Category: Android

Archos 101 Home Tablet, possibly cheapest 10″ capacitive ARM Cortex-A8 tablet

Posted by – January 7, 2011

Rockchip RK29xx based 10.1″ capacitive Android 2.3 Gingerbread tablet. It may cost something like $199 at retail, price is to be confirmed by Archos once this product is ready to be released. Release depends approximately on Rockchip being able to mass manufacture and deliver their new RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 high performance yet affordable processor.

Rockchip presents RK2818 and RK29xx series Processors at CES 2011

Posted by – January 7, 2011

Rockchip is doing some awesome work to provide ARM Processor platforms highly integrated with stable turn key solution Android software at very cost effective prices, thus they are powering many of the cheap affordable and usable Android tablets and other devices coming up including Laptops, Set-top-boxes, Mobile Phones and more.

Freescale i.MX51 Powered Tablets at CES 2011

Posted by – January 7, 2011

Robert Thompson, Director of Smart Mobile Devices at Freescale, gives us a 14 minute presentation of the dozens of Freescale Powered Android tablet form factors and devices that are on the market or that are going to be on the market soon.

Seco srl presents Pico Projector in a Lamp concept

Posted by – January 7, 2011

Check this out cause it’s actually awesome. This is a concept device, integrating a Texas Instruments OMAP3530 processor platform running Android, WiFi, Bluetooth, into a lamp that takes power from any lamp. It’s a lamp, but it projects Android and apps to the wall, any video. Find more information about Seco at http://seco.it

Seco Q7 OMAP4 dual-core module

Posted by – January 7, 2011

This is the first OMAP4 dual-core module for the embedded form factor market for theindustrial environment for the mobile and automotive markets. Thanks to Seco’s pression on the q7 consortium, people can now swap the x86 module for an ARM architecture, it works for Windows, Android and Linux OS. Find more information at http://www.seco.it/

Motorola Atrix 4G

Posted by – January 6, 2011

Here’s an interview with the Product manager on Motorola Atrix 4G, Seang Chau, where he talks about how it was designed and how it works. This may be the coolest ARM Powered device ever shown at CES, Motorola promotes this as a full Laptop replacement! Yeah!

Honeycomb user interface demo

Posted by – January 6, 2011

I’m not really supposed to try to film this, but here it is. I try to click around in this pre-release Honeycomb Motorola Xoom tablet pre-production prototype instead of only letting it play the animated prepared UI videos from the gallery. Google is doing some awesome work in making software optimized for tablets. Like Archos has been doing it, they decided there’s no need for hardware Android buttons on Tablets. Other aspects of this UI suggests UI design that’s really being designed for high resolution touch screen devices.

Samsung Infuse 4G at CES 2011

Posted by – January 6, 2011

For now they don’t want to show the new Super Amoled Plus screen yet. And they don’t say on this video if this uses a new Honeycomb or the ARM Cortex-A9 Orion processor already.

Parrot Asteroid Android powered car radio/hands-free Bluetooth kit

Posted by – January 5, 2011

Here’s a new hands-free Bluetooth kit, voice activated, with 4 USB hosts and a line in audio jack, high quality audio, support for USB 3G dongles, it runs a customized version of Android on an ARM9 processor, uses a 3.2″ screen, it support installing third party applications. They are also showing a version of their Android in-car system on a 4.3″ touch screen for in-car navigation support as well.

Lenovo LePad Qualcomm Snapdragon Tablet U1 that docks in Intel core i5 laptop

Posted by – January 5, 2011

The Lenovo ARM Powered tablet is $500 and the optional Intel laptop dock part is something like $800. Lenovo had shown this last year with a previous Snapdragon and Thunderbird’s customized Ubuntu Linux on the ARM part which I filmed then, but now they updated the ARM part to Android 2.2 on Qualcomm’s 8X50A is 1.3ghz 45nm processor (which they might upgrade to Qualcomm’s dual-core processor by the time this tablet comes out with Android Honeycomb), they say it’ll upgrade to Honeycomb, and it uses Lenovo’s LeAndroid UI layer (similar to LePhone UI that is available on the Chinese market, notice Paul Otelinni at Lenovo’s Aquanox party in the background of my last year’s LePhone video) as default home replacement.

Toshiba Tegra2 Tablet at CES 2011

Posted by – January 5, 2011

Unnamed for now, it’ll be released once Honeycomb is open sourced and available for others than Motorola for implementation. It’s got a 1280×800 capacitive 10.1″ touch screen, 5 megapixel camera and more. It’s being developed by a different group at Toshiba than the one working on the Folio-100 tablet that I filmed at IFA about 4 months ago.

Rockchip RK2818 and RK29 demonstrated and explained

Posted by – December 27, 2010

Rockchip released their next generation of ARM9 based processor RK2818 and are teasing their next generation ARM Cortex-A8 RK29 to be shown by CES. RK2818 can be made with up to 1ghz frequency, supports more and faster RAM memory, comes with a fast DSP and GPU core to accelerate graphics and user interfaces. This new Rockchip processor makes it possible to run up to Android 2.1 on cheaper tablets such as the new $149 (possibly $179 with margins) capacitive Archos 7 Home Tablet v2, and have them perform better for web browsing than their previous generation ARM9 RK2808 processor, video playback and other things are also improved. Rockchip’s next gen RK29, to be showcased at CES, they say is ARM Cortex-A8 better than Apple A4, with 1080p encode/decode, 30 million triangles.

Broadcom BCM2157 to enable $75 Android phones within 3-6 months

Posted by – December 26, 2010

Android robot logo.
Image via Wikipedia

It’s ARM11 at up to 800Mhz, HVGA 480×320 or WQVGA 400×240, 3G integrated on the chip, 65 nm digital CMOS process, support for Android 2.2 and up. That is what is claimed by Broadcom representatives in a Fortune Magazine CNN post.

To be clear, That sub $100 price is not the cost of materials, it is the suggested retail price after the manufacturers (and carriers) have taken their profits.

This could enable Android to accelerate into first position in worldwide Smartphone sales by next year in front of Symbian even, generating most of possibly as many as 500 million smartphones to be sold next year (up from 269 million smartphones sold in 2010 and 173 million in 2009).

Thus as Android might have been activating 30 thousand smartphones per day (less than 1 million per month) back on 1st January 2010 and has officially been announced to be activating 300’000 smartphones per day (9 million per month) by 1st January 2011 (900% growth rate year over year), if Android expansion accelerates as can be expected with this type of platform to reach sub-$100 and sub-$75 unlocked sales prices to reach China, India and other developing markets during 2011, it may reach an activation rate of closer to 1 million units per day by 1st January 2012 yet another 300% growth rate in a year.

Within a year, the smartphone could thus become the dominant fastest selling device to access the Internet in front of the laptop. While cheaper Android devices means the developing world can finally afford access to smartphones (better than Symbian stuff), it also means carriers in rich countries may have to come up with new tricks if they want to continue making huge profits on wireless phone services. As sub-$100 Android phones can be bought, consumers in rich countries will also decide to buy those with pre-pay services, more and more data centric, and that could trigger the disruption of the “carrier-subsidized” Android super phone carrier model. Which model is not as much about a carrier “subsidizing” a phone than it is about a consumer over-paying on 2-year contracts on a phone device presented as overpriced if bought unlocked.

If you thought Android’s huge growth was impressive while most phones are bought with 2-year $2500 contracts, just wait for Android’s continued growth once most of them will be bought below $100 without any contracts needed.

Source: broadcom.com
Found via: cnn.com

iWave launches iW-i.MX51 SOM

Posted by – December 22, 2010

Bangalore based embedded design house iWave Systems Technologies has recently released High end, low cost, Low power SOM (70mm x 70mm) based on Freescale’s i.MX51 (Cortex-A8 ) Multimedia application processor. This Platform runs Win CE 6.0 R3, Android2.1 and Linux 2.6.28 Operating Systems.

This integrated, high performance, Low power module can be used for a wide range of applications in Industrial, Medical, Security/surveillance, Digital Signage and Automotive. The key features of this module are i.MX51/800MHz processor, on board 128MB/512MB RAM, 128MB/2GB NAND Flash, Micro SD with Edge and Expansion connectors for supporting Dual LCD/Camera, Multiple USB/SD/SDIO, TV, SPI, I2C etc interfaces. Any product development can be developed in about 10 weeks time.

Features/Specification:
1. i.MX51 Processor, PMIC, 512MB DDR2, 2GB Nand Flash, MicroSD,
2. 230 pin edge connector: Ethernet MII interface, Two MMC4.0/SD Mem 2.0/SDIO1.2, TwoI2C Interfaces, Two USB2.0 Host, Two UART Interfaces, SPI interface, SSI (Audio) Interface, CSI Interface-1, Display Interface-1, One Wire interface, TV-OUT, GPIOs, Power,
3. Expansion Connectors: NAND Flash (Expansion), Processor EIM Bus (16 bit multiplexed bus), 4×4 Keypad interface, CSI interface-2, Display Interface-2.

Contact: mktg@iwavesystems.com
More info: iwavesystems.com

netbooknews.com: Kinpad i600 7″ Android Tablet

Posted by – December 19, 2010

Here’s a Freescale 800MHz 7″ Tablet with AMD z430 graphics. AMD z430 may be the same graphics that Qualcomm Snapdragon uses called Adreno 200, that is for example in the Nexus One and HTC EVO 4G. This 7″ Kinpad i600 is being sold at $399.

This video was released at: netbooknews.com

Huawei IDEOS X5 and X6 Android phones released

Posted by – December 12, 2010

After the low cost $150 2.8″ capacitive Huawei IDEOS U8150 (also known as Huawei Ascend?), Huawei is now also bringing larger screen perhaps a bit higher end X5 at 3.8″ and X6 at 4.1″ screen sizes, also including a 1Ghz processor and a HDMI output. It will be interesting to see at what prices those are going to be sold at unlocked, if Huawei plans to provide cheaper alternatives to the high end Android phones.

Source: androidguys.com
Via: androidcommunity.com

Marissa Mayer and Dave Burke demonstrate Gingerbread at LeWeb 2010

Posted by – December 11, 2010

Here’s some filming of Marissa Mayer’s Q&A with Michael Arrington and David Burke’s Nexus S Gingerbread demostration of Google Maps 5.0 Vector Graphics and 3D features at LeWeb 2010, you can watch the full official video here.

appoke.com presented by Stéphane Guérin at LeWeb 2010

Posted by – December 11, 2010

Appoke is a startup that is showcased at the LeWeb 2010 conference in Paris.

mylifeshow.tv presented by Jerome Derozard at LeWeb 2010

Posted by – December 11, 2010

LifeShow player app on Android and mylifeshow.tv is a startup that is showcased at the LeWeb 2010 conference in Paris.

Suli SL-7, 7″ Capacitive-Glass RK2818 $249 Android Tablet

Posted by – December 4, 2010
Category: Tablets, Rockchip, Android

Here’s an exclusive unveiling for an upcoming new Android tablet design made by Suli International Co., Ltd. It’s a nice combination of the new higher performance Rockchip RK2818 (ARM9 600mhz + 550mhz new high performance DSP) with Glass type 7″ Capacitive multi-touch touch screen. It supports 3G USB dongles on the USB host connector. Plays back mp4 and rmvb video at up to 1280×720 (bitrates/high profiles not yet confirmed). The Rockchip RK2818 improves web browsing from RK2808. At $249 this one is thus positionned $150 cheaper than the ARM11 Qualcomm MSM7227 3G-enabled Foxconn 7″ Tablet (also known among other brands as Viewpad 7).

Comparison
comparison
(comparison graphics provided by Suli International)

Suli International also says they have a 8″ capacitive Android tablet coming in 2 weeks using either the Amlogic or the next generation ARM Cortex-A8 based Rockchip RK29 design!

Here are some pictures of the Suli SL-7 tablet:

Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet Suli SL-7 Android Tablet

Full specs: Suli SL-7 Android Tablet full specs