Category: Laptops

Asus Transformer Book 5, $1200 double-Intel “converged” device

Posted by – June 5, 2014

Asus shows their $1200 laptop/tablet/phone combination device, with an Intel processor in the Phone (with LTE support) and another Intel processor in the Tablet, with a keyboard dock. They say battery life is fine, we’ll see about that. Price I think is around $1200 or $1300, since they say it costs something like a $1000 laptop + their zenphone. Asus has been showing a lot of Intel devices for many years, but I don’t think they have been selling many.

Archos ArcBook RK3168 $169 Android Laptop 10.1″ 1024×600, 9-hour battery life

Posted by – May 13, 2014

Google Play certified Laptop from Archos, with the ultra low power consumption Rockchip RK3168 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9, 1GB RAM, 10.1″ 1024×600 touch screen display, possibly an excellent keyboard and mousepad, priced at only $169 in retail, here’s the Archos ArcBook: http://www.archos.com/us/products/themed/arcbook/index.html

Archos ArcBook

$160 RK3188 11.6″ Ultrabook, RK3188 9″ FHD 4G Tablet by Firstview


Firstview is showing some interesting devices, one is their 11.6″ Rockchip RK3188 based Touch-screen Ultrabook, selling at $160 in bulk, the other is their $155 (bulk) 9″ FHD RK3188 Tablet with built-in 4G LTE. They also have $110 MediaTek 9.7″, 10.1″, 8″ IPS and more. They can manufacture about 1500 tablets per day with 800 people in their factory. And the $160 MT6592 FHD large phone.

You can contact them here:
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Chrome OS on Rockchip RK3288 with Mali-T764 in Tablets, Set-top-boxes, shipping next month


Rockchip shows RK3288 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A17 in Tablets, booting Chrome OS (named Chromium OS when not Google certified), playing back H265 4K 60fp HDMI 2.0 10bit, extremely fast Mali-T764 GPU, mass production starts next month.

Filmed at the HKTDC Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Spring Edition) 2014

Qualcomm, Mediatek, ZTE, Allwinner and Comcast join Linaro


George Grey, CEO of Linaro, the not-for-profit engineering organization consolidating and optimizing open source Linux software and tools for the ARM architecture, announces that Qualcomm, Mediatek, ZTE, AllWinner and Comcast are joining Linaro to work together on bringing Linux on ARM forward together. They are joining the existing Linaro member companies who are ARM, HiSilicon, Broadcom, Fujitsu, LG, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, AMD, AppliedMicro, Canonical, Cavium, Cisco, Citrix, Enea, Facebook, Freescale, HP, LSI, Marvell, Montavista, Nokia Solutions and Networks, Red Hat and IBM who all are contributing engineers to all be working together to improve Linux on ARM for Mobile, Enterprise (servers), Networking, and now also for Home (Set-top-box) usage with the Internet of Things potentially also to be supported. Linaro just held its Linaro Connect Asia here in Macau this week and I will be posting many videos from there, interviewing Linaro engineers about some of the latest Linux hacking work they are doing to speed up all ARM Powered devices.

Samsung Exynos 5422 Octa-core and Exynos 5260 Hexa-core

Posted by – March 6, 2014

Samsung releases the Exynos5422, their fastest yet Octa-core ARM Processor, with optimized HMP Heterogeneous Multi-processing support with all 8 cores working simultaneously at up to 2.1Ghz reaching something like 20 thousand on Antutu benchmark (which is a lot). The performance for ARM Chromebooks may be extremely high. The Exynos5422 may have more than double the CPU performance over the Exynos5250 of previous generation Chromebooks (according to some online benchmarks for the dual-core Exynos5250 in Nexus 10 compared with the Antutu number Samsung shows for their Octa core Exynos5422 Antutu result), this should provide for some extremely powerful new Samsung ARM Powered Chromebooks! Samsung also announced the 6-core Exynos5260 with 2 big ARM Cortex-A15 cores and 4 LITTLE ARM Cortex-A7 cores, a design that may feed well for the mid-range market perhaps also better for Android Smartphone usage scenarios while the Exynos5422 may be best on Chromebooks that may need higher burst performance. The Samsung Exynos5422 is going to ship in the newly announced $399 Samsung Chromebook 2 with a 13.3″ FHD display, 4GB RAM, 16GB Flash and an ultra-thin and light form factor for a laptop.

MHL for Productivity, Acer Extend, MediaTek MT6592 MHL Optimizations and Dell/Roku MHL HDMI Sticks

Posted by – February 28, 2014

One of the most interesting aspects of MHL in my opinion is that MHL enables your Smartphone to run your PC/Desktop/Laptop experience. Now Acer is showing their Acer Extend prototype where it’s an “empty” good looking laptop shell as stylish as an Ultrabook, which only contains the display, battery, keyboard, mousepad and basic MHL support electronics, thus potentially being sold at a very cheap price, then you power that Laptop Dock with your Phone, in the similar way to the Motorola LapDock system of a couple of years ago. MediaTek is showing some Android software optimizations that they are doing to run this setup on their Octa Core MT6592 processor, thus switching the Android UI to a more Laptop-friendly orientation and configuration when the MHL connectivity to the Laptop Dock is triggered. Hopefully that Android 5 will feature optimized MHL functionality also, perhaps even enabling to instantly switch to a full Chrome OS like productivity state when the MHL to Laptop Dock is detected. MHL also demonstrates a couple of important HDMI sticks from Dell and from Roku which feature MHL support, making HDMI Sticks easy to use and clutter-free, automatically powered by the TV itself and running the full Productivity Suite or the Entertainment Functions directly on the HDMI Stick. Now with MHL 3.0, MHL supports up to 600mbit/s on the USB Host direction, something that I have been looking forward to since I started video-blogging about MHL in 2011. The potential here is to accelerate the adoption of ARM Devices for powering productivity.

Latest Hasee Laptops, Phones and Tablets

Posted by – February 20, 2014

HASEE is a 20 year old company. HASEE makes laptops, smartphones, and tablets. HASEE employs 3,000 – 4,000 people in their factories. HASEE has a 4.5″ phone for 69 USD and a 5″ phone 99 USD and 139 USD and a 6″ phone for 159 USD all for retail price.

Company Website: http://www.hasee.com/en/

MHL shipped in over 400 million devices, MHL 3.0 does 4K


MHL launches MHL 3.0 with 6gbit/s bandwidth to support 4K 2160p30 video output from a phone, simultaneous up to 40mbitps data channel for USB 2.0 host (for example USB hard drives), new RCP commands, HID support for touchscreens, keyboard and mice, now charging with up to 10W of power, HDCP 2.2, 7.1 surround sound with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD, connector agnostic (uses as few as five pins), support for simultaneous up to 4 displays on one MHL 3 output while being backward compatible with MHL 1 and MHL 2. Thus far, more than 200 companies have shipped over 300 MHL compatible devices in phones, tablets, TVs, accessories and more, shipped in more than 400 million devices on the market thus far since MHL 1 launched in 2010.

Toshiba launches 13.3″ Chromebook For $279

Posted by – January 17, 2014

Toshiba’s first Chromebook is 13.3″ (1366×768 resolution). Sadly it uses an Intel Haswell Celeron processor. The Toshiba Chromebook has a fullsized laptop keyboard. In terms of storgage you get 16gb internally and 100gb of cloud storage. The Toshiba Chromebook contains most basic ports such as an HDMI and SDXC slot. The battery life is 9 hours. The Chromebook will sell for $279 and it will be on the market next month.

OLPC XO-2 7″ $149 and XO-10 10.1″ $199, bringing productive education to tablets

Posted by – January 11, 2014

The One Laptop Per Child shows their latest quad-core RK3188 Tablets, 7″ retailing for $149 and 10.1″ retailing for $199, those retail prices can subsidize the One Laptop Per Child foundation, bringing tablets and laptops to more children in the developing world as soon as possible. The XO Tablets ship with OLPC’s latest UI replacement for Android 4.4 kitkat. Parents can unlock that UI and use the tablets as Nexus-like unlocked tablets also. When are all the 1 Billion children in the world going to have full access to education using technology?

You can also watch Giulia D’Amico of OLPC talk to Engadget about the latest with OLPC here: http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/07/olpc-interview/

Toshiba 4K Laptop

Posted by – January 10, 2014

Toshiba will release laptops with 4K screens starting later this year. The 4K screens enables you to display amazingly sharp text and can do more for the readability of multi-window multi-tasking and a lot more. The price and specifications of the laptop itself are to be announced with summer being the target. The laptop itself is still considered an ultrabook despite its large screen and graphics card.

Ubuntu Founder Mark Shuttleworth, runs on 30 Smartphones, all ARM Servers and upcoming ARM Laptops

Posted by – December 17, 2013

Ubuntu Founder, Mark Shuttleworth, talks about why he started Ubuntu, how it runs on 30 different ARM Powered Smartphones, on all the ARM Servers, on upcoming ARM Powered Laptops also. GPU providers opening up more and more to allow full Ubuntu hardware acceleration, optimizing Ubuntu on one GPU can enable Ubuntu on ARM Powered phones, tablets, laptops and desktops also.

$108 13.3″ Android Laptop, VIA8880 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9, 5000mAh

Posted by – December 8, 2013

The cheapest 13.3″ Ultrabook killer, now selling at near $100, with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor WM8880 from VIA WonderMedia. Running smooth Android, but of course would be nicer with Chrome OS (or Chromium OS) and Ubuntu, on dual or triple boot. It has 1GB RAM, 8GB Flash, 1366×768 screen resolution, 5000mAh battery could do 10+ hours battery life if the display was a Pixel Qi ultra-low power sunlight readable LCD. This is where the upcoming Intel-killing Ultrabook-killing is going to come from.

Samsung Wide IO Memory Interface for the faster and lower power ARM Processors of the future

Posted by – November 21, 2013

Memory bandwidth is one of the most important features in an SoC to get performance. Here presenting Samsung’s new memory architecture, possibly (my guess) to be used in Exynos6 (64bit) possibly at 20nm or perhaps even 14nm even, Samsung talks about their upcoming Wide-IO faster Memory Interface architecture for future ARM Processors to input and output much faster memory bandwidth. To run the same workload, it can use 60-70% less power of the memory plus memory interface power within the SoC, which is a large part of the power consumption within an ARM SoC, Samsung is ready with the technology. The business is about the timing, they are aiming for the best timing to introduce this technology. Provides for example 17gbit/s memory bandwidth, allowing to increase memory bandwidth possibly above 100gbit/s, to be confirmed as better technology is implemented. The history of LP-DDR is to increase the frequency to increase memory bandwidth, but with Samsung’s Wide-IO memory design, they can increase the memory lines instead and thus achieve much better memory bandwidth, possibly running 2-3x faster memory bandwidth at the same frequency, perhaps something like 50gbit/s easily. The demand for the memory bandwidth for smartphone devices will surpass memory bandwidth for the traditional desktop PC.

Samsung Exynos5420 HMP big.LITTLE demo

Posted by – November 21, 2013

Samsung shows HMP big.LITTLE mode working on the Exynos5420, Heterogeneous Multi Processing means that you can manage the 8 big.LITTLE cores independently and use them all at the same time. Showing HMP mode achieving a higher benchmark result over IKS process switching mode on the same CPU and on the same exact tablet hardware. Even being able to do full Octa Core Exynos5420 CPU and the full 6-core Mali-T628 GPU performance using renderscript at the same time heterogeneously achieving the maximum performance and at the same time also improving battery life when doing the same task. Showing here some advanced photo editing app using renderscript to optimize performance of that type of app.

HP Chromebook 11 unboxing and first boot

Posted by – October 29, 2013

I decided to buy a $279 ($303 with taxes) HP Chromebook 11 with the Exynos5250 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 with Mali-T604 inside, even though it would have been nice if it already would have been shipping with the newer Exynos5420 Octa Core ARM Cortex-A15/A7 with Mali-T628. I guess that Samsung doesn’t yet provide their latest big.LITTLE yet for third parties to ship in devices? As soon as a good cheap 13.3″ Exynos5420 Chromebook is available I’ll probably switch to that latest ARM Chromebook as my main video-blogging laptop.

$65 VIA8880 10.1″ Laptop, $41 RK3026 7″ Tablet and more from Wabook


Wabook shows their latest range of low priced tablets, now featuring Rockchip RK3026 and Allwinner A23 to lower prices and to increase the performance at lower power consumption, also showing RK3188 and A31S tablets, then also showing Wabook’s new and improved ARM Powered Laptop design now using the new VIA WM8880 dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, now with a better chiclet keyboard, a better larger mousepad, better mouse buttons, better USB Host port designs and more, priced at $65 in bulk. Wabook now says Chrome OS on that is a possibility.

Contact Wabook (serious importers/distributors only please, tell them you watched the video):
Shenzhen Wabook Technology Co Ltd
Helen Zhao, Sales Manager
Mobile phone: +86 18566261690
helen@wabook.com.cn
http://www.wabook.com.cn
Skype: wabook-helen

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Filmed at Filmed at the HKTDC Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition) 2013

AmLogic M802 2Ghz Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9, TSMC 28nm, 8-core Mali-450 GPU, supports 4K


AmLogic shows their new M802 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 (28nm TSMC) with 8-core Mali-450 GPU, showcased in the new Geniatech ATV580 4K Set-top-box, 7.85″ Tablets, 9.7″ Retina tablets, 13.3″ Laptops and more, all running Android 4.3 with mostly 2GB RAM and 4K video playback support. AmLogic claims to provide higher benchmark scores than competing quad-core Rockchip and Allwinner solutions on the market. The AmLogic M802 has dual-channel DDR3 RAM for 4K and Retina screens while the AmLogic M801 has a single-channel DDR3 RAM support for lower resolution devices without 4K support.

Allwinner A80 Octa ARM Cortex-A15/A7 big.LITTLE, A70 quad A15/A7, A90 ARMv8 64bit, A23 Dual A7


Allwinner announced their upcoming Allwinner A80 Octa-core with four ARM Cortex-A15 cores and four ARM Cortex-A7 cores configured in a big.LITTLE configuration, the release to happen around Q1 2014. As well as the Allwinner A70 Quad-core (2x Cortex-A15 and 2x Cortex-A7), and for later, Allwinner already announces that they will release a 64bit ARMv8 ARM Cortex-A57 and ARM Cortex-A53 big.LITTLE processor, perhaps for later in 2014 or for early 2015. For the first time, Allwinner shows the Chrome logo, Windows 8 (probably meaning Windows RT), this means the Allwinner A80 may be good to use in mass market affordable Chromebooks, cheap Windows RT laptops and desktops and more. This video also features the Allwinner A23 PCB, implemented in affordable 7.85″ tablets and more, manufactured now by Pegatron and Foxconn, Ramos, Onda, Winn and many more. Allwinner is the leading Quad-core and Single-core chip provider for tablets worldwide.