Here is one very cool looking, ultra thin and ultra light tablet by Asus powered by Windows CE7 and running on an NVidia Tegra processor. It’s only 0,48 inches (1,21cm) thick, sports a touchscreen and a built in camera, supports Adobe Flash and is said to have 10hrs of battery life. Asus announced its release for end of 2010/beginning of 2011 but did not reveal the price. According to rumours it will start at $399.
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
This is the QOOQ tablet, perhaps worlds first commercially available consumer 10.1″ capacitive tablet, has been available only in France since October 2009 (many months before the iPad), it uses a glass panel which is also useful for it to resist the attacks of ingredients in the kitchen as it is water and smudge proof. This product features many interactive recipes, some of them from Frances top chefs, with step-by-step videos. The content is streamed from the QOOQ Akamai servers, over Wifi or Ethernet, with additional recipes being added over the Internet.
The QOOQ is released by the French company Unowhy, the first such customized design released on the Shogo tablet platform from Hong-Kong company Realease, and runs on a Freescale i.MX37 processor with Linux. It currently is sold only in France for 349€.
Here’s a recent build of Chromium OS running on the ARM Cortex A8 Freescale i.MX51 processor platform in a desktop form factor, using a keyboard and mouse on a DVI monitor.
Ubuntu has been working over these past couple of years with ARM and ARM partners such as Freescale to optimize the Ubuntu OS for ARM Processors. Here’s a demonstration of the latest version of Ubuntu 10.4 running on a Freescale i.MX51 development board. In theory this Ubuntu desktop could be sold for below $100 without the screen, keyboard and mouse.
Realease is launching this Freescale i.MX37 (ARM11) and i.MX51 (ARM Cortex A8) based Linux open-source Tablet. With a whole range of customized features, on an open HTML5, Qt, Flash even Android-compatible development platform, customizable designs, 1 external USB, 2 internal USB (for adding internal USB 3G dongle and other), motion sensor, camera, ambient light sensor, and more.
It is meant for software developers who want a platform to develop or port their solutions for B2B usages like medical, planes, hotels, or any niche consumer markets where a closed solution is required (unlike the iPad) check for instance the QOOQ culinary coach, a tablet that is derived from the Shogo predecessor.
This video shows how to leverage a Video processor and a Graphics processor (GPU) to show 3D videos. This is done on the Freescale i.MX51 System-on-chip, that integrates an ARM Cortex A8 processor + a video processor + 2 GPUs.
Freescale is demonstrating Quake 3 on Android 2.1 running on their ARM Cortex A8 Freescale i.MX51 processor platform. It seems to run pretty smoothly with a decent frame rate outputted on this 800×480 medium density screen. This degree of success in 3D hardware acceleration for advanced 3D games on ARM devices with Android, as well as the achievements by the Unreal Engine group (watch my video Interview with Unreal Engine founder of Epic Games talking about Unreal Engine on Android), can give us a pretty good idea of how extremely advanced and fun 3D gaming can quickly become on these new Android devices.
Realize this, Quake 3 and even Unreal Tournament is running smoothly on our pocketable ARM Powered devices!
You may be familiar with OpenGL hardware acceleration in all the recent ARM Processors, but check this recent API from the Khronos group: OpenVG. It is meant at rendering Vector Graphics, where basically the images are stored not in bitmaps (a sum of pixels) but in maths formulaes. Each time you need to re-draw the image, you just have to re-calculate the vectors to show high quality pictures and animations. This is what pdf and postscripts use, and this is especially useful for zooming. All cool user interfaces should use OpenVG at some point, which is easier and more flexible than OpenGL thus for certain graphics and animations to be used in all kinds of user interfaces as well as content.
So far, most processors could support OpenVG on top of the OpenGL hardware accelerator. But Freescale added a second GPU in its i.MX processors. So for instance their i.MX51 has a GPU for OpenGL and a second GPU for OpenVG.
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.
Qt is a cross-platform application and UI framework for developing once, and deploying across lots of embedded Linux platforms, Windows CE, Symbian and Maemo without rewriting the source code. At Mobile World Congress, Qt was demonstrating their solution used in many different devices.
Qt Quick (Qt User Interface Creation Kit) is a high-level user interface technology that makes it dramatically easier for UI designers and developers with scripting language skills to quickly and easily create beautiful, pixel perfect UIs and lightweight, touch-enabled apps with Qt – all without requiring any C++ skills. It will be part of the Qt 4.7 release, which has had its first technology preview released in March.
Alcatel-Lucent is showcasing their new ecosystem that creates what they call “the developer innovation experience”. This includes services, content, and platforms that they say will drive the next generation of telecom.
Here’s one of the cheapest Realtek based 1080p media streamer boxes. It could even play Youtube in HD over its Ethernet connection if only Google would licence that out to set-top-box makers. The representative of Zinwell is saying that Google recently changed their policy for licencing of Youtube access to set-top-boxes by charging a huge $1 Million licencing fee just to be allowed to access the Youtube API to stream the videos. Zinwell says Flash 10 support might be added already by next month, which may be a workaround to support Youtube without having to pay the Youtube API licencing fee. I bought this device for 80€ and will post a video review of it here at http://138.2.152.197 soon.
IDTI, which I filmed their early prototypes at last year’s Computex, is now showing this finalized implementation of their technology in this touch screen product which is a 21,5″ 1080p screen that integrates their specific stylus based touch screen technology. IDTI’s touch screen technology claims to provide same visibility as capacitive screens but for a price closer to resistive screens, though it only works using their stylus.
Asus is releasing their third generation of HD video players in the O!Play HD2, it plays all video formats, comes with a USB 3.0 connector, eSata, HDMI output and even in theory could play back Youtube in HD from its Ethernet connection if Google would authorize set-top-box makers to connect with the Youtube video API.
Motorola HS1001 is being released at CeBIT 2010, it features a very customized version of Android 1.6 running on its 2.8″ QVGA touch screen display. This cordless phone will be sold for 99€ in Europe and $149 in the USA. It supports 2h of cordless phone calling on the battery, comes with a MicroSD card reader.
Chinese manufacturer Hott is launching a design for a 4.8″ tablet based on a version of Android which they have customized to work for them on the ARM9 Rockchip based processor which comes with full video playback support. Check out these interesting Android customizations in this product that they proudly define as “iPad-killer”.
The design of this 4.8″ Android tablet by Hott is the most compact that I have seen so far. I think it is very nice that it only has a minimal screen bezel. Check out it’s size compared to my Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android in the following pictures posted to Picasa (click to see the full size versions on Picasa):
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