Category: OS

Dell Smoke, Android based Blackberry-like phone

Posted by Charbax – April 21, 2010
Category: Smartphones, Qualcomm, Android

Here’s a design for an Android phone by Dell to be released next year, it will be based on the next generation Qualcomm MSM7230 processor, come with a 2.8″ QVGA screen, 14.4Mbps HSPA and is said that it will be sold for cheap.

Source: engadget.com

$80 Eken 7-inch Android Tablet

Posted by Charbax – April 21, 2010
Category: Tablets, Android

This is the Eken M001, it has an accelerometer, SD card slot, 7-inch screen, $80 for ordering 100 pieces.

Source: shanzai.com

$104 Eken 8-inch Android Tablet

Posted by Charbax – April 21, 2010
Category: Tablets, VIA, Android

Here’s another Android tablet presented by Eken at the China Sourcing Fair in Hong Kong. It runs a 600mhz VIA ARM Processor, USB-host, SD card slot, the 3G-module is optional.

Source: shanzai.com

Hott MD700 Android Tablet

Posted by Charbax – April 21, 2010
Category: Tablets, Rockchip, Android

So you might have seen my video of the Hott MD500 that I posted from CeBIT here last month. Hott is now showing the 7″ Android tablet called the MD700 at the China Sourcing Fair in Hong Kong. The price in bulk is said to be probably around $130 USD.

Source: shanzai.com

SungWorld’s Android Tablets

Posted by Charbax – April 21, 2010
Category: Tablets, Android

Filmed at the China Sourcing Fair in Hong Kong.

Source: shanzai.com

Android 8-levels of secrecy

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

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.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

brightsideofnews.com: Banchmark comparisons of ARM Cortex A8 against Intel Atom N450

Posted by Charbax – April 14, 2010
Category: Freescale, Intel, Ubuntu

At about 3x lower power consumption, much lower heat dissipation and much lower overall system pricing, the Freescale i.MX515 platform in a development board developed by Pegatron, is used for benchmarks of all kinds of performance areas by processor benchmarking expert Van Smith at this 9-page benchmarking article at brightsideofnews.com

While this specific ARM Cortex A8 implementation performs great on integers, power consumption, heat dissipation, price, floating-point performance still needs some improvement with ARM Cortex designs to come. Consider also that Ubuntu 9.04 used in this test is only the first implementation of Ubuntu for ARM Cortex and that Ubuntu 10.4 which is imminently going to be released will significantly improve ARM performance of those benchmarks.

The ARM Cortex-A8 sample that we tested in the form of the Freescale i.MX515 lived in an ecosystem that was not competitive with the x86 rivals in this comparison. The video subsystem is very limited. Memory support is a very slow 32-bit, DDR2-200MHz.

I guess it’s not yet possible for Van Smith in this test to make an apples to apples comparison as the current ARM Cortex A8 are still oriented at Smart Phones and thin and light Tablets rather than full SmartBooks for full desktop-like performance requirements of the more desktop-performance oriented next generation ARM Cortex designs.

The goal for ARM when reaching the markets of Laptop and Desktop form factors is to reach the level of performance required to run full high resolution Web Browsers at full speed, where the OS with the browser boots instantly, with fast enough RAM where unlimited tabs open instantly, where hardware acceleration of embedded videos functions smoothly and where even the Native Client and 3D features run fully within the ARM Powered Web Browser. Once that level of performance is reached, further performance improvements will be less important than lowering the power consumption and lowering the cost of the next processors. Once everything most users need to have processed on their devices seem to run instantly, reaching the instant browser performance level, why would anyone want to increase the performance of client device oriented processors further?

You can find the benchmarks at: brightsideofnews.com

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Google to open-source On2 VP8 for HTML5 video

Posted by Charbax – April 13, 2010
Category: Software, Google TV

JVC GZ-MG555 digital camcorder
Image via Wikipedia

I was right when I immediately deducted back in August 2009 that Google’s purchase of On2 would likely lead to them open-sourcing and releasing On2’s VP8 video codec as a free open-source video codec to be used as the HTML5 video format.

Google could use VP8 codec on Youtube in HTML5 mode, and force everyone using Youtube to upgrade to HTML5 browsers

Newteevee.com is reporting that Google plans to announce VP8 video codec for HTML5 at next month’s Google I/O conference in San Francisco.

This means the world will get an open-source and free video-codec to use in all consumer electronics, to use in all websites and for the distribution of all video contents. Look forward to small Chinese manufacturers not anymore having to pay ridiculous $20’000 or more licencing fees to the Mpeg Consortium through “Sisvel” and other such hugely expensive licencing costs which manufacturers have to pay to exhibit products in Europe or in the USA for simply being able to playback those formats. Consumer electronics products will likely ship with Google’s Video codec installed by default and only unlock access to proprietary codecs through a codec licence unlocking system through letting users pay the licence themselves or only unlock the functionality at the time of sale and not during the conference exhibitions.

Using this new VP8 for HTML5 could potentially save Google and other content and distribution companies millions of dollars in H264 licencing costs for sites like Youtube. Google Chrome and Firefox will thus ship with HTML5 video codec pre-installed in the browser, and obviously that Android, Chrome OS will come with it too. And Google will likely freely provide all the tools for hardware acceleration on all hardware platforms as well.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Google builds own Tablet-e-reader

Posted by Charbax – April 13, 2010
Category: Tablets, E-readers, Pixel Qi, Android

Google Chrome Tablet
Image by nDevilTV via Flickr

The New York Times reports:

Google hopes to make its own apps marketplace available for new slate-like devices.

But Google is going one step further, exploring the idea of building its own slate, an e-reader that would function like a computer.

Yes! Things are going to happen fast!

Obviously, it wouldn’t make sense for Google not to provide the Marketplace on Android Tablets and e-Readers to compete with the ipod touch and the ipad.

Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, told friends at a recent party in Los Angeles about the new device, which would exclusively run the Android operating system. People with direct knowledge of the project — who did not want to be named because they said they were unauthorized to speak publicly about the device — said the company had been experimenting in “stealth mode” with a few publishers to explore delivery of books, magazines and other content on a tablet.

In a second blog post by the New York Times:

Another person who has been briefed on the Google slate project, but asked not to be named, said that Google was still wrestling with several parts of the project, but that it would most likely come with the Chrome Web browser from Google.

Google’s big push to consumers and developers with the device will be to offer a completely open platform — an approach that runs counter to Apple’s closed App Store model.

In the article, HP is said to be working on a 6″ Android tablet. Nokia is also working on an e-reader.

Logically, all those e-reader and tablet combos will have to use the Pixel Qi LCD screens to provide e-reader and a color Tablet in one device.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Archos Generation 8 Android Tablets, prices and sizes rumored

Posted by Charbax – April 12, 2010
Category: Tablets, PMPs, Texas Instruments, Archos, Android

The prices are said to be $100 to $350, the sizes 3″ to 10″, ARM Cortex processor from 800mhz to 1ghz, with multi-touch and 3D acceleration.

My guesses are, based on this slide presented by Henri Crohas in China:

2x Archos 3 Android Gen8: starting at $100, what would the second 3″ model be about?
1x Archos 5 Android Gen8: starting at $200?
2x Archos 7 Android Gen8: $200-300? Why two 7″ models?
1x Archos 10 Android Gen8: $350? Pixel Qi dual-mode screen (my huge wish, so it can be readable for e-books and run 50h on the battery)?

The slide mentions multi-touch, a big question would be, does Archos now use Capacitive touch-screens? The the case of 3″ and 7″, might it be that the second skew is to provide a cheap resistive choice as well as a $50 to $100 more expensive capacitive type? The thing about capacitive screen is this, as far as I understand, and as far as one can find by just looking at what’s available on the market, it might be capacitive screens are really much more expensive and hard to come by in sizes other than some very definite sizes decided to be mass manufactured by the smart phone industry.

OpenGL acceleration and multi-touch features are clearly stated in the slide. Which may mean that Android 2.1 support is pretty much for surely available. Another hardware feature would be interesting to know about would be how well those devices will integrate 3G connectivity. We know Archos does Bluetooth tethering well, and one can buy a Mifi for WiFi to 3G tethering, how about Archos building 3G modems directly into skews of those Android tablet devices, and how about them making sure that power is managed in a way so that Voice-over-IP and other instant messaging over IP applications can constantly be active and stand-by on 3G and WiFi connections.

Logically to reach 1ghz they will use the Texas Instruments OMAP3640 series of processors, which is a significant upgrade on OMAP3440 of the current generation. This is not only a matter of increase of mhz speed. OMAP3640 is built on a 45nm process instead of the 65nm process of the current processor, which means the processor is significantly smaller and uses a lot less power, which probably brings better battery runtime. You can watch my video comparing OMAP3630 with OMAP3430. The performance increase for 3D rendering with the new processor is more than 62% going from 92fps to 156fps on the same 3D rendering animation. I don’t know if video decoding and encoding performance has been improved. And I don’t know how much things like website rendering is improved, if it’s just 25% faster based on 800mhz vs 1ghz or if it is more than that.

I do not know if OMAP3640 can do 1080p decoding and much higher HD video decoding bitrates. I don’t know if OMAP3640 simplifies the integration of mini-HDMI output directly into the device. If Archos includes a camera, it could probably record 720p video which would be really awesome, if a wireless microphone using Bluetooth or mini-jack input also can be used for good sound recording.

You can discuss this news in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=32392

Source: p5w.net
Found via: archoslounge.net

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Sharp IS01, Android 5″ 960×480 capacitive pocketable

Posted by Charbax – March 31, 2010
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Qualcomm, Android

About 6 months after Sharp’s introduction of the Freescale i.MX51 powered PC-Z1 running Ubuntu on the Japanese market, Sharp is now announcing this Qualcomm Snapdragon powered 3G-enabled Android powered device to be released in June to the Japanese market.

Watch also an augmented reality application runing on the Sharp IS01 in this other video interview with a Sharp representative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHXv8ob7jNQ

Here are the specs:
– Qualcomm Snapdragon processor
– Android 1.6 for now
– 5″ touchscreen with a 960×480 resolution featuring Sharp’s “New Mobile ASV” multi-touch capacitive display
– Dual camera with one of 5.27Mpix and one front facing of only 0.43Mpix
– Full QWERTY keyboard with a 11.2mm key pitch
– 1Seg TV tuner (Japanese mobile QVGA 220-320 kbit/s terrestrial TV broadcast standard)
– WiFi
– IRDA
– Aquos Blu-Ray transport allowing you to rip Blu-Ray movies directly
– Bluetooth
– FM Transmitter
– 4GB of internal memory(3GB available for data usage)
– MicroSD slot
– 3G connection using AU CDMA (Japanese CDMA 3G carrier)
– Weight 227g
– Size 83×149×17.9mm

A developer version called JN-DK01 will be available in Japan starting in May.

Source: en.akihabaranews.com

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Google TV with HDMI pass-through?

Posted by Charbax – March 26, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google, Google TV

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

HTC Supersonic (HTC EVO 4G) WiMax Android phone

Posted by Charbax – March 23, 2010
Category: Smartphones, Qualcomm, Android

I filmed the Windows Mobile based HTC HD2 last month at the Mobile World Congress:
http://138.2.152.197/2010/02/17/htc-hd2-at-mobile-world-congress-2010/
And at the HTC booth at asked the HTC representative if there would be a 4.3″ LCD screen based Android phone as well, I didn’t get an answer on that at that point:
http://138.2.152.197/2010/03/01/htc-desire-htc-legend-and-htc-hd2-mini-at-mobile-world-congress-2010/

The HTC Supersonic is basically the same hardware as the HTC HD2, but this time it runs Android, comes perhaps with slight hardware changes such as a slightly larger battery (people might have been complaining about battery runtime on the HD2), it has a HDMI output when using an adaptor for that, 720p video recording and the 1ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

Very interestingly, this is the first WiMax phone released by Sprint in the USA. That requires a whole new Mobile WiMax network and only some carriers are deploying that in some places. Though I have been covering WiMax for years such as in these interviews that I filmed at CeBIT 2006:
http://techvideoblog.com/cebit/wimax-forum/
http://techvideoblog.com/cebit/runcom/

So perhaps now finally some things may be happening on the Mobile WiMax front. My question is still, how much better is WiMax in terms of bandwidth capacity per user, bandwidth capacity with many mobile users. What is the performance of Mobile WiMax compared to 700mhz unlicenced wireless mobile networking over White Spaces or how does it compare with 3G HSDPA and LTE technology?

This video was released at: slashgear.com

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Samsung Galaxy S, 4″ Super AMOLED Android phone

Posted by Charbax – March 23, 2010
Category: Smartphones, Displays, Samsung, Android

I filmed some Super AMOLED videos last month at the Mobile World Congress:
http://138.2.152.197/2010/02/17/samsung-beam-android-phone-projector-at-mobile-world-congress-2010/
http://138.2.152.197/2010/02/15/samsung-super-amoled-screen-technology/

Super AMOLED is spectacular, that’s for sure. Blacks are incredibly black and vivid colors and brightness is super. The Super AMOLED is officially 20% birghter and reflects 80% less light than the first generation AMOLED screens, it removes some kind of layer that was covering the screen so devices can be thinner and the angle of vision is incredible.

Yet, my question is how much more does Super AMOLED cost compared to LCD, especially at sizes larger than 4″ in diagonal. I guess this is a matter of Samsung having invested huge amounts of billions of dollars into developing the AMOLED technology, that they have to try to mass manufacture those screens in quantities of millions for them to get down in cost. I wonder though, what is the difference in cost between AMOLED and LCD in those screen sizes? Anyone who knows the bill of material, please post in the comments.

I probably don’t really like Samsung’s attempt at making a different UI layer on top of Android which they call “S Life UI”. With the bit that I played with it on the Samsung Beam, I would probably prefer to disable that and somehow enable a normal standard Google Experience user interface.

This video was released at: IntoMobile.com

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Kyocera Zio M6000 $169 Android phone to be released

Posted by Charbax – March 23, 2010
Category: Smartphones, Qualcomm, Android

Cool. The cheap unlocked Android phones are coming! This Kyocera Zio M6000 is announced to be released unlocked on the US market from $169 to $216. That is without contract, thus a cheap pre-paid Android phone.

Here are the specs:

3.5″ 800×480 touch screen
600 Mhz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor
3G (CDMA for now), WiFi and stereo Bluetooth
3.2-megapixel camera
512MB of onboard app memory (what’s the RAM?)
Android 1.6 but it will be user-upgradeable to Android 2.1

This video was released at: mobileburn.com

Kycoera/Sanyo is a leader in producing low cost phones sold with pre-paid carriers in the USA such as Virgin Mobile, Cricket, and MetroPCS. The arrival of cheaper unlocked and pre-paid-only Android phones is just awesome. Having to pay $529 for an unlocked Nexus One or having to pay more than $3000 over a 2-year contract is just ridiculously expensive. Android will dominate the market as soon as unlocked sub-$200 Android phones start becoming available worldwide.

Source: pcmag.com
Via: Engadget.com

NetbookNews.com: Broadcom Powered Tablets at Mobile World Congress 2010

Posted by Charbax – March 20, 2010
Category: Tablets, Broadcom, MWC, Android

Posted at netbooknews.com, this video features the Broadcom Persona BCM11211, which I am not sure if it’s currently ARM Cortex A8 or A9 based (as Broadcom officially has announced in September 2009 to be licencing ARM Cortex A9). This video of the Broadcom Tablet reference designs feature remote DLNA remote control of a HDTV as well as a cool demonstration of 720p HD video-conferencing on Android, and actual announced products to be released by NTT Docomo and another design with video-gaming controls by Askey that is part of the Pegatron/Asus group.

Released at: netbooknews.com

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Marvell announces $99 Moby Tablet to Revolutionize Education

Posted by Charbax – March 18, 2010
Category: Tablets, E-readers, Marvell, Pixel Qi, OLPC, Android, Windows

According to this press release, Marvell is announcing the $99 Moby Tablet for Education. You’ve seen my video of Marvell’s 4.3″ Tablet prototype shown at CES based on the Marvell Armada 600 processor. The Moby tablet is based on the same Armada 600 platform but comes with a larger screen (probably 10″).


This is an image of a 10″ Marvell powered tablet recently shown at the Future of Publishing Summit in New York City as published by Harry McCracken of Technologizer.com, which may be the first $99 Moby Tablet prototype. Consider, this prototype design is most likely of a reference design, Moby won’t look like this when shipped.

Marvell’s Moby Tablet may be the first prototype of the OLPC XO 3.0:


The OLPC XO 3.0 for $75 wasn’t supposed to happen before 2012, but Marvell may now be speeding up its release for a $99 Tablet for Education within months.

Marvell’s first version of the $99 Tablet might not initially achieve all the design goals of the One Laptop Per Child XO-3, such as making it as waterproof, sturdy and with plastic unbreakable touch screen.

Will Marvell sell it directly to Governments and Schools to keep the costs low? Or does Marvell plan to have many vendors use their Tablet platform to release several versions of this Tablet platform for around $99 using many brands?

Most importantly, will the first Moby tablets come with a 10″ Pixel Qi capacitive touch screen display? Their press release does not yet mention Pixel Qi for the screen technology. But as this is targetted for replacing school textbooks, as it’s intended for reading, as Marvell is the largest sponsor of the One Laptop Per Child program of which Pixel Qi is a spin-off company and that the press release clearly says that “The ultra low power Moby tablet is designed for long-battery life“, my expectation is that it has to come with a Pixel Qi LCD touch screen display to be readable nearly as clearly as with e-ink and to be able to provide 20-30h battery runtime or more.

Powered by high-performance, highly scalable, and low-power Marvell® ARMADA™ 600 series of application processors, the Moby tablet features gigahertz-class processor speed, 1080p full-HD encode and decode, intelligent power management, power-efficient Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM/GPS connectivity, high performance 3D graphics capability and support for multiple software standards including full Adobe Flash, Android™ and Windows Mobile.

This seems to be happening now, for release soon, yet not with a confirmed release date yet:

Announcing the initiative this week during her keynote speech to the country’s leading publishers at the Future of Publishing conference in New York City, Marvell Co-founder Weili Dai said that the Moby tablet is a technology whose time had come.

Marvell will soon announce a pilot program in partnership with the District of Columbia Public School system (DCPS) where the Company will donate a Moby tablet to every child in an at-risk school as part of a multi-year program in new media and learning.

And this is definitely related to the One Laptop Per Child OLPC project:

Marvell has made a long-term commitment to supporting education at all levels and is the largest sponsor of the One Laptop per Child program which is bringing much-needed netbook computers to the developing world.

It would be really great of Marvell to speed up the release of the thin, light and cheap tablet/e-reader for education. Weili Dai, Marvell’s Co-founder and Vice President and General Manager of Marvell Semiconductor’s Consumer and Computing Business Unit said following at her keynote speech to the country’s leading publishers at the Future of Publishing conference:

Education is the most pressing social and economic issue facing our country and our times. (…) Marvell can help propel education into the 21st century with an all-in-one device that gives students access to the best live content, information and resources the world has to offer — from books and online sources, in text, video, news, music, data expression or any medium. With Moby tablet, students can conduct primary research, reach out directly to the world’s leading subject experts and even collaborate with one another around the globe. Best of all, the device is highly affordable. I envision Marvell’s Moby tablets to benefit all students around the world.

I am definitely eager to see and hear more on Marvell’s Moby $99 Tablet project. Look forward to more coverage on this Tablet/e-Reader for Education here at http://ARMdevices.net as I try to get more informations and perhaps even bring you videos of more prototypes soon.

Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/marvell-drives-education-revolution-with-99-all-in-one-moby-tablet-designed-for-the-worlds-students-88376967.html

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Eric Schmidt confirms Android (Marketplace?) for Tablets

Posted by Charbax – March 17, 2010
Category: Tablets, Smartphones, Archos, Android

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, recently spoke about large screen Android Tablets at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit keynote (at timecode 10 minutes and 39 seconds). It’s a nice way of Eric Schmidt to indirectly confirm that Google is definitely going to support the development of Android based Tablets as alternatives on the market to the upcoming iPad.

When I say “phone”, you might have a really big phone, like a phone about “this” big (he shows a size of about 10″ diagonal for a tablet with his hands), also known as a Tablet, makes sense [to have] big screens (…) you are going to have them from many vendors including using Google’s Android Operating System.

How soon until Google announces official Marketplace support for all Android Tablets?

Of all the Android Tablets which I have filmed so many of at the last couple months at CES, Mobile World Congress and CeBIT consumer electronics shows, none of the companies presenting those tablets were able to confirm if and when they might be allowed to include the Google Marketplace on those tablets officially supported by Google. As you may know, the Archos 5 Internet Tablet and any other currently shipping Android tablets around the world, none are yet officially certified by Google to include the Google Marketplace.

As you can see from my videos of the Archos 7 Home Tablet, the Hott MD500, the $199 Freescale powered tablets, Creative Zii Egg, Altina’s 4.8″ Android GPS Tablet, the Camangi Webstation, Forsa 7″ Android Tablet, 1Cross Tech MIDhybrid, Hard Kernel ODroid and many many more which you can find at http://138.2.152.197/category/tablets/, Android Tablets can be sold for cheaper, they can come with or without 3G, they may not come with capacitive but only resistive screens to save costs, they may not include cameras or even accelerometers. They instead bring higher resolutions, larger screens, more connectors and ports (such as built-in USB host, HDMI outputs..) and most importantly, Android Tablets can be sold at more affordable prices and be sold at retail stores without the need to signup for 2-year subscription plans with telecom carriers. Basically, the Android Tablets can occupy the market segments that go from the iPod Touch to the iPad.

Will Apple have a hard time selling as many devices and making as much revenues and profits in a market when dozens or hundreds of Android based competitors are going to be available for a lot cheaper prices and offer if not at least the same, then likely more features because of differentiation through free market competition? Android Tablets are likely to come with Flash support, HDMI outputs, USB host ports, hard drive storage options, storage expantion, Pixel Qi screens, removable batteries, video-conferencing, full video and audio codecs support, mass storage device modes not requiring iTunes to synchronize media files, open source and even open firmware software updates for the installation of alternative Android firmwares and even alternative Linux OSes including Ubuntu, Maemo, Angstrom. Can Apple compete with that?

Also check my (off camera) interview with Andy Rubin and Eric Schmidt about Android Marketplace on Tablets and Laptops from Mobile World Congress last month: http://138.2.152.197/2010/02/22/i-interviewed-eric-schmidt-and-andy-rubin-at-mwc-off-camera-for-now-watch-eric-schmidts-keynote-video/

This following video starts at the correct 10m39s timecode when you click the play button, where you can see Eric Schmidt’s above statement regarding Google’s official support for Android Tablets:

You may copy and paste this embed code to your blog if you want the embedded video to start at that same timecode:

<object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9GMjtOSvMDs&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;start=639"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9GMjtOSvMDs&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;start=639" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="340" width="560"></embed></object>

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

ARMflix: ARM interviews Texas Instruments at Mobile World Congress 2010

Posted by Charbax – March 13, 2010
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, Set-top-boxes, Projectors, Cameras, Texas Instruments, MWC, Android

ARM talks to Robert Tolbert, Director of Product Management at Texas Instruments at Mobile World Congress about their latest OMAP 4 platform showcasing multiple display capabilities.

You can also see my video interview and product showcase that I filmed at MWC at: http://138.2.152.197/2010/02/16/texas-instruments-omap4-demonstrations/

This video was released at ARM’s official Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/ARMflix

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

sync-blog.com: Hands on with the enTourage eDGe

Posted by Charbax – March 13, 2010
Category: Tablets, E-readers, Reviews, Marvell, Android

For $499, http://entourageedge.com is releasing the dual-screen 9.7″ e-reader with Wacom and 10.1″ Android Tablet combo based on the Marvell PXA168 processor. It comes with 3G sim reader, memory expansion, USB host ports and plenty more. I filmed an interview and product demonstration with an Engineer of Entourage Systems at CES: http://138.2.152.197/2010/01/17/entourage-edge-android-dual-mode-tablet-e-reader-at-ces-2010/

Once companies start getting the annotation, collaboration user interface aspects of the Android tablets and stylus touch e-reader functions right, this could unlock huge revolution in all areas where people need to collaborate on editing texts, potentially revolutionizing education, journalism, law, politics and more.

Here’s a video-review posted by sync-blog.com:

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]