Category: Favorite companies

Rockchip RK2818 to come at 1ghz with improved DSP

Posted by Charbax – July 13, 2010
Category: Tablets, Laptops, PMPs, Rockchip, Archos, Android

Rockchip may be the new “China Processor”, that ARM Processor coming out of China that can be found in some of the cheap Android Tablets and Laptops. This could be a major part of China’s attempt at providing every component of future low cost computing devices, even the processor. The new version of the Rockchip processor is said to be faster, RK2808 is 600mhz while RK2818 can go to 1ghz. But according to Toms Hardware, this new Rockchip RK2818 might still be ARM926EJ-S ARMv5 based.

In practice, RK2808 reached 1.1 DMIPS per MHz, while a core based on the Cortex A8 is 2 DMIPS per MHz and the recent Cortex A9 is 2.5 per DMIPS MHz. Even at 1 GHz, a Rockchip will be about two times slower than what the Cortex competition offers (at a higher price).

The question might be, how much cheaper are ARM9 based devices? Rockchip might still be only for low-end lower cost devices mostly made by Chinese manufacturers. The good news is this new Rockchip can support Android 2.1 and 2.2 (while RK2808 can only do Android 1.5). It’s got to be thanks to its newer and better DSP graphics accelerator, with screen support at up to 1024×768 which could be great to power cheap ARM Powered laptops and low cost 10″ Android Tablets. Availability may be after September for a bunch of new RK2818 based products or maybe also simply quick upgrades of RK2808 based designs. I wonder if the new 720p video playback on RK2818 may be improved, while RK2808 could only playback H264 MKV 720p at up to 2.5mbit/s.

Source: Toms Hardware France (in french)

Youtube 4K, for realz?!!!!!

Posted by Charbax – July 9, 2010
Category: Displays, 4K UHD, Web, Opinions, Google, Google TV

Google announced this new resolution support on Youtube a bit weirdly: 4K is 4096×3072 thus 3072p. It is not “4096p” and not “1096 x 3072 pixels”. Or is 4K supposed to amount to 4 Million pixels? Here’s the text from Youtube’s announcement (as posted at this moment to http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/07/whats-bigger-than-1080p-4k-video-comes.html):

Today at the VidCon 2010 conference, we announced support for videos shot in 4K (a reference resolution of 4096 x 3072), meaning that now we support original video resolution from 360p all the way up to 4096p.

We always want videos on YouTube to be available in the highest quality possible, as creators intend. In December of last year, we announced support for 1080p, or full HD. At 1096 x 3072 pixels, 4K is nearly four times the size of 1080p. To view any video in a source resolution greater than 1080p, select “Original” in the video quality pulldown menu:

Here’s my reaction:

– WHOAAAWWW! Is this 1st of April or something? Is Google talking for real?

– What is the bitrate going to be for 4K? My guess, based on calculating the bitrate per pixel of 2mbit/s for Youtube 720p and 4mbit/s for Youtube 1080p is that for 4K it would be something like 24mbit/s. That’s within the same bitrate as our 15 year old DV format (like miniDV tapes). That’s like the top bitrate established for 1080p AVCHD format. This is totally manageable! We can get 50mbit/s and 100mbit/s “easilly” over here in Scandinavia. If Google would provide full bandwidth delivery of Youtube 4K worldwide, we could seriously enjoy this!

– I wish the LCD and Projector industry focus on making Quad HD or 4K screens (however they should be called) instead of that 3D fad thing. Logically, thanks to Youtube 4K, we could be getting 4K HDTVs and projectors for less than $1000 by this time next year. Because the processors are already ready, they just need to be put into mass manufactured screens and projectors.

Another point in Youtube’s announcement that I would like to learn something about and maybe start to counter:

To give some perspective on the size of 4K, the ideal screen size for a 4K video is 25 feet; IMAX movies are projected through two 2k resolution projectors.

I have seen Quad HD LCD screens at trade shows. Those were in the 50-82″ range I think. They are absolutely amazing (Sergey Brin has one), some of the most impressive demonstrations I have ever seen in going to most of the trade shows since 2005. See my video of the Samsung 3840x2160p 82″ LCD HDTV. See my video of the JVC 4K2K HDTV and Projector.

I believe that one can see higher than 1080p on HDTV starting below 50″ sizes. The iPhone 4 has a 326DPI 3.5″ screen. I don’t see why we can’t get higher DPI on our HDTVs than 52DPI on a 42″ HDTV? Why should the iPhone 4 have a 6x higher DPI than my 42″ 1080p Full HD HDTV? If they were to put 4K processor in my 42″ HDTV, it would still “only” have a 111DPI, still much less than what they have done on the iPhone 4. Sure my 42″ HDTV has 132 times larger surface area than an iPhone (a 42″ HDTV could fit 132 of iPhone’s screens), if you want to set a standard for what the DPI per field of vision should be based on the iPhone 4 held at half arms length (50cm) with 326DPI screen, then a 42″ HDTV with 4K screen of 111DPI would need to be seen within 1.5 meters of a distance to get the same effect. Usually a sofa is placed 4-6 meters away from the LCD HDTV. Perhaps people will want to sit closer to the screen to experience something closer to 4K quality. At the photo exhibitions and museums of paintings, it is common for people to approach the images at distances closer than 1 meter to appreciate the details in the image. Perhaps 4K would be more suitable sizes above 50″ and preferably perhaps even above 60″ in diagonal. 67″ 4K HDTV would have a 70DPI thus achieve same pixels per angle of view at 2.5 meters distance. 65″ 1080p HDTV is $2500 today at Best Buy, how much more would it cost to include the latest 4K processor in there to stream 4K contents from Youtube 4K? Perhaps 4K HDTVs in the living room can be displaying any of our existing 12megapixel images taken with any recent digital photo camera, slideshows on a 4K screen look awesome. Thus Picasa could be streaming out some amazing customized and personalized slideshows, to be marvelled at in the living room at closer distance than usual.

Another point in Youtube’s announcement that I would like to discuss:

Because 4K represents the highest quality of video available, there are a few limitations that you should be aware of. First off, video cameras that shoot in 4K aren’t cheap, and projectors that show videos in 4K are typically the size of a small refrigerator. And, as we mentioned, watching these videos on YouTube will require super-fast broadband.

Now, let’s discuss, when are cheap 4K encoders going to be available? What hardware is required in the camcorder to encode that resolution effectively (and not also use up too much bandwidth in its compression). How expensive are the 4K decoders really?

Is 4K support something that could come with the upcoming ARM Cortex A9 processors?

I would think that this could be a nice challenge for ARM processor providers to work towards. They have now reached 1080p playback for a while already, even though it only really comes with ARM Cortex A9 to small low power consumer devices. Media streamers though have done 1080p playback for a few years already. I filmed the first 1080p KiSS Technology players at CeBIT 2004:

With Moore’s law, doubling of playback processing every 18 months, 4K decoders should have been ready since the second half of 2008 already, and in Set-top-box devices that shouldn’t cost more than the KiSS Technology DP-600 shown in 2004, less than $300 today? Perhaps next year we will be able to see Google TV boxes with 4K and Youtube 4K streaming support on $2K 65″ 4K LCD HDTVs or $1K 4K projectors?

Flexible and unbreakable plastic E Ink screens

Posted by Charbax – June 24, 2010
Category: E-readers, Exclusive videos, Freescale, FTF, E Ink

Sriram Peruvemba, Vice president of marketing at E-ink, presents the new flexible plastic based E-ink display. That new plastic e-ink screen technology will make it more usable for school children to use E-ink based devices to read all their textbooks and for all to access all books and texts ever written in the whole world.

E-ink is for full readability, outdoors, with reading lights indoors, it basically provides near paper quality, perfect for reading hundreds of pages. Something that is not possible on the current LCD based iPad.

Dell promotes the 5″ Android Tablet form factor

Posted by Charbax – June 21, 2010
Category: Tablets, Reviews, Qualcomm, Computex, Archos, Android

Here’s my review of the Dell Streak, 5″ capacitive Qualcomm Snapdragon powered Android Tablet, as posted by JKKmobile.com a few minutes after I first tried to use his unit at the recent Computex in Taiwan.

The 4.8″ to 5″ Android Tablet is in my opinion the coolest and the best size for a Tablet because it is the largest possible screen that fits in most pockets, thus this form factor Android tablet can be carried around everywhere with the largest screen size for web browsing and watching videos and launching apps always available.

Archos created and has been selling this form factor since 2003 with their release of the Archos AV300, back then the first large screen PMP device. Since 2005, Archos released the first WiFi enabled touch screen embedded Linux Qtopia based PMA430 and for over 9 months, the Android based Archos 5 Internet Tablet has been available on the market at $249 in Radio Shack.

The release of the Dell Streak is a good thing for Archos as it popularizes the form factor. Also, I believe Archos has some advantages even with their 9 month old Android product such as pricing with a 9 month old pricing that is at about half the launch price of the Dell Streak, support for all video codecs and high profile H264, larger storage capacities up to 500GB, HDMI output, USB host and a bunch of other features. Also, Archos is expected to release 45nm based OMAP3640 Android tablet devices by September, thus further improving on the features and on the price/value performance.

Tudor Brown, President of ARM – Keynote

Posted by Charbax – June 2, 2010
Category: Exclusive videos, Computex, ARM

Tudor Brown, one of the founders and current president of ARM, speaks at a cloud computing forum at Computex 2010.

Innoversal shows Pixel Qi Tablet

Posted by Charbax – June 2, 2010
Category: Tablets, E-readers, Exclusive videos, Computex, Pixel Qi

Innoversal has a good looking Pixel Qi tablet design, based on Intel Atom for now, with an ARM Powered one coming soon as well. It runs Chromium OS, Android or Windows 7.

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ARM Mali400 for 3D user interfaces and games

Posted by Charbax – June 2, 2010
Category: Set-top-boxes, Exclusive videos, ST-Ericsson, Computex, ARM

This STMicroelectronics STi7108 development platform demonstrates what the future of set top box user interfaces will look like, with support for multiple live video views and pretty advanced 720p or even 1080p playing on the HDTV of 3D games like Quake 3.

Pixel Qi vs iPad

Posted by Charbax – June 1, 2010
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Displays, Exclusive videos, Computex, Pixel Qi

Comparison of the Pixel Qi screen and the iPad screen in broad sunlight. Pixel Qi wins.

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Shuoying 10′ Laptop “U100 1A”

Posted by Charbax – June 1, 2010
Category: Laptops, Computex, Shuoying, Windows

ARM 11 processor, Windows CE, approx. 120 US$ for large quantities.

PixelQi screen compared to i Pad screen

Posted by Charbax – June 1, 2010
Category: Laptops, Displays, Pixel Qi

Comparison of the PixelQi screen and the I Pad screen in broad sunlight.

Pixel Qi wide view capacitive

Posted by Charbax – June 1, 2010
Category: Tablets, Exclusive videos, Computex, Pixel Qi

Mary Lou Jepsen demonstrates the Pixel Qi wide angle view capacitive touch 10″ screen, with anti-glare layer, wacom touch, two actual Pixel Qi prototypes as well as she explains how the Pixel Qi screen is actually made.

Pixel Qi shows 10″ capacitive

Posted by Charbax – May 31, 2010
Category: Tablets, Laptops, E-readers, Displays, Exclusive videos, Computex, Pixel Qi

Imagine being able to combine the Laptop, Tablet and e-reader into one convertible device, then having a screen technology that enables you to take it outside in the sun! Geeks outdoors in the sun, how cool is that going to be? Imagine also being able to turn off the backlight, increase up to 5x the battery runtime of your Tablet compared to for example the iPad. At Computex 2010, Pixel Qi is finally releasing the 3Qi screen, here demonstrating 10″ capacitive touch screen support and with half a dozen or more major partners. Here are some details from Mary Lou Jepsen, CTO of Pixel Qi, about the current status of the mass manufacturing of this technology. Look forward to many more Pixel Qi related videos from Computex 2010 uploaded right here on http://ARMdevices.net

Marvell makes OLPC XO-3 Tablet, now official

Posted by Charbax – May 27, 2010
Category: Tablets, E-readers, Opinions, Marvell, Pixel Qi, OLPC, Android

I predicted it in my article on 18th March, Marvell’s Moby Tablet announcement is the beginning of the new OLPC XO-3 project.

This is great news! It means XO-3 is coming earlier than 2012 as originally planned. It’ll basically start coming as soon as the next generation Marvell Armada 61X processor is ready. Check my video of Marvell Armada 610 and my video of the Marvell Armada 618 to have an idea how impressive this processor is. This means that prototypes of XO-3 could be showcased today and I’m guessing mass manufacturing can start before the end of year.

This also means the 5000+ people at Marvell are now working towards reaching the goals of the OLPC project. Cheaper access to learning, information, web, online entertainment, e-books, worldwide communications, all this is great!

Read the press release: http://www.marvell.com/company/news/press_detail.html?releaseID=1418

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Review: Novatel Wireless Mifi 2352 vs Huawei e5830

Posted by Charbax – May 16, 2010
Category: Other, Exclusive videos, Reviews, Archos

The Mifi is a great solution for bringing a WiFi hotspot with you everywhere in the city and even in the country (depending on HSDPA/UMTS/GPRS coverage in your country). It’s perfect to add 3G connectivity to your Archos, iPad, iPod Touch, Laptops and any other WiFi-only devices that you may have. In this video, I compare the performance and features of the two Mifi adapters that are available on the market, the Novatel Wireless Mifi 2352 and the Huawei e5830.

In this video, I demonstrate a VOIP call taken using Google Voice and Gizmo5 on my $249 Archos 5 Internet Tablet using SIPdroid or any other SIP VOIP applications on the Android OS. This is the vision where you just need a pre-paid 1GB or 10GB of bandwidth per month on a SIM card, just enter it in your unlocked Mifi device, make sure the right profile informations are entered using the control panel and that’s it. You’ve just about got a full mobile phone replacement, but where you don’t need to pay for voice minutes and SMS subscriptions any more.

Although eventually all devices will have built-in unlocked SIM card slots and modems, the Mifi solution is a really great temporary alternative, that connects on 3G all WiFi-only devices. When your city gets White Spaces, LTE or WiMax, you don’t need to buy new devices, just buy a new Mifi.

If you travel a lot in Europe, this is a must have. Then find SIM cards for cheap pre-paid plans, for 5€ to 10€ and get Mifi internet access all over that city and country.

The Novatel Wireless Mifi 2352 that I got was unlocked beforehand, I don’t know if there are online programs to unlock one if you happen to have a locked one. It can be bought unlocked for 214€ at moblix.hu and expansys.com.

I will post further test video of the Novatel Wireless Mifi 2352 once I get to figure out how to use some of the more advanced features. And at Mobile World Congress, Novatel Wireless advertised the functionality of installing applications on their Mifi device (see my video interview about it), to increase the functionalities. Such as hosting a little server in there on the MicroSD card, doing some file-sharing, file caching, GPS tracking and other stuff. The Mifi is the kind of device that I think all busses, trains in Denmark are getting installed to provide free WiFi to all people taking public transportation. If you own a taxi business, drive a bus, own a sausage stand, providing your customers with mobile WiFi is an awesome opportunity.

I bought the Huawei e5830 at the Three store in London for £49 with a compulsory £10 1GB/month first month pre-paid credit. I then unlocked it for 15€ using http://www.dc-unlocker.com/ (it can also be bought internationally from ebay.co.uk for around £80 unlocked) and I installed the latest firmware with full Control Panel, built-in Profile and other Router management features at: http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=98318&page=2. Consider also I filmed the Huawei E5 version 2 (with faster 3G HSPA+ speeds support and a new display) at Mobile World Congress, see my video here: http://138.2.152.197/2010/02/15/huawei-e5-2-mifi-at-mobile-world-congress-2010/

I am going to Computex

Posted by Charbax – May 16, 2010
Category: Computex, Pixel Qi

Computex in Taipei Taiwan June 1-5th is going to be awesome. Last year was my first Computex show and it was a great experience. While last year, I was lucky to be the first to see Pixel Qi in action (2, 3, 4), I saw Android on laptops and tablets, I saw Smartbooks demonstrated by Freescale, Qualcomm and Nvidia (2). I interviewed ARM about the status of Mobile Computing. Now finally, all those products are actually going to reach the market. For the past year, advances and optimizations in Chrome and Flash support is showing consumer-grade web browsing experiences for these products. Here are some of the main topics that I hope to film at this year’s Computex conference:

– Pixel Qi LCD in actual announced products “to be announced by half a dozen or more companies”, this technology is going to be the basis for the combination of E-reader, Tablet and Laptop markets.

– Chrome OS and Flash support on ARM Powered Laptops, makes Smartbook category ready to be a massive success.

– Android Tablet Edition, I trust that Google provides the full Google Marketplace on a whole range of Tablets to be shown.

– Cheaper Android Phones, I want to see cheaper phones shown by other manufacturers than just HTC, Motorola and Samsung (although those companies make nice Android phones).

– Youtube HD on cheap set-top-boxes, right after the Google TV announcements expected at Google I/O, I would like to see manufacturers showing cheap sub-$100 ARM Powered set-top-boxes that stream Youtube in HD quality directly on the HDTV, that may provide HDMI pass-through and overlay interactive features to existing TV channels as well.

– Connected E-readers, e-ink devices are great for reading, they make people read more again. But it’s important that all the worlds text contents reach those e-readers wirelessly.

Check back here on http://ARMdevices.net before, during and after the Computex trade show June 1-5th, to find me uploading 50 to 100 new awesome videos showcasing all those new ARM Powered devices that I think are going to change the world. If you are a blogger, subscribe to my RSS feed and make sure you check back here for the best Computex video coverage, you are of course welcome to embed my best videos on your blog with a link back to my blog post. If you are a fan of big technology news blogs and you like my videos, I appreciate if you submit my best videos to those sites.

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Acer to launch Chrome OS laptops at Computex

Posted by Charbax – May 13, 2010
Category: Laptops, Computex, Pixel Qi, Chrome OS

Acer Incorporated {{lang|zh-Hant|宏碁股份有限公司}}
Image via Wikipedia

Venturebeat.com reports that it has heard from several sources that Acer is going to launch Chrome OS laptops at Computex in June.

Last year’s Computex, Acer really disappointed me with their “fake” Android netbook, one that booted Android as a dual-boot with Windows on an expensive and power consuming Intel Atom based Netbook.

The big questions are:

– Will Acer’s first Chrome OS laptop use an ARM Processor or will it be based on Intel?

– What type of price point does Acer plan to reach?

The answers to those questions I think could be found by answering following two other questions:

– Does Acer want to be innovative enough and be one of the first big laptop manufacturers to use an ARM Processor in a Laptop form factor to lower the price, increase battery runtime, lower the weight and size of their new Chrome OS line of laptops?

or

– Does Acer feel it needs to stay in bed with Intel and Microsoft, and thus keep any non-Wintel projects out of their marketing radar?

If they announce it with ARM and Pixel Qi at Computex, hear the drum rolls:

1. 50h battery runtime

2. Instant on, month of standby

3. Below 800gr, 1cm thickness

4. Below $199 retail, no contracts, they sell tens of millions?

5. Built-in 3G module (maybe not included by default) for always connected use

6. Native Code SDK and OpenGL for even advanced video-editing and 3D games

7. Maybe even a swivel screen and the device holds like an e-reader? Touch-screen not absolute necessity for cheap model. Next/previous page and enter/exit buttons on the side would be good enough.

Source: Venturebeat.com

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What will Google charge for Youtube HD access on ARM Powered devices?

Posted by Charbax – May 11, 2010
Category: Set-top-boxes, Opinions, Google, Google TV

Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Youtube HD consumes lots of bandwidth, Google wants to kind of control which devices can access that. I spoke with some Realtek based set-top-box manufacturers that told me it actually costs $1 Million in licencing to get Youtube API support on a device. Check my video: http://138.2.152.197/2010/03/17/zinwell-cinematube-at-cebit-2010/

I don’t really believe it’s that expensive. It wouldn’t really make sense. But anyways, I think it’s got to do with something about Google changing the way the API works for devices to pull the Youtube videos to devices.

But that may change anyways and not be required anymore when Flash support is added in the next few weeks. That may be the solution for full Flash video support no matter about the Youtube API licencing issues.

Otherwise, I hope Google soon clarifies what they require for licencing out the Youtube HD access for devices, I wouldn’t mind if they require users to be logged in and pay a very small amount,

Something like $1 per 10GB
= 10 hours of Youtube playback at 720p 2mbit/s
= 5 hours of Youtube playback at 1080p 4mbit/s

of authenticated Youtube HD access or something like that, and that this should work on any device. This would then cover Google’s bandwidth costs for HD video streaming, and even provide the groundwork for Youtube to provide video-on-demand, video rentals, perhaps even scale up a new Live Youtube Streaming Service, also provide a one-click donation system and paying very small amounts to watch videos in HD quality without ads.

At Google I/O next week, Google is going to launch the Google TV initiative, I expect them to clarify the terms of Youtube access on devices by then.

Clearly defined specs of ARM Powered devices that may access Youtube in HD quality, and provide the full pay-per-view support with that, may provide a solid platform for one of the biggest revolutions for the TV media. People watch 3-4 hours of TV per day in average, the easy access to web video from Youtube on a sub-$100 set-top-box may revolutionize the content people will watch on their TVs. It may affect major election results. Youtube already represents perhaps as much as half of the worldwide internet bandwidth.

If Google makes this happen in the right ways, Google TV may become Google’s new largest source of revenues and profits. At the same time, I think, it may revolutionize media and democracy for the better.

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Smartbooks will succeed thanks to Flash (and Chrome?)

Posted by Charbax – May 6, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google

ARM’s marketing vice president, Ian Drew is quoted in an article at ZDnet.co.uk as saying:

“Our target is mostly internet machines — it becomes sort of a requirement that they run the internet,” Drew said. “[The delay in optimising] Flash has stalled it”.

Drew suggested that solving the issue of Flash optimisation had involved “lots of heavy lifting” but once the new version of Adobe’s rich media software is in place for smartbooks, that would be “very powerful” for ARM.

(…)

“I actually think we’re a lot stronger because of it,” he said. “We now know what we didn’t know two years ago. It has taught us a lot about how we work with software companies.”

So we know from my Interview with ARM’s Director of Mobile Computing and from my interview with Adobe Flash’s product manager that ARM, Adobe and other partners including Google, Nvidia, Freescale, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and others have invested hundreds and hundreds of engineers in working full time over the past many months to optimize and succeed in supporting the full Flash on the ARM processors of upcoming Smartbooks, Tablets, Phones and Set-top-boxes.

The Smartbooks are a big deal. Getting the full speed web browser experience working I think is the biggest job. Delayed Flash support on ARM Cortex A8 and A9 processors was one part of it, my theory is also that ARM has had to wait for the Chrome browser to come and smooth things up and optimize speed of Javascripts and AJAX-heavy websites as well. It wouldn’t look good enough for consumers if AJAX versions of Gmail, Facebook and Flash-heavy sites like Youtube and Hulu weren’t able to display correctly and feel like the browsing experience was as fast as on Intel.

Now though with Google Chrome for ARM and Flash for ARM being finalized, and also even the dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processors starting to become available, performance for a full PC web browsing experience on ARM should be real.

Once full web browsing performance is working, once all major websites load instantly on ARM laptops, from then on, advances in processors I think will be more about lowering cost and lowering power consumption further, then there would even be the need for any performance increases. The performance increases can be used in server parks powering the processor intensive tasks in the cloud, but the web browser access terminal just needs to have a perfect web browsing experience to unlock an experience that all consumers will like.

ARM Laptops to even support heavy Multimedia authoring applications on the cloud:

Clever cloud computing should even allow for very advanced video-editing, image rendering, even 3D graphics acceleration and 3D games can be streamed to a thin client that just needs to run some kind of 3D engine. Even professionals and advanced users will prefer an ARM laptop for video editing, if they have a fast enough upload speed to store the original native video files on the cloud, display AJAXified video-editing user interfaces and thumbnails in the web browser or in an app that interfaces with the cloud, and then you can have a grid of servers on the cloud processing, rendering and encoding the videos much faster than any multi-core local processor could do it. Imagine clicking a button and having 2000 servers on an FFmpeg grid encode your hour-long HD video for you in a minute. All video editing and encoding professionals would love to have that setup.

Found via: Techmeme.com

Flash support on all ARM Cortex A8, A9 devices

Posted by Charbax – April 29, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google

Up until last year, I didn’t like the business model around Adobe Flash at all. My theory was that Flash was basically used by Microsoft, Apple and Intel to block mass adoption of open source Linux and embedded Linux operating systems as there was no good enough Flash support on open source computers and embedded devices.

On the other hand, and as I am not a developer with access to Adobe’s source code so I can’t really know how hard it is for them to optimize their proprietary source code, perhaps Flash isn’t as bloated as I thought, but that it really represents graphics intensive animations and embedding of videos which actually are really hard to process using multi-purpose processors and which really perform much better once it can be made to use the latest hardware acceleration.

Check out my video filmed with Adobe Flash products manager Richard Galvan at Mobile World Congress 2010 demonstrating Flash support on the ARM Cortex A8 based Nexus One and Motorola Droid as well as a very interesting demonstration of the controversial Creative Suite 5 authoring software suite on which Adobe is demonstrating the infamous “Export to iPhone” option, where developers can input any Flash application based on ActionScript3 and output it in the iPhone applications format. Thus develop once and output all hardware platforms.

The big talk right now on Techmeme is the funny war going on where Apple doesn’t want to support the Flash format on the ARM Cortex A8 based iphone, ipod touch and ipad. Even though technically, Flash certainly could work on those devices. It’s probably just a question of a few megabytes of plug-in code that would have to be installed with the Safari browser on those devices.

My guess? Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer are angry at Adobe’s Open Screen Project. Up until last year, Microsoft and Apple had the exclusive platforms to have hardware accelerated Flash support on X86. Nobody else could get full Flash support, especially as Flash 9 fragmented into ActionScript3 based Flash projects which more and more displayed either not at all on Open Source OSes or displayed really badly, without hardware acceleration. My guess also is that Microsoft’s attempt with releasing Silverlight may also be a provocation against Adobe which pushed them further to optimize Flash for embedded Linux and thus support Flash everywhere else than Microsoft/Apple/Intel.

My point? To some degree, one of the main reasons Linux hasn’t yet caught on for mass market mass consumer adoption on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones has so far been the lack of decent Flash support. Sure, there are many many other factors. But Flash support was an important problem that up until recently released Ubuntu 10.4, hardware acceleration of Flash wasn’t even available for Linux!!

Of course I still wish Adobe would bluntly just announce that they will open-source Flash and licence it out for free (they can still release proprietary authoring tools that they can sell for lots of money to developers). And for sure, I am a proponent of HTML5, Ogg Theora 2.0 (based on Google’s On2 VP8 codec), for sure I can’t wait to see Google’s Native Client plugin for Browsers, Google’s 3D plugin for Browsers (like the very impressive new Google Earth for Google Maps in the browser (not for Linux yet)).

For now, especially as I expect Flash support in Android and Chrome OS can be fully hardware accelerated, run smoothly and nicely as Adobe has been investing hundreds of full time engineers in optimizing this process over the last couple of years. As I don’t expect any other aspects of Android and Chrome OS will feel any slower or any more bloated by adding Flash support. I don’t think Apple’s choice of excluding Flash is a good choice for their users.

What will happen? I think consumers will enjoy Flash support on Android, Chrome OS and other embedded Linux it also looks very impressive and nicely hardware accelerated in Ubuntu 10.4. If Apple persists in wanting to exclude the Flash plugin for non-technical reasons, consumers will likely buy Android and Chrome OS devices instead. In any ways, competition is good and in the coming months, it will be very interesting for me to film demonstrations of Android Tablets, Phones and Laptops with hopefully full and smooth Flash support.

Android 8-levels of secrecy

Posted by Charbax – April 16, 2010
Category: Opinions, Archos, Google, Android

Image representing Android as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Nice article at http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2010/04/is-android-evil/comment-page-1/

How does Google control what services, software and hardware ships in Android handsets? The search giant has built an elaborate system of control points around Android handsets.

To dig deeper we spent two months talking to industry sources close to Android commercials – and the reality has been startling. From a high level, Google uses 8 control points to manage the make-up of Android handsets:

I love Android, yet I am also the webmaster of the Archos Fans community. Archos is basically so far still the only Android Tablet manufacturer in the world (although 50+ Android Tablets have been shown at trade shows, nearly none of those are yet available on the market). Thus Archos, this little French company with less than 100 engineers, has had an Android device on the market since September 2009 and yet NO legal official way for them to pre-install the Google Marketplace, Gmail, Gtalk on their devices. There are illegal ways to install Google Apps on the Archos tablets, even a very simple .apk to transfer to the tablet over USB that does all the necessary Google Apps installations pretty easily.

This whole unofficial Google Apps deal is absolutely not sustainable, it’s like some kind of cyanogen thing. The mass market consumers that buy ipod touch and ipads would never accept to have to go through such unofficial channels to get some sort of “Google Experience” on their device. For the 50+ Android Tablets to be released to the worldwide markets these next few months, Google will have to unlock the Google Experience for more hardware configurations.

As the roadmap of Android is top secret, as Google geniuses prepare their Knock Out blows against Apple/Microsoft/Nokia/Intel, I think we as Android fanboys can also rather straight forwardly guess what that roadmap likely is going to be.

I see it a bit like some kind of trojan horse approach. Deep down I am sure Google does not want to do evil, but to reach the goal of providing sub-$100 Android devices that do all the VOIP, VOD, Credit Card and ID replacement, RFID, Augmented Reality, GPS, Social Networking and all that other stuff, Google first simply has got to play it nice with the largest Manufacturers and the largest telecom carriers.

I was at the Mobile World Congress recently at the Q&A with Eric Schmidt, you could hear really fun questions being asked by provocative telecom industry people, such as Google wanting to “Steal the telecom industry’s voice minutes”, that Google wants to “Transform the telecom industry into dumb pipes”. Those transformations are for real, and I am sure the Google top strategists are aiming to reach those goals as soon as possible. But Google alone, even though they have the most and best PHDs cannot make the $100 unlocked Google Phone/Tablet/e-reader/set-top-box happen. So they have to work in certain levels of secrecy with the right big companies that need to have their investments recouped before Google opening up the next level of Android openness to the whole industry.

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