Marvell, ST Ericsson, Texas Instruments and carriers Orange, Telefonica O2, KPN in the Netherlands, Telecom Italia in Italy and Netcom in Norway are all talking about wanting to sell cheaper pre-paid only unsubsidized Android phones to consumers in Europe according to this article.
chipmakers are rising to the challenge – Marvell showed off a chipset to enable a sub-$99 smartphone; Texas Instruments discussed a cutdown implementation of its OMAP3 application processor for midrange handsets or new device formats like e-readers; and ST-Ericsson pinned its growth hopes on ‘smartphones for all’.
Alcatel Mobile Phones introduced its first Android phone, the OT-980, at Mobile World Congress. It sports a touchscreen, vertical slider Qwerty keyboard, Wi-Fi and HSDPA and will ship in June at an unsubsidized price point of below €200.
Unlike most Alcatel phones, which are targeted at developing economies, this will be marketed mainly in Europe, with the UK, France, Spain and Italy the prime markets because the firm believes the Alcatel brand is strong there. Alcatel Mobile Phones is owned by TCT Mobile of China, which acquired the business from what is now Alcatel-Lucent several years ago but kept rights to the brand. Like other Chinese players like ZTE and Huawei, it aims to use affordable smartphones as the route to gain a presence outside developing markets.
Imagine walking around with a head-mounted 15″ display to view informations available to you at all times. This system features a pretty cool six-axis position tracker from Hillcrest Labs that allows you to operate a cursor with nearly pixel-for-pixel accuracy by just moving around your head when for example panning around a large image or a map. There is a highly targetted microphone that understands voice-commands where you can for example zoom in on maps or images, you can exit back to the programs menu, launch specific applications and open specific files.
Here are the specs of this Second Generation Kopin Golden-i Motorola-branded Head-mounted Computer system:
Processor — TI OMAP3530 clocked at 600MHz
Display — Kopin SVGA (800 x 600) liquid crystal micro display (LCD)
Networking:
Bluetooth 2.0
WiFi — “Will be offered soon”
User interface — Includes speech recognition and motion sensing
Other I/O — 1 x USB
Expansion — microSD slot
Power — 1200 mAh battery provides more than eight hours of operation
Weight — 3 oz (85g)
Operating system — Windows CE
Product manager in OMAP4 based Linux soloutions, Eric Thomas, talks to us about OMAP4 and shows us the cool looking OMAP4 based development board doing all kinds of awesome things.
This is a pretty good looking 3D accelerated home replacement using Open GL ES 2.0 hardware acceleration for Android on Texas Instruments based devices.
Dozens of awesome open ARM Powered Linux Tablets coming to the market from MSI, Asus, ICD, Notion Ink, HP, Dell and others, most are based on Android and are likely to foster competition that can provide cheaper and better Tablets than Apple. Archos is the only manufacturer with powerful Android Tablets on the market since October 2009, the Archos 5 Internet Tablet (8GB) is now available for $249 in Radio Shack and (16GB) for $279 in Best Buy. Today, Archos is releasing the Special Edition Firmware that adds Ångström Linux as a dual-boot for their latest Archos 5 Internet Tablet generation so that developers can start developing powerful Linux solutions for the Archos Linux tablets and not only do Android stuff.
Read more and download the Special Edition Firmware: archos.com
Slashgear.com went to Texas Instrument’s Dallas Texas headquarters to write an article about the OMAP4 dual-core ARM Cortex A9 1ghz development platforms which can decode 3 videos at the same time, with 1080p HDMI video output, a built-in pico-projector, significantly higher resolution support than WVGA 800×480 for the on board screen (1024×600? 1280×720?), 1080p 24/30fps video encoding, “universal decode” which they say means it will support playback of all video codecs (High Profile h264 MKV 1080p at up to 50mbit/s?).
The chipset can simultaneously record 1080p and D1 (e.g. regular TV resolution) footage, as well as still images, giving you an HD copy for local playback and a smaller version for uploading. Meanwhile there’s enough processor grunt to spare for digital video stabilisation, both for recording and, potentially, for stabilising the pico-projector when you’re operating it handheld.
Wow, it will be nice to encode full quality 1080p at high bitrate for archiving and at the same time record D1 for uploading to the web. Although my favorite combination would be something like a combined 20mbit/s 1080p and a 720p 4mbit/s encoded with high encoding complexity to provide a good baseline 720p version to be uploaded to the web. Though it would also be nice to record decent 1080p which Youtube supports, and at the same time encode D1 at low bitrates to stream on 3G networks or to stream over WiFi to live video services like Qik or Ustream.
And in terms of how Texas Instrument OMAP4 compares with Nvidia Tegra2:
While production devices based on the Tegra 2 aren’t available yet, TI reckon there are several points at which they eclipse their rival. According to Marcelo O Vieria, general manager of the OMAP business group, the OMAP4 1080p video codec is stronger than that of the Tegra 2, in fact he reckons TI “have a better video engine than [NVIDIA] do”. OMAP4 also supports 20-megapixel or higher image processing, as well as three simultaneous displays, and it has significantly more memory bandwidth than Tegra 2 which means it’s better at multitasking. Worth remembering, too, is that OMAP4 is suited to smartphones, which is an area Tegra is yet to extend into.
This all just sounds very awesome, I look forward to see Texas Instruments demonstrate their new OMAP4 platform in Mobile Computing products and reference designs, hopefully as soon as Mobile World Congress in Barcelona between the 15-18th February, where I plan to film 50 new videos of the latest most awesome ARM Powered devices.
Slashgear.com also filmed this video of Texas Instrument’s e-ink development platform which the Texas Instruments representative clearly says could also run a Pixel Qi screen:
If the leaked pricing rumor of £149 for the Archos 7 Internet Tablet is correct, this may mean that it will be sold for only $199 in the USA. Consider that European retail pricing always includes around 20% VAT taxes which are not included in US retail pricing.
In September 2009, Archos did announce that they would upgrade to 1ghz processors, thus I expect it may be the new Texas Instruments OMAP3640 that is a 45nm process or a 1ghz version of the current OMAP3440 processor.
The cheaper $199 Archos 7 Internet Tablet, means the Archos 5 Internet Tablet will probably also be available $50 to $100 cheaper. It is currently sold at $249 at Radio Shack. Thus by March, pricing for the Archos 5 Internet Tablet (8GB) may be lowered to around $179 (I am speculating here).
Hackers have installed Android as a dual-boot on a Maemo Linux based Nokia N900. Although Maemo Linux for sure is better than Symbian, I think Nokia might soon just as well release Android based devices. Android is free and open-source, it doesn’t really make sense for Nokia to stubbornly stay with their own OS even if their own LiMo stuff also is open-source. My guess is Nokia engineers are working on Android and that it’s only a political matter until Nokia officially would announce Android based products.
Here is a video that shows you how easy it now is to install the full Google Marketplace experience on a Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android with the new firmware 1.7.33 that integrates a whole bunch of the Android 1.6 software features from Google that optimize everything better for Archos’s larger screen:
3.7″ WVGA Texas Instruments OMAP3 Android smart phone by Motorola. Also comes with dual CDMA and GSM sim card reader. It is probably one of the worlds first phones with a mini-HDMI output and bother 720p camcorder and 720p video playback support. I should be able to stream Youtube in 720p quality onto a HDTV as well.
And here is what you can find in all Radio Shack stores in the USA, the Archos 5 Internet Tablet (8GB) selling right there for a very affordable $249 price. If Archos markets this device the right way and provides a perfect Android firmware for it with full Google Marketplace integration, and soon announce 3G and 7″ versions and solutions for Camera and Compass, I think Archos has a huge opportunity right there to make a very big influence on the market.
You can follow my extensive HD quality video coverage from CES here on http://138.2.152.197 during the next few days.
Here is a demonstration at LeWeb conference in Paris of the Seesmic application for Android running on the Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android, the worlds first Android Tablet with a 800×480 medium density 4.8″ touch screen and even with a 720p HDMI output. This video was filmed by John Yamasaki @jyamasaki of Seesmic using the Flip HD.
We have had to wait a month and a half since the release for the full Google Experience to start being available and working on the Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android. Google had not certified the Archos on Android 1.5 for a WVGA 800×480 Google Experience, so the hope is that this certification will be signed by Google when Archos updates the installed Android version to 2.0 at some point in the next weeks.
Archos is the first provider of a Youtube HD set-top-box solution by the Archos 5 Internet Tablet simply being the worlds first Android product supporting the playback of H264 High Profile at 1280×720 and 2mbit/s that is the format, resolution and bitrate that Youtube encodes all their HD videos in. More and more videos are uploaded to Youtube in HD quality (including this video that I embed in this post) and all those videos playback awesomely on the Archos 5 Internet Tablet since the 1.2.11 firmware version by just clicking on the embedded videos play button or browsing through all the Youtube videos at http://m.youtube.com
As Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said at the Royal Television Society Convention, the coming of new cheap set-top-box products that can play Internet video will be the biggest enabler of the IPTV revolution towards Video-On-Demand, with Youtube already delivering more than 1 Billion views per day, with cheap set-top-boxes with direct Youtube support on people’s HDTVs, Youtube would reach even many more views per day and there will be a greater demand for higher quality Youtube videos at up to HD quality. Archos delivers this solution with the Archos 5 Internet Tablet, the first cheap embedded support for Youtube HD on a HDTV.
Waiting for Flash 10.1 support in Android is not even required for Youtube HD, HQ and Normal qualities to work. Flash 10.1 support will come on Archos as soon as Adobe releases Flash 10.1 for Android.
If Archos can support full MKV 720p H264 high profile support with full bitrates in optimized firmware updates, then the Archos 5 Internet Tablet starting at $249 MSRP for the 8GB version is effectively about to become a pocket-sized replacement for Blu-ray. With better features than Blu-ray since Youtube HD support basically is like HD quality video-on-demand.
A few things that I think Archos, Google and third party Android software developers should do to provide a perfect Youtube HD experience:
– Someone should create a YoutubeHD.apk application that should launch Youtube HD/HQ/Normal quality videos automatically in playlists and based on the Youtube user’s Youtube account to list recommendations, subscriptions, add searches and tags, display overlay ratings and comments, even provide live overlay chat for videos and for Youtube channels. It could be called Google Watch, be the same as Google Listen, but for Video. Even provide clever podcatching storage and caching of videos and not only go onto Youtube but use any other video sources of the web.
– Archos should provide the user with a choice to limit the quality to HQ or Normal if the user does not want to stream HD quality for some reason, for example perhaps the bandwidth that is available is not enough for that user to have a smooth Youtube HD experience.
– http://m.youtube.com needs to be improved, I want to sort searches by date for example.
– Archos should provide overlay text input facility such as commenting and chatting around the videos and channels. The social features around videos can be really powerful to increase the value proposition of IPTV set-top-box video-on-demand.
– Archos should release a $150 screen-less set-top-box with Android, with only 8GB built-in storage, but possibility to connect any EXT3 formatted USB hard drive or a local NAS to expand storage for DVR functions and for Video downloads also using BitTorrent and RSS. What is cool that you can see in this video of the Archos 5 Internet Tablet, is that this is a proof that Archos certainly has the hardware and software know-how to make this happen. Once the easy-to-use Youtube HD set-top-box arrives with BitTorrent, RSS and USB hard drives storage support, for below $100 to $150, I think Video-on-demand and the real IPTV revolution will finally really happen.
Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android provides the worlds first 800×480 4.8″ Android experience on an ARM Cortex A8 processor. It loads websites super fast and smooth. It plays all video codecs from DivX, WMV, Mpeg2 and H264 even MKV video files at up to 1280×720 resolution. There are thousands of compatible Android applications (now or later..) and more to test and to report on every day in the http://forum.archosfans.com as developers are optimizing their applications for Archos 800×480 resolution screen.
Why it’s the best: (better than ipod touch, zune HD and other Android smartphones)
– The screen is 2x larger at 4.8″ vs. 3.5″
– The screen resolution is 2.5x higher at 800×480 vs. 480×320
– The processor is 3-4 times faster with ARM Cortex A8 vs. ARM11 (the new ipod touch released last month does have ARM Cortex A8 as well though)
– It plays back every video codecs, including DivX, XviD, WMV, Mpeg2, VOB, H264, MP4, MOV, MKV up to 1280×720 and audio codecs Mp3, Flac, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, AC3 and WMA. Even RMVB might be supported (I have not tested RMVB yet)
– This device can stream Youtube HD and any other HD video format directly from the web over WiFi-N. It’s basically also a 180gr $200 (street price for 8GB version) full Blu-ray replacement. On the 500GB version (soon $400 street price), you can basically walk around with 120 Blu-ray quality movies in your pocket to connect and play on any HDTV using the HDMI Mini Dock.
– Archos comes with up to 500GB built-in storage for the hard drive based models.
– MicroSD card slot on the Flash based models.
– HDMI output through the HDMI Mini Dock (price not known yet) or the DVR Station ($130 or lower)
– USB and Bluetooth keyboards and mice are supported
– WiFi-N provides more bandwidth and broader coverage for connecting to WiFi Internet
– 3G Bluetooth tethering through a mobile phone for Internet when you are outside of reach of WiFi hotspots
– Video-recording and scheduling with electronic program guide like a Tivo (with the optional DVR Station $130 or below)
– Real GPS built-in for Archos provided Android GPS application or for any other Android based GPS and location based applications
– FM receiver and transmitter built-in
– Samba and UPNP file sharing for streaming of HD movies and TV shows on your local network (I have not tested this feature yet, I am waiting for my Fonera 2.0n to arrive hopefully next week)
– 1280×720 Android Desktop experience when outputting the screen to a HDTV using HDMI. This is the worlds first 1280×720 Android experience. Apps could be optimized for this in the coming months, for example I am expecting to see the full high resolution compatible and optimized Google Chrome available for ARM Cortex A8 based Android devices in the coming few months.
– All that, and it still fits in a pocket, it does not cost more than the ipod touch or zune HD, it is much cheaper than the currently available HTC and Samsung Android phones (at least when bought unlocked) and it is only 1.5x heavier than the ipod touch.
The Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android is, I think, the most significant alternative to Apple’s and Microsoft’s portable multimedia consumer electronics products on the market for real tech geeks. In my opinion, Archos already has released the industry’s best ipod touch and zune HD killer with what we have now. Even though I do look forward to them improving a few things in firmware updates to come in the next weeks and months.
What Archos can improve in the next firmware updates:
– They should fix the audio-synch issue with H264 720p HD video files such as MKV HD and Youtube HD playback. I am confident Archos can fix this in on of the soon to come firmware updates. Mostly the audio-synch issue I am experiencing is only very slightly noticable and the TV episodes as still very watchable and look fantastic using HDMI output from Archos 5 Internet Tablet to my 42″ HDTV.
– They should try to support more than 3500kbit/s MKV high profile h264 720p so that MKV 720p 4GB+ movies will play smoothly and that MKV 720p TV episodes will not sometimes drop some frames (usually for 1-3 seconds) on the high peak bitrate scenes (see my tests of MKV high profile h264 720p playback in this forum thread http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=26603)
– Hopefully Archos can add support for the DTS audio codec, which is often used in 4GB+ MKV 720p movies.
– USB Webcams or Headmounted camera for live video broadcasting applications like Ustream and Qik.
– USB 3G Dongles would be really useful even though carrying and connecting the USB 3G dongle to a Mini Dock, HDMI Mini Dock or Battery Dock is not the most compact of setups.
– Archos has promised Android 1.6, Android 2.0 and Flash 10.1 support in updates. It’d be nice to see all these officially add support for all the Google apps such as Gmail client, Google Maps, Google Contacts, Google Listen and the Google Marketplace for apps, considering it should be possible for Google to just filter the apps for Archos’s specific screen resolution and also filter out apps that require the Camcorder and the electronic compass, unless Archos does provide a Dock or USB webcam and headmounted camera add-on support that ads support for those features.
– It will be interesting to see if Archos specific hardware advantages will be taken advantage of by third party Android application developers. For example, it will be interesting to see if third party developers will be able to provide some apps that support HD video streaming, peer-to-peer downloading and streaming, video games emulation up to N64 and Dreamcast, advanced 3D games such as Quake3, and many other such really advanced things.
– It is going to be interesting to see also up to what extent Archos, Google and third party developers can take advantage of the 1280×720 output when using the HDMI output to a HDTV. I would like to be able to use my Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android as a full Desktop/Laptop replacement. That is, if the ARM Cortex A8 platform inside of it and with all the hardware acceleration can be powerful enough to provide me with the complete performance that I need for full screen, full keyboard and mouse computing.
If they can quickly improve the firmware with these improvements and added features, I believe the Archos Android Tablet could become the absolute must have product for all geeks.
In my next videos that I will post here during the next few days, I plan to show you 3G Bluetooth tethering, Youtube HD playback (which now works in todays new Firmware update 1.2.03), some awesome Android apps that work, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse fun, remote desktop, local and remote file sharing and streaming and many more awesome features.
Some pictures:
I posted some high resolution pictures of it comparing it to things you might know the size of (click on the images to see them in full size on Google Picasa):
The next hardware:
For the next Archos Phone range due to be released or shown at CES in January 2010, I wish for Archos to integrate a Pixel Qi 3Qi Capacitative touchscreen (watch my video from Computex http://techvideoblog.com/computex/pixel-qi-screen-demo-live-from-taipei/), a 720p camcorder and an electronic compass together with the 3G HSDPA sim card modem. Archos is getting to be very close to absolute perfection in mobile computing.
Full disclosure:
Full disclosure: I am the biggest Archos fanboy in the world. I run the worlds biggest Archos fans community here at http://archosfans.com and at http://forum.archosfans.com and have done so for the past 5 years. Archos did send me this new Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android 4 days ago for free and have told me that I could keep it since I also need it to support the thousands of Archos users in my online community.
I broadcast a 3 hour live video coverage on the 11th of June from the Archos event in Paris. Henri Crohas the CEO of Archos’s Keynote with guests on stage such as Alain Madelain President of the World Fund on Digital Solidarity for the Archos 9classmate launch, Presidents of Intel France and Microsoft France as well launching the new line of Archos Intel/Microsoft products, you can see here the 3 hour long video that we broadcast live from Paris today filmed using an Archos 10’s built-in Webcam using ustream.tv. You can scroll this video forward to 57 minute to see the English speaking live video coverage from the Archos showcase of all the new products, including interviews of Archos representatives, discussions among the Archos bloggers and more:
There is also a second part of this broadcast, where we continue to go up close with the products:
HD hands-on videos are being uploaded right now. If my Hotel’s internet upload is fast enough, you will have the videos posted early tomorrow morning. Otherwise I will upload them during the next couple of days.
Archos Android products will be shown later, in September, by the 15th of September 2009, Archos will have the Android event with one or more Android products shown. Sorry, I thought that Archos was going to show the Android products at this event.
Thanks to BenMars for borrowing his Archos 10 laptop to enable us to do this live video streaming from the event today!
Archos had representatives from Intel and Microsoft on stage, so Archos could not use this event to also show their fully in-house developed Archos Android product or line of products. Sadly. We will have to wait a bit more to see more of that. But Archos CEO Henri Crohas started his Keynote speaking about the Android line of products and giving us some details, basically saying that it’s going to be awesome.
Archos explained a bit of how it is working now in terms of R&D and development work. Archos still has their core engineering team working on the Android device/devices to be unveiled on or before September the 15th at another event. All the while, Archos is able to release Intel and Microsoft based products and position themselves very well on the market, in partnership with engineers and manufacturers in China, in partnership with Intel and Microsoft as well.
CrOvax and Ulrich from http://frandroid.com are Android fans at the Archos event in Paris, reporting about their reaction to the fact that Archos is not zet showing the Android device/devices publicly but only a bit talking about them at this point, and annoncing only officially about the Archos Android September event that will be coming up.
Review of the Archos 5 TV Snap-On accessory that let’s you watch and record DVB-T (freeview) signals city-wide and country-wide for most European countries which already have good DVB-T coverage. It comes with a dual diversity antenna system that allows you to get the best reception for a mobile DVB-T receiver, it picks in real-time the best available signal while you walk around or move your device around when at the football match, at work, in school, on the bus, on the train, anywhere especially in densely populated areas which have good DVB-T coverage.
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