Category: Android

MediaTek helio P60, octa-core ARM Cortex-A73 and ARM Cortex-A53 with Mali-G72

Posted by – March 1, 2018

MediaTek helio P60 is MediaTek’s most powerful chipset yet, built on TSMC’s 12nm FinFET production process, with MediaTek’s CorePilot 4.0, featuring four ARM Cortex-A73 cores at 2.0GHz, four ARM Cortex-A53 cores at 2.0GHz in a big.LITTLE configuration, ARM Mali-G72 MP3 GPU clocked at 800MHz. They also provide a Multi-core AI processing unit (Mobile APU) with a 280GMAC/s performance for deep learning facial recognition, object and scene identification, user behavior-informed performance and other AI and AR application enhancements good for computer vision enhancements on the cameras such as Single or Dual Camera bokeh, Real-time HDR recording and viewing and more.

Vuzix AR3000 Smart Glasses starts mass manufacturing

Posted by – February 26, 2018

Vuzix is about to launch the mass manufacturing, they are already shipping a few samples to developers to prepare some of the killer apps that will be available. They will be providing two skews, one more basic consumer edition and more higher spec version for the enterprise. They support Alexa, it runs Android with all kinds of Augmented Reality and Smart Headmounted Dashboard type apps that can be developed. It also has a Smartphone app that simplifies the management of the smart glass, choosing which app to load in the UI.

My Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+ Review at launch unboxed MWC

Posted by – February 26, 2018

Samsung releases the same phone again, this year still $900, but now they re-imagined the camera. It was already a great camera last year. But now it’s better for sure. Now the “amazing” S9 camera has a mind blowing dual aperture so that is supposedly good. The 960fps slow motion is grainy and blurry but it’s the same Sony did in their XZ phone last year. Samsung Dex is great but it seems they haven’t developed any productivity apps yet, just loading whatever is there for smartphone and tablet. The poop emoji is also here the highlight the most important revolutionary feature of 2018, as a copy of Apple’s poop highlight from last year. Also it’s great you can buy your next makeup using augmented reality. Welcome to my Samsung review!

Rockchip RK3229 Smart Speakers Solution runs Android Things with Google Assistant

Posted by – February 25, 2018

Rockchip has optimized their RK3229 and RK3036 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 System on Module solution to run Android Things or another optimized Linux OS to be able to support Google Assistant, Alexa, iflyertek, DuerOS for high-end to low cost smart speaker products and intelligent voice interactive products, supports sound source localization, sound field enhancement, echo cancellation and noise suppression technology. This Rockchip RK3229 Solution supports 8 channel digital silicon microphones directly connected chip solution, and thus achieves an overall solution of cost-effectiveness and high expandability for the Smart Speakers market.

Onyx Note 10.3″ vs reMarkable 10.3″

Posted by – January 19, 2018

I think the most promising Note E-reader form factor, here I compare devices using the same awesome 10.3″ flexible (plastics based) E Ink display at 1872×1404 at 226dpi, in thin and light 320-350gr form factors but with different E Ink implementations yet where the Onyx Note seems smoother in the way it manages note taking, page turning, navigating inside of its Android based UI. While the reMarkable seemed to “blink” more in its (Linux?) based UI and with the note taking also seemingly smoother on the Onyx Note at least based on the current firmware that I was able to test and based on how I was able to use the reMarkable. The Onyx Note is shipping shortly at $549 on Amazon (I think they said it’s to start shipping between now and February) while the reMarkable is available at $599 on their website once the perfect Android apps for smart collaborative and productive work are available especially for the Onyx Note (I am not sure how the reMarkable manages evt collaboration work and productivity?), I believe this market segment could grow rapidly to be a very important new market segment. One where creative people will be able to read and work with ideas, with texts in a much more interesting and productive way.

$1499 DLP 4K Projector Optoma UHD50 and UHD51A with Amazon Alexa

Posted by – January 12, 2018

World leader in 4K projectors, Optoma presents their lower cost UHD50 to make 4K Projection more accessible to the mass market. This one features 2x HDMI 2.0 ports, HDR10, 50% vertical lens shift, 1.3 zoom. 2400lumen while the UHD60 is 3000lumen, RGBRGB color wheel, 2 inches smaller, 2 pounds lighter. For $200 more, they are also shipping the UHD51A with the same features as the UHD50 but it also comes with Amazon Alexa support, an Ethernet port, it runs Optoma’s implementation of Android (not for installing apps, possibly for Google Assistant support also), USB Host port.

Onyx Boox Note 10.3″ and Max2 13.3″ now shipping

Posted by – January 11, 2018

At CES 2018, Onyx is launching Boox Note, the nicest E Ink device yet, thin and light (320gr) 10.3″ 1872×1404 (227dpi) E Ink notepad e-reader to be shipping in February at $549 on Amazon (with a red limited edition for Valentine’s Day) and the Onyx Boox Max2 is a 13.3″ 2200×1650 (207dpi) E Ink notepad e-reader at 550gr in weight for sale now at $849 at Amazon.com (price to be $799) both run on a Quad-core ARM Processor, with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, very long battery life with a 4100mAh battery in both. The HDMI input is available on Max2 to use the 13.3″ E Ink display as a Computer monitor. Both come with WACOM stylus note input with 2048 levels of touch input for annotations, note taking, idea scribbling, pdf document scribble overlays, with 11 ebook formats supported, eventually that can be used for collaboration and productivity. Both run Android and any Android apk that runs on Android 6 can be loaded and used on these devices which run with 2GB RAM and 32GB Flash storage with a MicroSD slot.

Gemini PDA at CES 2018

Posted by – January 9, 2018

Successfully funded with over $1.2 Million on Indiegogo, the Gemini PDA dual boots Android and Debian Linux, comes with a nice keyboard, dual USB Type-C, HDMI output through Type-C, USB Host, option back facing Camera module, 5megapixel front facing camera for video-chat. They have a whole bunch of keyboard shortcuts and a nice UI for shortcuts at the bottom. One SIM card slot and a second eSIM support, LTE it runs on the MediaTek X27 with LTE.

Skyworth 100″ 4K HDR Android TV, 77″ OLED, cheap 55″ Android TV

Posted by – December 22, 2017

Skyworth shows their latest and upcoming 4K HDR TV range with Android TV. Including a 100″ Android TV. Skyworth also sells 77″, 65″, 55″ OLED TVs (probably manufactured by LG) with JBL audio. Skyworth 65″ 65Q8 LCD LED. 55″ 55G7 and 55G6 with Android TV with HLG support, cooca sound bar.

Huawei Hisilicon Kirin 970, 10nm, AI computing

Posted by – December 22, 2017

With 5.5 Billion transistors, this is one of the most advanced ARM Processors for smartphones in the world, included in the Huawei Mate 10, Huawei Mate 10 Pro, with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A73, quad-core ARM Cortex-A53, Mali-G72MP12 GPU, featuring the built-in neural network processing.

Geniatech Tablet Dock for 96Boards


Geniatech shows their Tablet Dock for use with 96Boards compatible/sized development boards, where the board can just be swapped into the Tablet Dock to power it, including with touch support. To be distributed by Arrow at an affordable price.

Geniatech also provides a range of 96Board sized open source Qualcomm 410, 820 based development boards which you can see some of them featured in this video filmed at Embedded World 2017:

$79 Poplar Android TV Development Board by Hoperun on Hisilicon Hi3798CV200


Poplar is the first development board compliant with the 96Boards Enterprise Edition TV Platform specification. Developed by HiSilicon, the board features the Hi3798C V200 with an integrated quad-core 64bit ARM Cortex A53 processor and high performance Mali-T720 GPU, making it capable of running any commercial set-top solution based on Linux or Android. Its high performance specification also supports a premium user experience with up to H.265 HEVC decoding of 4K video at 60 frames per second. It’s available for $79 at Aliexpress.com

Thundersoft CTO Pengcheng Zou talks Open Source Automotive and more


Thunder Software Technology Co., Ltd. is a smart device operating system and platform technology provider since 2008, providing smart device operating system solutions, speeding-up time to market for smart phone, IoT, automotive, robots, drones, cars, smart logistics, with years of R&D investment in mobile OS technology such as Android, Linux, Windows and HTML5, from the hard drive, operating system kernel, and middleware to upper application, and has accumulated extensive experience along with a large number of IP including protocol stack, deep learning, computer graphics techniques, operating system optimization, security solutions, etc.

$399 Laser Beam Pro C200 Laser Pico Projector, UO Smart Beam Laser

Posted by – November 10, 2017

KDC USA presents their Laser Beam Pro C200 ($399 at Amazon.com) which they claim to be the World’s First and Only Class 1 Eye Safe Laser Projector, which also won the CES 2017 Innovation Award, it is world’s brightest portable laser projector. Class 1 laser with FDA approved Eye safe laser technology let you have Focus Free at all times, with 200 lumen brightness and built in Android powered OS. World’s smallest handheld computer laser projector that projects up to 150 inches with maximum 200 lumens and 768P HD resolution also built in with Android. With up to 120 minute battery life, it can play any contents from SD card or USB flash drive or to download and play any content directly onto the 8GB internal storage, stream videos on any Android app and websites, and users can enjoy better sound using a Bluetooth speaker or headphones, it can connect wirelessly to Android and iOS mobile devices and the user can use it with a keyboard and mouse. Filmed at the SID Display Week.

Arrow shows Dragonboard 410c Development Board

Posted by – November 7, 2017

Arrow shows the Dragonboard 410c, a Qualcomm Snapdragon based development platform for IOT and industrial platforms. The 410c is based upon a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410E (Quad Core Cortex A53 and Qualcomm Adreno 306), has 1gb of ram and 8gb flash storage plus sd expansion. The 410c supports Android 5.1 (Lollipop) on Linux Kernel 3.10, Linux based on Debian 8.0,Open Embedded, Ubuntu Core, and Windows 10 IoT Core. The 410c in terms of connectivity has a ; One 40-pin low speed expansion connector: UART, SPI, I2S, I2C x2, GPIO x12, DC power; HDMI Full-size Type A connector, one micro USB (device mode only), two USB 2.0 (host mode only), micro SD card slot; 60-pin high speed expansion connector: 4L MIPI-DSI, USB, I2C x2, 2L+4L MIPI-CSI and Footprint for one optional 16-pin analog expansion connector for stereo headset/line-out, speaker and analog line-in.

Bero shows his ARM Desktop and ARM Laptop


Bero (Bernhard Rosenkränzer) from the Linaro Mobile Group set out this week as you can see in my previous video to build and bring up his ARM Desktop based on the Quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 Marvell MACCHIATObin development board with a Radeon or Nvidia GPU. Bero also built his own ARM Laptop based on the Dragonboard 820 running Open Mandriva Linux.

Latest from the Linaro Digital Home Group at Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017


Mark Gregotski, DIrector of the Linaro Digital Home Group, provides an update on the latest work in open source for the Digital Home Group that LHG is working on including the adoption of OP-TEE (Open Portable Trusted Execution Environment) with DRM integrations including PlayReady DRM PK v3.3 on AOSP 8.0 on the HiKey960 development board and Widevine for Linux and for Android AOSP. NXP demonstrates some of their work, NXP has recently joined the Linaro Digital Home Group. The LHG group has worked to integrate V4L2 with gstreamer and ffmpeg to improve media playback on ARM offloading all the computation onto the video codec hardware of the SoC.

4K60 HDR on ALi M3755 quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 Set-top-box SoC

Posted by – September 26, 2017

http://alitech.com has shipped over 600 Million SoCs for Set-top-boxes thus far, they are aiming to soon have shipped over 1 Billion Set-top-box SoC chipsets, here showing their new ALi M3755 quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 SoC with Mali400MP2 with 4K60 UHD support with HDR-10 and HLG support with ALi’s HDR2SDR technology, 1080p30 H264 encoding, PiP UHG+FHD or 4xFHD, supporting Linux and Android.

Ali M3733 is an ARM Cortex-A9 SmartHybrid HD DVB-C SoC with advanced security with a 5000DMIPS performance 1080p60 support, 720p60 video encoding support. This chipset is for example used by a Fiber to the home provider in Russia.

M3529 is an entry level MIPS based chipset with a 2000DMIPS performance which ALi has shipped in large quantities to the Indian market already.

$199 Elephone P8, 5.5″ FHD, MediaTek P25

Posted by – September 22, 2017

Elephone P8 4G Phablet ($199 at GearBest) with a 5.5″ FHD bright IPS display, runs on a MediaTek Helio P25 octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor built on 16nm FinFET+ process node running at up to 2.5GHz with an ARM Mali-T880 MP2 GPU, 6GB RAM, 64GB flash, Cat-6 LTE, Dual Band WiFi. 16megapixel front camera with selfie flash, 21megapixel rear camera with dual-color temperature flash it can record 4K video. Right now this phone is selling at $199 at GrearBest here.

ARRIS 4K HDR Android TV (Operator Tier) Set-top-boxes with services at IBC 2017

Posted by – September 21, 2017

ARRIS International plc is a world leader in the Set-top-box industry, launches next-generation full Google certified 4K60p HDR HEVC enabled Android TV (Operator Tier for custom UI allowed) product family designed with a modular architecture enabling IPTV (VIP5202, VIP5402 and VIP6102W); DVB-C cable (ZC4515); DVB-T terrestrial (ZT4517) and DVB-S satellite (PS5517), as well as a variety of third-party user experiences integrated and running on Android, addressing the wide range of requirements for cable, telco, satellite and terrestrial operators. Based on Android TV Operator Tier, they offer Wi-Fi connectivity and DVR options, as well as support and integration with DVB networks, and conditional access and DRM security solutions. Arris’s new UHD HDR Set-Top Solutions with Android TV launched at IBC 2017 also provide services capabilities for service providers, allowing for quicker and more efficient launches of customized Android TV experiences with options such as built-in TV tuner, built-in DVR, using different new powerful chipsets for a smooth Android TV experience. Also allowed by Google to let the service providers slightly customize the user interface designs colors to match the design identity of each service provider. As Android is increasingly popular among service providers large and small as it offers fast time to market, greater control over the user interface, and subscriber access to familiar features such as YouTube, Chromecast built-in, and Google Play Store applications. As an open platform, service providers have the freedom and flexibility to create bespoke branded experiences, develop features rapidly, and benefit from revenue share opportunities through the Google Play Store. Complementing ARRIS’s hardware is a suite of services, to help operators integrate and launch Android TV services. These span every phase of adoption, including:
– Assessing and planning for Android TV services
– Customization and integration: development of operator-specific launcher and apps, integration of content security and back-end systems
– Validation and certification: with Google and other third-party applications
– Deployment support: across both new and legacy set-tops
– Lifecycle management: integration, management and testing of mandatory Android updates and upgrades