Category: Opinions

Can the Android bloatware user interfaces be turned off?

Posted by – July 24, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google

I am an Android fanboy. But I don’t like the different custom Android user interface designs such as Motorola Blur, HTC Sense, Samsung TouchWiz, Sony Ericsson’s nor Acer’s custom user interfaces, I think they are confusing and they are like visual bloatware. Please investigate following:

1. Is there a home replacement in the Google Marketplace that returns the full UI in Android to the default Android UI in all of the different Android phones? If not, then why isn’t Google officially releasing this default Android UI in the Google Marketplace? Does anyone have any contacts at Google to whome they could ask about this?

2. Will that Default Android UI Home Replacement provide a way to have exactly the same UI as on the Nexus One? And without voiding any of the warranties? And without consuming any extra RAM memory or slowing anything down in any way?

It’s very simple, but we need simple and definite answer on this. And we need answers from Google officially. Thanks.

I do understand that the reason for each of these different layers of designs on top of Android is that each of the phone makers feel that they have to differentiate their Android offerings from the competition. That consumers have to think that they are buying a HTC phone and that only HTC phones can do that or look like that. And so on.

But I would rather that the Android ecosystem immitate the Windows world, let all the default desktop user interfaces look the same. Stop confusing the consumers. Let them recognize the true value of the whole Android ecosystem. And phone makers should preferably compete on hardware and features for the prices.

I understand this idea is disruptive to the current Android business plans of each of the companies. But please, could we at least just get a little basic Home Replacement somewhere deep in the Google Marketplace that offers anyone with any Android phone to set it back to the Nexus One styled basic Android UI design?

I’ve been told in certain comments that Launcher Pro and some other Home Replacements were good. But I am looking for a Home Replacement that offers exactly the same UI designs as on the Nexus One. Please let me know in the comments if you know of a near or fully Nexus One UI Home Replacement that is available for any of Samsung Galaxy S, Droid X, HTC Desire, Sony Ericsson X10 or any of the other Android phones, what your experience is with it and on which of the phones.

Having to void warranties on those $500 devices just to get a normal UI is a terrible thing.

Read more at droiddog.com: Hey manufacturers, leave Android alone!

How to test and compare Apple’s iPhone 4 antenna design

Posted by – July 24, 2010
Category: Opinions

I don’t have the iPhone 4, nor any of its main Android competitors (I am considering a Samsung Galaxy S to test Super AMOLED and Hummingbird, but I still think it is far too expensive at 450€ unlocked), nor would I have the time to actually do this type of thorough testing, but here is how I would suggest that it would be best for an independent and trusted media to test the iPhone 4’s antenna. I think it could be much more useful to get the real user testing data than to wait through more back and forth between each of the companies advertising and spin doctors, news conferences, blogger fanboys and other media stunts.

1. Make 100 calls of at least 2 minutes in length with each device, holding it in the left hand. Preferably make the test using people not familiar with the issue at all (ask anyone in the street who have not read the news or seen any pictures of how Apple recommends holding the phone), just ask them to make the phone calls holding the phone with their left hand. Make sure the people are speaking to each other constantly for at least those 2 minutes per call as silent calls may emit less data and generate less dropped calls.

2. Try to test this at different locations, be them central where signal reception is known to be strong as well as places where the signals are known to be weak.

3. When possible, test the different networks. For example, test other Android devices that use the same network as the iPhone 4 as well as testing the Android devices that work on other networks.

4. If possible, try to measure the bitrate and codec, thus quality of the phone calls. Perhaps one company uses lower voice call bitrate, stronger compression, maybe non standard compression technologies which may result in less dropped calls due to bad signal. For example, one phone brand on one network may have fewer dropped calls but also a lower voice call quality.

5. Report how many dropped calls there were out of 100 calls on each of the devices.

6. Launch downloads over 3G of certain different (un-cached) test 10 megabyte files hosted on specific servers. Ask the user to please hold the phone with their left hand and again with their right hand. Measure exact transfer bandwidth differences. Try to download on all the different phones at the same time and at the same location. If possible also compare upload speeds the same way if it is possible to upload something to a same server online using some browser or app based upload functionality.

I don’t think this should only be an issue about the number of bars displayed in closed, open source or hacked mobile phone OSes. This is about calls being dropped or not. And about 3G data transfer bandwidth.

If the iPhone 4 is proven to have significantly more dropped calls when the phones are held with the left hand, then I do think it would be fair for consumers to claim it to be defective and to demand a global recall. And they should be entitled a new one with a fixed antenna or for a full refund. Not within any 30-day usual return schedules, this would have to be valid for anyone having purchased a defective phone within the whole 2 years of the signed contracts. And I don’t think consumers have to be satisfied by just getting a $1 piece of plastic case to cover it.

The secrets behind Microsoft’s new ARM License

Posted by – July 23, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google

The biggest threat to Microsoft’s $62 Billion in yearly revenues and $24 Billion in yearly profits is the possibility that consumers and the enterprise start adopting sub-$200 Linux based ARM Cortex A9 laptops and desktops as the new standard for personal computing in the months to come. There is a high probability that Chrome OS and Ubuntu will turn out to work very smoothly on ARM Cortex A9 processors, so smoothly that most consumers might be satisfied with the experience of web browsing speed and for running basic applications like text editors but even basic video- and photo-editing once those are available on the cloud and powered by advanced HTML5 native code and caching mechanisms.

Microsoft clearly must be seeing this as the biggest threat to their core business and thus is probably preparing a version of Windows 7 for ARM. It won’t run all the .exe files that run on Intel/AMD/VIA x86 processors. But there may be tools for developers to recompile the most important applications and to make new drivers. The challenge is for Microsoft to present such a lightweight version of Windows for ARM in a way that consumers will still pay for the Microsoft Windows OS experience even as prices of those ARM Powered laptops arrive at under $200. The profit margins will be low for Microsoft and this will require for them to implement totally different and bold business models if they want to try to keep the same numbers in yearly revenues and profits to not have their share holders sell their stocks. It would probably be based on Windows CE 7, but since that one looks much like Windows CE 6, it would be all about how they could upgrade the user interfaces to make it look and perform as much like Windows 7 as they can.

Some other possibilities as to what Microsoft may be doing with this ARM Licence:

– To release a new lower cost ARM Cortex A9 powered XboX to compete with the upcoming Google TV platform. 10 years ago, Microsoft launched MSN TV and for years there has been Windows Home Center Edition but it never really was a success like Google TV has the potential to be. Features need to be implemented in a cheap ARM Powered hardware such as HD quality video-on-demand streaming, casual and advanced 3D gaming, lean back web experiences.

– To release a Tablet centric OS to compete with Android and iOS, it would be related to Windows Phone 7 Series and with some features of the ARM version of Windows 7.

– Microsoft may want to design and control their own version of an ARM processor and keep it for their products. Like Apple keeps A4 for their products.

What do you think Microsoft is going to do with this ARM License?

via: techmeme.com
source: arm.com

India’s $35 tablet is based on AllGo Systems design (specs inside)

Posted by – July 23, 2010

Indian minister for HR Development HRD, Kapil Sibal announces $35 tablet project. It seems to be based on the Freescale i.MX233 system on chip, with a 7″ resistive 800×480 touch screen. Here’s my video with AllGo Embedded Systems, a R&D company based in Bangalore India, where they are showcasing their $35 tablet reference design at the Freescale Technology Forum in Orlando last month. This is likely to be the tablet that India’s HRD Minister is talking about:

The Bill Of Material is as following:
ARM9 Processor: $5 (Freescale i.MX233)
Memory: $3
WiFi B/G: $4
Other discret components: $3
Battery: $5
7″ 800×480 resistive touch screen: $15
Total bill of material: $35

It is of course a honor for me that the Indian Government watches my videos and bases their Government projects on those. I just wish India’s HRD would stop attacking the One Laptop Per Child efforts all the time. That Minister is quoted as saying that this project is their “answer to MIT’s $100 computer”. Why can’t he say that this is their answer to the $640 Apple iPad? Why does the Indian Ministry of Human Ressources have to attack the non-profit OLPC organization?

Already back in 2006, the HRD published very harsh statements against the OLPC project such as “India must not allow itself to be used for experimentation with children in this area”. After which HRD announced a totally bogus $10 laptop project which resulted in a USB stick. The result of which being, 4 years has passed, and very little has been done to help Indian children at getting any hope at getting a better education using technology.

The $75 OLPC XO-3 design uses a more powerful ARMv7 class processor (3x faster), a 10″ capacitive touch screen on an unbreakable plastic Pixel Qi LCD screen that allows it to run 40 hours on a battery instead of 4 hours of this India HRD project! The screen is a very important component, maybe the most important component to make this a revolutionizing success in the whole of India to hundreds of millions of children.

So if HRD wants to make a difference for the Children of India, they need to be open about the specifications of their open source hardware designs, they need to present the options in which ARM Processors they are trying to use, which features that would be included in the SoC and how much HRD would like to support the mass manufacturing of sunlight readable Pixel Qi LCD screen technology. And they should stop positioning this as India HRD vs OLPC but talk about it as India HRD + OLPC vs Apple iPad + Intel netbooks.

Boxee on ARM Powered Box coming soon

Posted by – July 17, 2010

This is not Google TV on ARM yet, but this is a major achievement already, Boxee can run the full Boxee software experience on an ARM Powered box. Boxee is considered to be one of the best user interfaces for media streamers and Web TV. I wonder how much would need to change in D-Link’s Nvidia Tegra 2 Powered Boxee Box for them to be able to release a Google TV version of Boxee Box, and have the Boxee video navigation UI functionalities be an app on top of Google TV OS. My guess is the full Google TV experience requires HDMI input and output and an IR blaster (to integrate with existing cable/satellite boxes), thus would require a slightly upgraded version of this hardware.

For users who don’t require the feature of old TV integration with cable/satellite set-top-boxes but who only want the future experience of VOD, media streaming and web TV stuff, it would be cool to know how likely or unlikely it might be to be able to load Google TV OS for ARM once it is open sourced by Google on this Box and have Boxee’s complete set of features and user interfaces as a 3D accelerated app on top of Android. In my video interview with Boxee from CES, the Boxee representatives say that Boxee Box is designed to be open source and hackable:

There is an SD card slot on the side. We know that a lot of developers and hackers really like to side load the OS and have their own apps, so we are trying to make it as developer friendly as possible.

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

Posted by – July 9, 2010

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?

30 minutes with Jeff Orr of ABI Research

Posted by – June 30, 2010

ABI Research releases forecasts on ARM Powered laptops, tablets, they correctly predicted the 2009 netbook sales and have many other research papers, reports and forecasts out. In this video, we discuss the growth of Android vs the iOS devices, we discuss the potential of tablets, smartbooks, the possible disruption of Telecom business models. Cheaper ARM Powered smartphones and other devices.

Marvell makes OLPC XO-3 Tablet, now official

Posted by – May 27, 2010

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

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

Posted by – May 11, 2010

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 – 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

Will Intel have to make ARM processors again?

Posted by – May 4, 2010
Category: Opinions

ARM’s advantage is not only a question of performance per milliwatt and price, it’s also mostly about it being a processor technology licenced by several processor makers. More makers of processors means lower prices, means more features. When manufacturers who are making the next Laptop, Tablet, Phone, Set-top-box, E-reader devices have more choices for the components that they can use, it helps bring prices down, it helps bring a more diverse set of hardware designs and features to the market.

As consumers and as fans of technology and progress, we should welcome more choice, more competition to the market.

While I can’t know Intel’s next generation performance and price, my guess though is that while they can probably bring something with their billions of dollars in R&D, it’ll likely still not be able to match the work done by the dozens of huge ARM processor makers all combined. As ARM is just a core set of processor IP, a lot of work is done on top of that by Texas Instruments, Marvell, Freescale, Qualcomm, Samsung, ST Ericsson, Nvidia, VIA, Broadcom, even AMD-spin-off Global Foundries is investing Billions in differentiating their way of doing ARM Cortex A9 multi-core using High-K Gate, 28nm process and more.

The performance we need is simply one that displays a web browser instantly on all screen sizes. So really, while we would like cloud computing performance to increase, the performance of our internet access devices only need to reach a certain magic level where all websites and web apps can be displayed instantly. From then on, processor improvements that bring savings on power consumption and price will be much more valuable than further increases in performance.

Sure Intel has lots of money and engineers in R&D, but one must question their motive; I think Intel wants to stay in control of the bulk of the PC/Laptop product categories than it really cares about value for consumers and about much improving access to computing for the more than 4 billion people who still don’t have access to the Internet.

Flash support on all ARM Cortex A8, A9 devices

Posted by – 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 – April 16, 2010

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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I would have liked to video-blog at Hong Kong and Shenzhen fairs

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

Hong Kong Trade Development Council Logo
Image via Wikipedia

The Hong Kong Electronics and Sourcing fairs and the China Consumer Electronics Fair were just held in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. I had tried for 3 weeks after CeBIT to find a sponsor to cover my flight and hotel costs so that I could go there and bring you 50 videos of all the new products that I expected to be shown there. But I did not succeed to convince any sponsor for going to film in Asia this time, so I am for now staying in Copenhagen where I am currently filming some interviews at the Cphpix Copenhagen Film Festival: 1, 2, 3.

I’ve then been trying to find other sites covering those trade fairs with video, pictures and infos, but I have not found much thus far. Google News has some things about CCEF and about HKTDC in Chinese, clonedinchina.com has a few posts showing such things as a new Rockhip powered Android phone, SmartDevices R7, Onda VX560 7-inch PMP, Kinstone Windows CE MID, Huawei C8600 Android phone, MDO Avatar G580 Android phone, lots of cheaper ipad-like tablets.

I don’t know for sure how much innovation and new products were shown by the Chinese manufacturers at these Trade Shows these past few days. I didn’t yet spend enough time translating all the Chinese blogs and searching more for those most interesting Android tablets, new cheaper Android phones, new interesting e-readers, ARM Powered Laptops and more.

I guess also that this year’s CCEF, HKTDC and HK Spring Sourcing fairs may not have been too popular among those European and US based bloggers that I know. Maybe they don’t go there for a reason.

Anyways, I will try to bring you exclusive videos of a bunch of awesome ARM Powered products that I have right here to review, I’ve got a $95 10″ Android VIA-ARM Powered laptop (watch me showing a brief preview of it in the video below), I’ve got an Intelligent Mobile Hotspot Mifi adapter by Novatel Wireless, I’ve got the touch-screen PocketBook 302 with WiFi/Bluetooth and I’ve also got a Bluetooth wireless foldable keyboard by Chinfai Leicke. I’ll post extensive video reviews of those and more as soon as I find the time.

This video was posted at: netbooknews.com

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Drobo FS brings automatic NAS backup solution to the market

Posted by – April 6, 2010
Category: NAS, Opinions, Google

Data Robotics have just announced the release of the new faster gigabit-connected Drobo FS NAS storage device. Check my video interview with Drobo at CES 2010 where I asked them about Ethernet NAS features: http://138.2.152.197/2010/01/08/drobo-at-ces-2010/

It supports up to 5 SATA hard drives, hot-swappable, 1 or 2 drives can fail in their special RAID configuration and all files stay intact, different sized hard drives are supported automatically (when you buy new larger drives, just replace the oldest smallest ones with those). Now also with some Gigabit ethernet local and remote file sharing features.

I am eager to find out how this new Drobo FS NAS performs as it’s said to have a new faster processor. Reaching super fast data transfer, data copy, data backup performance using the newest fastest ARM Processors, keeping very low power consumption especially when the hard drives are idle (which they would in most cases), and especially providing all this at lower prices. I do believe that the Home Server NAS market is potentially going to grow very rapidly. Even though Cloud Computing is revolutionizing storage, 2TB, 1.5TB and 1TB Hard Drives are getting cheaper every day, it makes perfect sense to store a huge amount of data at home as a buffer and cache to the cloud hosted in people’s homes. Also, cloud storage at places like Google and Amazon still costs about 16 times more per terrabyte per year compared to buying TB hard drives on the open market and hosting it oneself using a clever ARM Powered NAS in the home (not including cost of NAS and power consumption). As consumers create and download more and more video, audio and high resolution photo files, I believe we all need solutions to manage all those cheap hard drives at home.

Source: engadget.com

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The iPad promotes the ARM Powered Tablet market segment

Posted by – April 6, 2010
Category: Opinions, Archos, Google

Tablet PC Icon
Image by ichibod via Flickr

The swarms of Apple fans buying and talking about the Apple iPad during these next days and months, are rapidly popularizing the demand for ARM Powered tablets in the worldwide market. This should be a great opportunity for the many companies working on releasing Android Powered Tablets during these next few weeks and months.

1. Will consumers prefer cheaper and more powerful Android powered tablets?

– Archos is already selling an $249 Android Tablet with a pocketable 4.8″ screen, they have been selling it since September 2009, check out some of my videos of it: 1, 2, 3, 4

– As you can see in my Tablets category http://138.2.152.197/category/tablets/, there are more than 50 Android Powered tablets coming to the market from all major manufacturers during these next few months.

2. All the best tablets should have sunlight readable, reflective Pixel Qi LCD screens. Watch some of my Pixel Qi videos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

3. This can accelerate the release of many ARM Powered laptops. As consumers see that ARM Powered embedded platforms load the full screen full resolution websites fast, consumers will demand there be regular laptop form factors available as well using the same technology.

This video was released at: laughingsquid.com
Found via: techmeme.com

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Auto-updates (and more platforms?) coming with Android Froyo and Gingerbread

Posted by – March 29, 2010
Category: Opinions, Archos, Google

Google Inc.
Image via Wikipedia

Chris Ziegler writes at Engadget.com that with the upcoming Android Froyo software release, Google will be

decoupling many of Android’s standard applications and components from the platform’s core and making them downloadable and updatable through the Market, much the same as they’ve already done with Maps. In all likelihood, this process will take place over two major Android versions, starting with Froyo and continuing through Gingerbread.

This means that Android may get built in a way where software and component updates come from the central software update system controlled by Google, and as long as the hardware follows a certain set of hardware requirements, that manufacturers will not even have to work to update their customized firmwares anymore, but where Google will be taking care of the software releases centrally providing all the different hardware platforms with component, feature and application updates automatically.

This brings us to another important aspect of the fragmentation of Android which I certainly expect to see Google add support for with Froyo:

Google’s Support for Android on Laptops, Tablets, E-readers and Set-top-boxes.

Which means that Google has to provide a set of customized Google Marketplaces for all those different categories of products.

Android Tablets:
I see no reason Google wouldn’t want to support a market of Android tablets to compete with the iPod Touch and the iPad. Customizing Android for WiFi-only small or large Tablets with or without Cameras, accelerometers, GPS and 3G should be easy. It’s just a matter of Google adding a few filters to apps in the Marketplace based on the hardware configurations of each device.

Android e-readers:
I am convinced Google wants to help provide an Android platform for e-readers to better access the Google Books, Google Reader and Google News, to create a powerful platform for the competition to the Amazon Kindle in e-ink based e-readers. An e-ink based e-reader with Android-powered RSS, Bookmarks sync, e-mail, webkit based web browser, Google Fast-flip, Google Reader Play, Aldiko/FBreader, WiFi and text-input all those apps and components will make e-ink based e-reader much more powerful.

Android Laptops:
Although Google is coming with Chrome OS, the way I see Chrome OS for ARM, is basically that Google is optimizing the web browser for all ARM based Linux platforms. So there would be no reason not to just include the full Chrome Browser simply as a Web Browser icon inside of Android. What Google needs to customize though in Android is a User Interface adapted for mouse and keyboard input of Laptop form factors instead of touch-screen inputs. The filter for laptops will highlight the best high resolution Android apps.

Android set-top-boxes:
The core here is to provide Youtube support on set-top-boxes. But also it is to provide apps with optimized user-interfaces to be used on a remote control on the TV. Customized Widgets, user interfaces for overlay Chat, Polls, Debates, all that will work on an optimized software platform like Android. The HDMI-passthrough features recently rumored could make the Android-powered “Google TV” set-top-boxes even more impressive as they would bring in all the interactivity on top of all existing TV tuner platforms, be them any existing Cable, Satellite or DVB-T tuner platforms. So the Android set-top-box not only realizes Video-on-demand, it also improves existing live broadcast television.

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Google TV with HDMI pass-through?

Posted by – March 26, 2010

Following are opinions, not facts:

The Google TV box can be made for $50 if they use an ARM processor based platform, which is much lower power and much cheaper than Intel and provides all the same if not more 1080p and video streaming features.

The idea of implementing Google TV using the HDMI pass-through option (as “reported” by videonuze.com) and adding stuff to HDMI from the existing Cable/Satellite set-top-box sounds like a genius plan. If HDCP or however all those copy protection technologies of HDMI don’t prevent that solution from happening or to be turned off by broadcasters, then my guess is that Google could provide a $100 retail solution including HDMI pass-through and infrared emitter that would basically be compatible with all existing set-top-boxes, no matter what Comcast and DirecTV think about this.

HDMI pass-through and the infrared emitter would allow Google to replace your existing remote control with a more web centric remote control (and keyboard), display any overlay graphics and informations on any video contents, even “take over” existing programming, such as streaming customized advertisements instead of the broadcasted ads (with the agreement of the broadcaster of course). Possibilities could also include overlay chats, IMs and status updates, overlay community features like polls, discussions, ratings. It could include real-time user-generated recommendations for programming, even time-shifting to allow Google to overlay automatically generated subtitles, even translated subtitles. Time shifting could also allow for launching of related Youtube searches and videos at any time and then resume normal programming.

My guess though, even though Google TV will kill current broadcast monopolies and TV stations eventually, the Google TV solution will also completely revolutionize advertising for all TV stations. Basically, a TV station and broadcaster could opt-in to have Google manage personalized advertisment instead of the existing common denomiator type of TV advertisement. By doing that, the revenues from TV ads would go up 10 times overnight. So either they can decide to show 10x less ads for the same content, or they can make 10x more money and use some of it to create better contents.

In my opinion, the real deal here is to bring Youtube to the HDTV. But also to provide a recommendations box for broadcast TV as well. Imagine the Google TV learns what you like, because the Google TV remote control will have one big green “Like” button, users click it when they are watching something that they like. That will help Google learn your taste. And if you want to watch TV but you are too lazy to research what content is available, Google can generate recommended content queues for you, of either live or on-demand content, and a mix of both.

A cool little app that will change the TV and movie business seriously, because Google TV is open source, integrated BitTorrent downloads and RSS will not be stoppable. Which means, you want a movie, just type in the title and the device will start the BitTorrent download automatically, be it legal or not. And StreamTorrent type technology can even let you nearly instantly stream any contents using p2p technology. Net Neutrality will make this great.

I originally posted these estimates and opinions at: videonuze.com

Google subsidizes Android and Chrome OS devices with advertising

Posted by – March 25, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google

The point of Kyocera’s newly announced Android phone is to be the first pre-paid Android smartphone in the USA. It will be sold for $169 at Virgin Mobile, Cricket and MetroPCS. No contracts. The phone might be SIM-locked to that pre-paid carrier, but there is no subscription plans required to have an Android smart phone.

The fact is that Android phones cost around $150 to manufacture at the moment. The Nexus One might cost $50 more than Kyocera’s phone to manufacture (perhaps $175 vs $125), due to the more expensive components. But in general, the cost of parts and manufacturing is around $150.

Same with Android or Chrome OS on ARM processors for Laptops and Tablets. Those can also be manufactured for around $150 or even less if you don’t include the 3G modem in the device and use the lowest quality components.

Of course Google can subsidize the price of the devices with advertising. In fact, I think we can expect Google will sell $99 Android Phones and $99 Chrome OS laptops on google.com/phone and google.com/laptop within long.

For Internet access, there will be pre-paid deals for using 3G and LTE networks without contracts, and there will be WiFi-only devices or 700mhz White Spaces ones in those products, to thus route the VOIP through data and provide near-free wireless broadband usage on these products. So $99 devices without contracts, without subscription plans is doable.

The question is only how soon does Google want to disrupt the whole market?

I originally posted this as a comment here: paidcontent.org
Found via: techmeme.com

Nintendo 3DS and my feature Wish-List

Posted by – March 23, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google

Image representing Nintendo as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

The Nintendo 3DS has now been announced by Nintendo in this official press release:

March 23, 2010
To Whom It May Concern:
Re: Launch of New Portable Game Machine
Nintendo Co., Ltd.(Minami-ward of Kyoto-city, President Satoru Iwata) will launch “Nintendo 3DS”(temp) during the fiscal year ending March 2011, on which games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.
“Nintendo 3DS”(temp) is going to be the new portable game machine to succeed “Nintendo DS series”, whose cumulative consolidated sales from Nintendo amounted to 125 million units as of the end of December 2009, and will include backward compatibility so that the software for Nintendo DS series, including the ones for Nintendo DSi, can also be enjoyed.
We are planning to announce additional details at E3 show, which is scheduled to be held from June 15, 2010 at Los Angeles in the U.S.

I’m a big fan of Nintendo, while I would be very impressed if this 3D screen technology (rumored to be Sharp/Hitachi’s parallax barrier) actually doesn’t look like some blurry crap, which is my opinion of all the 3D screens that I have seen at consumer electronic shows so far these past few years, with and without glasses. Here are my feature wish-list for Nintendo’s next portable game console:

– It should be possible to deactivate the 3D screen effect and the screen must be just as clear as the market’s best LCD screens

– Game downloads, Nintendo needs to be bold and provide $1 Game downloads, for all games, including affordable $15/month game subscription plans that gives access to all the games. Online games means they get updated often and new games could even be streamed when they are based on pre-installed game engines.

– 3G module for extra $50, there should be a module slot in the back of the device where users should be able to add such things as a modem for 3G and its SIM card. The 3G module shoulds be unlocked so anny SIM card on any carrier can be used.

– Android OS, Nintendo surely has enough money and power to do their own OS if they want. I would find it much more interesting if Nintendo was so courageous and simply base their next portable on Android. At the same time announce that games will work on other Android phones that have graphics hardware acceleration. This would instantly add thousands of apps to the platform and make all UI and feature design work compatible with the rest of the industry.

– SD card slot but perhaps even a built-in hard drive compartment. Adding a 1.8″ or 2.5″ hard drive in the back of the device could be really cool to thus have enough storage for hundreds of big games, videos and music.

– HDMI output, this should basically be even more powerful than the Wii in terms of graphics outputting full 720p and 1080p games to HDTVs.

– At least dual 4″ screens, perhaps a larger version with dual 4.8″ screens. The screens should be close enough to each other so when the device is opened or put on a table, it would look like one big screen.

– Keyboard add-on should cover one screen and thus turn the device into a pocketable laptop form factor. The keyboard should be foldable, thus providing a full sized keyboard typing speed.

– Nintendo should do the marketing for using it for VOIP and IM, it should be compatible with SIP, Skype, Google Voice, video-conferencing and more. Over WiFi and 3G and even other networks as the modem module shall be replacable with other networking technologies. Thus Nintendo should market this as a replacement for smartphones.

– Full video codecs playback at up to 1080p and full bitrates also for high profile. Somehow video playback battery runtime should be at least 10 hours. Youtube HD support should be included.

Pixel Qi screens so the Nintendo portable can be used for reading, with 50 or more hours of battery runtime. Comon Nintendo, when you order 100 million screens, you can make any screen technology you want. Be the first to announce 4.8″ Pixel Qi LCD screens. Including even that 3D layer on top if you want.

– Usable for education. Instead of teachers and schools banning the Nintendo DS from the classrooms (I’ve seen this happen for some of my young cousins), Nintendo should work to include the hardware in class rooms. Thus it needs educational contents, it needs to provide productivity such as the web browsing and text input needs to provide a full speed experience.

– Pricing should be below $200, preferably $150 without the 3G module.

What do you think?

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