consumers, if given the choice in stores, that they will choose this type of Android alternative to the iPod Touch?
An overview of the difference in screen size, touch screen quality, web browsing speed. More on video playback support including a test on streaming video over Samba file sharing.
It is being said in this video that this ARM Powered laptop is customized with Linux software for education in China and comes with built-in SIM card reader for wireless Internet access.
Here are some specifications of the Armada 166 processor according to Marvell.com:
| Attributes | ARMADA166 |
|---|---|
| Frequency (MHz) | 800 |
| Core | Sheeva PJ1 w/WMMX2 |
| ISA | ARMv5/XScale |
| L1 Caches | 32KB/32KB |
| L2 Cache | 128KB |
| Memory | LP-DDR 200 MHz DDR2 400 MHz (DDR2-800) x16 |
| LCD Controller | Up to WUXGA |
| Graphics | 2D/Scaler |
| Video | Up to D1 using WMMX2 |
| Additional Blocks | QdeoTM ICR |
| Key Peripherals | FE, 5:1 Card Reader, USB, EPD Ctrl (166E) |
| Process, Package | 55nm, BGA |
| Application | E-Book |
Source: netbooknews.com
Found via: engadget.com
