As I told you in yesterday’s MacBreak weekly 221 post, last Sunday as I was in the Silicon Valley to video blog the ARM Technology Conference for my http://ARMdevices.net site, I had fun traveling up to Petaluma and bring Leo Laporte some of the Archos Gen8 tablets (70, 43 and 32) so he could test them out and let his Twit gang also play with them. So that they could compare those with Apple and Samsung tablets. The time code in this “This Week In Google” episode 69 where they start talking about Archos is around the 5th minute.
It’s out now on Amazon.de for 50€, I want something like this. This could be perfect with my Archos 70 Internet Tablet and my $48 Sony DR-BT100CX Bluetooth Stereo Headset. The idea is to answer VOIP calls on the wrist watch and use the Bluetooth headset without having to take out the Android Tablet from the pocket.
Before interviewing me on my interests in ARM Devices, EETimes editors Brian Fuller and Patrick Mannion went ahead and opened up the Archos 7 Home Tablet in front of a large audience of about 100 people at the ARM Techcon 2010 exhibitor area theater stage. They talked about the features of some of the processors that are used.
As I was in California to video-blog the ARM Technology Conference in Santa Clara on my http://ARMdevices.net, I thought I’d suggest Archos send me some extra Gen8 so that I could use those as excuse to bring them to the Twit Cottage in Petaluma, as I am a fan of the Twit podcasting network, the most advanced high quality production quality podcast network, I watched most of the Twit and Twig shows since 2006. The weekly Twit podcasts (they do about 20 weekly, some even daily podcasts!) are some of the most influential and popular technology audio and video podcasts worldwide.
In this episode of MacBreak Weekly, Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Merlin Mann and Andy Ihnatko discuss the Archos 70 Internet Tablets versus the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. In the embed below of MacBreak Weekly episode 221, I forward the video to about the 1h01m30s time code when they start talking about the Archos tablets (they mention the Archos 7 Home Tablet Amazon pricing for a few minutes).
While the games that will be optimized for the faster graphics processing of Mali-400 will look even better, it’s still cool to see some 3D stuff running on this upcoming Samsung Orion ARM Cortex-A9 processor platform.
Beijing based Nufront is presenting their ARM Cortex-A9 processor which they plan to launch in commercial ARM Powered desktop and laptop solutions soon. Here are some demonstrations of it powering an Ubuntu 10.10 desktop and a Quake 3 game.
Here’s a demonstration showing that the second core in ARM Cortex-A9 processors allow for at least 50% performance improvement for such applications as the web browser in Android.
Here I am video interviewed by EE Times Editors Brian Fuller and Patrick Mannion on the subject of ARM Powered tablets where I get to talk about Archos and what I think of the tablet industry in general.
Marvell shows the Armada 100 and Armada 600, explains the differences in price, performance, target markets. Also shows off the Marvell 168 powered Gplug D, the first Guruplug with a HDMI output. The big question I have is which platform will OLPC choose to use for the OLPC XO-3 tablet platform, if it will be one of these or if the timing allows for the even newer and more powerful Marvell Armada 628 Tri-Core processor to be used.
This is Samsung’s new ARM Cortex-A9 processor. Probably, I expect, the processor that will be in the next generation of Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab type of products from Samsung and from manufacturers who will want to use Samsung’s processor in their products. My guess is it may also be fast enough to power Samsung laptops with Chrome OS or some other type of embedded Linux. It seems also to be the first demonstration of Mali-400, to be confirmed. Samsung representatives were not able to confirm anything on this processor at this point.
Nicole of Netbooknews reports from the LG Optimus press conference in Taiwan. The phone is a 480×320 3.2″ Android phone to retail unlocked for about $332 in Taiwan. It uses the 600Mhz ARM11 Qualcomm MSM7227 processor.
Numbers for Q3 smart phone sales in the US market are currently being released by market analysis companies such as NPD and Canalys. The main graph to look at is following:
This confirms my predictions that Android smart phones are selling more than double as many smart phones per day than Apple iPhone in Q3 (considering even that the iPhone4 was released during this quarter) and possibly the rate will be closer to 4x as many by Christmas time.
Things will further accelerate in Android’s favor once cheaper Android phones are commonly available to all consumers. Once people can easily buy a $199 Android phone out of contract, on a pre-paid plan offered by major US carriers as well as pre-paid specialist carriers such as Virgin Mobile and MetroPCS.
WebM might eventually become the main video codec for the web, it’s Google’s open source video codec now being hardware accelerated by ARM Processor vendors such as Texas Instruments here demonstrating WebM 1080p playback on the upcoming OMAP4 ARM Cortex-A9 processor in both Android and Ubuntu:
Barnes and Noble just announced the NOOKcolor Android based LCD e-reader. I was wondering what ARM processor platform it may be based on and I just received the confirmation that it is TI’s OMAP3621 600Mhz ARM Cortex A8 at 45nm, it comes with POWERVR 3D graphics acceleration, and TMS320C64x+™ DSP technology for multimedia acceleration. Unlike the ARM11 based Pandigital Novel, this LCD e-reader should have enough power to provide some advanced hardware accelerated smooth user interfaces. The point at which Barnes and Noble and TI can develop smooth user interfaces that take full advantage of hardware acceleration will be interesting to see, as the customized e-reader application layers on top of Android that they have been showing on the NOOKcolor surely are interesting. Things like navigating through color magazines could be very interesting. Of course, I am also looking forward to this type of devices using the Pixel Qi reflective LCD screen technology. Also, it sounds interesting that TI provides OMAP3621 fir e-ink e-readers as well, with boasting of double as much battery runtime for e-ink page turns and with advertising of the fact that they want to support customized Android features for e-ink e-readers.
NOOKcolor runs on TI’s OMAP3621 (ARM Cortex™-A8 processor-based) applications processor—a member of the OMAP™ 3 processor family that was optimized for the consumer market. OMAP3621 delivers a robust, multitasking environment required to simultaneously run the eReader’s new feature-rich applications, which exercise the CPU, multimedia and graphics engines.
NOOKcolor represents the very first commercial launch of a reading-centric product using TI’s OMAP hardware and Android software architecture that we announced at CES 2010. And, today’s announcement is a prime example of how the OMAP 3 technology’s power and performance capabilities are leveraged in new consumer markets.
I have been secretly testing this for the last week (together with cajl of http://jbmm.fr and Thocan of http://archoslounge.net), it works pretty much awesome. Few optimizations and few bug fixes still to be done before Archos can release this cool firmware update.
Also check my video review of the Archos 70 Internet Tablet in multiple parts: Part 1 and Part 2.
Steve Jobs is saying that 7 inch Android Tablets can’t be popular. I think they can. This Archos 70 Internet Tablet fits in most Jacket Pockets and thus is the largest screen size that can be carried around without using a bag. Also, this one is half the price/size/weight of the iPad, it comes with HDMI output, full video/audio codecs support, USB host and a built-in Webcam for video-chat all which iPad lacks. This tablet at 300gr and 201x114x10mm may be the lightest and most compact 7″ tablet yet, but I think with optimizations and designs that use less bezel, the weight and size could further be optimized to make it even more jacket pocketable. Basically, Android tablets will provide choice for consumers, from small pocketable ones to larger ones that may mostly stay at home.
Testing some cool features, Dolphin Browser HD multi-tabs, video-chatting, RDP, video-games, I just did a 37 minute VOIP call using SIP on Fring and using my $8/month 1GB/month SIM card in my Huawei Mifi and it works pretty much perfectly. For some reason audio in Skype and in Fring video-chat is still buggy, but I am sure Archos will fix this in a firmware update imminently. Also see Part 1 of my video review of this product.
5 million e-readers were sold in 2009, 15 million are expected to be sold this year. Most are e-ink based e-readers, but LCD based ones are coming as well (soon enough with Pixel Qi based LCDs as well). This one runs Android with a custom UI optimized for e-readers, may come with a touch-screen, WiFi and video codecs support as well even though it’s to be sold below 95€, to be confirmed.
Thanks BenMars for your reports from the Hong Kong Sourcing fair!
First unboxing and review of the Archos 70 Internet Tablet, a $275 alternative to the $499 iPad and the $599 Samsung Galaxy Tab. I was amazed by how thin and light it is when I first took it out of the box, at 300 grams, it nearly feels like it’s an empty case without any electronics inside.
The capacitive touch screen on an Archos tablet is cool, I need to get used to that. Hopefully I will learn to type on it as fast as I do with my finger-tips/nails on my resistive screens. My plan this winter is to carry this 7″ Archos Android tablet with me everywhere in the inside of my jacket pocket. In this video, I try to show you multi-touch, web browsing speed, email, facebook, Google Maps Street View, Live wallpapers, video playback, HDMI output and more.
This review model is still running Android 2.1, while Archos is putting finishing touches to their faster and more optimized Android 2.2 firmware, hopefully to be ready in like days or so for when this device and its 101 big-brother actually ships worldwide. As I showed you in my previous video, Google Marketplace works on these Archos Android tablets using the gApps4Archos.apk one-click installation file. All codecs up to H264 high profile high bitrate 720p MKV works even on HDMI output (still to be tested and optimized in firmware). It’s only 300 grams (vs 380 grams Galaxy Tab and 680 grams iPad).
