Category: OS

Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 11e (5th Gen) Chromebook

Posted by – February 22, 2018

Extra-durable 11.6” HD IPS touch with Gorilla Glass convertible laptop for education, with the World Facing Camera, Garaged EMR Pen. A flexible 360-degree hinge and 10-point multitouch display, all day battery life, features up to 7th Gen Intel Core i5, Up to 8 GB DDR4, Up to 256 GB SSD, 2 x USB 3.0, HDMI, USB-C DisplayPort, 4-in-1 micro card slot, RJ45, 3.5 mm combo audio / mic jack, weights starting at 1.54kg.

Lenovo 500e Chromebook

Posted by – February 22, 2018

Lenovo 500e Chromebook is a 11.6” 2-in-1 Chromebook with a 360-degree hinge for four modes of interaction, a garaged EMR (electromagnetic resonance) pen, features like Two HD cameras, 720p front-facing camera and a 5MP world-facing camera.

$279 Lenovo 300e Chromebook on MediaTek MT8173C

Posted by – January 26, 2018

Lenovo launches their new MediaTek MT8173C ARM dual Cortex-A72 and dual ARM Cortex-A53 with PowerVR GX6250 GPU Powered Chromebook. It’s got a 10-point multi-touch 11.6″ display and a swivel 360-degree hinge to use as 2-in-1 in four different modes, Laptop, Tablet, Tent, or Stand. With Enhanced Touch Technology that they have implemented in their touchscreen firmware, the 300e Chromebook also allows students to use a standard No.2 pencil on the screen instead of a stylus. it is designed with military-grade durability, with rubber bumpers, reinforced ports, a 360-degree hinge that won’t snap under pressure, the 300e Chromebook is compliant with MIL-STD-810G testing for all manner of shock and awe. It’s also drop-resistant up to 29.5 inches (75cm), the height of a school desk.

Filmed at the London BETT 2018 education tech conference.

Shadow Blade cloud PC Xeon/GTX1080 for cloud gaming, cloud 4K60/8K video-editing

Posted by – January 25, 2018

French startup Blade presents their awesome Shadow cloud PC service at €30/month that streams a very powerful $2000 (equivalent) desktop PC hosted on their server powered by a high-end 8-threaded Intel Xeon server CPU with an Nvidia GTX1080 GPU, 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD (with harddrive/SSD storage expansion options available) running a full Windows 10 Pro desktop remotely in their server, using low-lag Internet technologies that they have developed, fast codecs (to have at least 15mbit/s Internet bandwidth available is recommended for a good experience), fast tricks that they have developed to make this all possible, to offer cloud gaming or high-end video-editing, 3D graphics rendering, audio processing, or anything else that might be useful to run on advanced PC hardware that you can think of, and you can then run that through client applications either running on their AMD APU based Shadow PC thin client that they offer to their subscribers (for a smooth up to 4K60 or 1080p144hz gaming experience), or you can run clients on a Chromebook, any Android phone, Android TV, Macbooks, any Windows machine, Linux, iPhone, iPad, their service runs on everything. Currently their service works well in France, initially it was just for French users who had Fiber to the home connections, but now it also runs smoothly onto any ADSL, Cable even LTE devices in France, the service is also supported in Belgium and a few other countries nearby France. Because for a good service, the user has to be within as few hops in the global backbone internet network as possible, to experience as little lag times as possible. Advanced professional gamers have tested this system and they have reported that they cannot feel any difference between the Shadow cloud gaming service and a local desktop gaming machine. The lag time are said to depend more on the speed of the PC monitor than of the internet back to their cloud server system. They are about to expand their offering to cover the whole of California as they are setting up a cloud server system right now in the Silicon Valley also. They plan to expand their services globally in the near future according to demand.

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.

$999 Lenovo Thinkpad X280 (2018) on Gen8 Intel Kaby Lake

Posted by – January 15, 2018

The new 12.5″ Lenovo Thinkpad X280 (2018) is thinner at 1.17cm thickness and lighter at 1.13kg with now an integrated non-removable battery. With two Type-C Thunderbolt 3 ports, two USB Type-A ports, HDMI, up to 16GB RAM, up to 1TB SSD, FHD or 1366×768 matte display with a matte touch on-cell option, compatible with Lenovo’s new 2018 side docking standard, with a native Ethernet dongle, it also has a physical sliding cover to cover the webcam.

$1709 Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 Gen6 (2018) HDR on Gen8 Intel Kaby Lake

Posted by – January 15, 2018

Lenovo launches their 6th Generation Thinkpad Carbon X1 with 8th Generation Intel Kaby Lake processor providing a 35% boost in performance, faster LPDDR3 2100Mhz RAM, optional LTE-A card, optional IR camera with Glance by Mirametrix merging face-tracking, eye-tracking, and gaze-tracking technology. Built with the same carbon-fiber reinforced chassis, Windows 10 Pro, dual Thunderbolt 3 over USB Type-C ports (with 65W Type-C RapidCharge and dongles), 14″ FHD or Quad- HD display with a Quad-HD Dolby Vision optimised HDR display as the top 500nit optional display. Intel HD Graphics 620, 720p webcam, Up to 16GB LPDDR3 2133 MHz, Up to 1TB SSD OPAL PCIe TLC, Up to 15 hours battery life, dTPM 2.0 Touch fingerprint reader, 2x Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C ports, 2x USB 3.0, HDMI, Native RJ45 (through dongle), MicroSD, MicroSIM (if WWAN card Qualcomm Snapdragon X7 LTE-A is installed), to be available in Silver and Black. It uses a new type of optional ThinkPad Pro Dock with its USB-C side mechanical docking station that spans a broad offering of 2018 ThinkPad devices with DisplayLink and extra USB ports and more. You can read more at: https://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-6th-Gen/p/22TP2TXX16G

$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.

$799 Lenovo Miix 630 Tablet convertible Windows 10 with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835

Posted by – January 12, 2018

Lenovo releases their Tablet convertible running a full Windows 10 on the 64bit ARMv8 Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with built-in LTE. Lenovo digital pen with 1024 levels of sensitivity with Windows Ink. 15.6mm thickness, 1.33kg weight, up to 20 hours of local video playback battery life. Comes with a 12.3″ WUXGA+ touchscreen to be priced starting at $799.

HP Envy x2 Tablet convertible Windows 10 with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835

Posted by – January 12, 2018

HP Envy x2 is a detachable convertible Tablet PC running a full Windows 10 on the 64bit ARMv8 Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with built-in always connected LTE and up to 22 hours of battery life. 90min 0% to 90% fast charging. Up to 1,000 hrs of connected stand-by time. Comes with the HP digital pen with Windows Ink for note taking and scribbling.

$1369 HP Spectre x360 15 (2018) with AMD RX Vega M GPU

Posted by – January 12, 2018

The HP Spectre x360 15 (2018 version) comes with the first hybrid Intel/AMD processor with an 8th Generation Intel Kaby Lake-G CPU with an AMD RX Vega M GPU on the same package. It comes with a 15.6″ 4K Gorilla Glass 4 touch screen with support for HP’s Tilt Pen, a 360-degree hinge, Bang & Olufsen audio, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD and also the option to have the NVIDIA GeForce MX150 GPU instead of the AMD one.

Best of CES 2018: Asus NovaGo Snapdragon 835 Windows 10 at Qualcomm CES 2018 booth

Posted by – January 11, 2018

Asus wins my prize of most important “best of CES 2018” device. This is the most powerful ARM Powered laptop yet. Finally, after years of work by thousands of Microsoft and Qualcomm engineers, true full Windows 10 on ARM is just about to be ready to be launched onto the worldwide market. Powered by the 10nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, with over 20 hours of battery life, while it comes on Windows 10 S by default it can quickly be “upgraded” to full Windows 10 Professional for ARM that gives support for the emulation of every x86 (32bit emulation supported only for now, 64bit x86 apps will be emulated once Microsoft updates the Windows software further) Windows 10 .exe application, hopefully we can run advanced video editing apps such as Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, Pinnacle Studio, advanced music creation applications such as Ableton Live, Propellerhead Studio, advanced photo editing software such as Gimp and Adobe Photoshop. This Asus NovaGo comes with two full sized USB3 Host ports (sadly, no full sized SD card slot), a full sized HDMI output port, fingerprint reader in the corner of the mousepad and a full sized keyboard with a bright glossy 13.3″ 1080p display. At the Qualcomm CES 2018 booth, they are also showing the two other devices (though both Tablet based 2-in-1 devices with flimsy case/stands) that are being released running Windows 10 on Snapdragon 835 which are the HP Envy x2 and the Lenovo Miix 630. I was hoping that somehow this would be the time Lenovo would unveil an ARM Powered Thinkpad style laptop, but hopefully Lenovo will consider to do that soon enough! In my opinion, Lenovo should do a Thinkpad X1 Carbon and Thinkpad x280 style ARM Snapdragon 835 laptop, that would be great, if possible sold at 50 percent cheaper than the Intel version of each. Also if HP would make an ARM Powered version of their HP Spectre x360, that would also be awesome. Of course it would be really great if they would sell this with an unlockable bootloader (they can manage it “securely” through an approval kind of thing if they’d like) and that users could install among many flavors of Linux on it if they’d prefer (Qualcomm should support the community to still keep full GPU acceleration and full LTE support within any Linux). The Asus NovaGo is the only real Laptop form factor yet running this new very important full Windows 10 on ARM platform.

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.

Canonical shows EdgeX on ARM


First demo of EdgeX on ARM in cross-host setup featuring Ubuntu Core and Ubuntu systems both running the EdgeX cluster. The Dell 5k Edge Gateway, based on Ubuntu Core Snappy, has been running the core EdgeX services (basically 11 out of 12) using the official Docker snap. The RPi3, based on Ubuntu, has been running EdgeX device virtual service.

The EdgeX Foundry Project is a vendor-neutral project launched by the Linux Foundation, aligned around a common goal: the simplification and standardization of the foundation for edge computing architectures in the Industrial IoT market, while still allowing the ecosystem to add significant value. The seed for the new project is a fully-functional, Alpha-grade edge platform based on over 125,000 lines of code donated by Dell with references to other open source projects and developed with feedback from their partners, customers, and even competitors. The EdgeX project has already garnered a diverse and experienced membership base of supporting companies that is continuing the development of the architecture and code base. The goals of EdgeX include to provide a flexible microservices architecture that can support the use of any combination of heterogeneous ingredients plugged into a common interoperability foundation, to be agnostic to hardware CPU (e.g., x86, ARM), OS (e.g., Linux, Windows, Mac OS), and application environment (e.g., Java, JavaScript, Python, Go Lang, C/C++) to support customer preferences for differentiation, to allow services to scale up and down based on device capability and use case and more.