Category: Smartphones

CES 2021: Kyocera DuraForce Ultra 5G UW, rugged, drop/water proof, Snapdragon 765G, push to talk

Posted by – January 22, 2021

via https://youtu.be/fbpmWv_GJA4

CES 2021: TCL NXTPAPER, TCL 20 Series, Smart Glass, Rollable Phone

Posted by – January 14, 2021

via https://youtu.be/pGyCpPODj68

Onyx Boox E Ink Phone at CES 2020, Boox Max3 Boox Note2 firmware 2.2.2 and more

Posted by – February 8, 2020

This is the second E Ink phone BOOX released. The first one was called BOOX E43 and launched out in 2014 which I helped make famous here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTbkNld0sHE The new phone shown at CES 2020 features a 5.8″ E Ink screen with 300PPI. It also has a front light with adjustable color tones, an octa-core processor, dual speakers, a microphone, a front fingerprint, and dual camera lens on the back, dual SIM card slots, or one SIM card and one SD card.

Other Onyx E Ink products are BOOX Max3 and BOOX Note2. BOOX Max3 features a 13.3” large E Ink screen, Octa-core processor, Android 9.0 OS, OTG support, 5GHz Wi-Fi, while BOOX Note2 has similar specs and a 10.3” display with front light.

BOOX also introduced the new firmware 2.2.2 they just released. There were a lot of great new features for its eReaders, such as full-page translation, scribbles on nearly all ebook formats, optimized user interface, and so on. Inspired by the users’ feedback and advice, BOOX gets a great number of ideas and launches a new firmware update for its eReaders every three to six month.

Linux on Cosmo Communicator, Shipping Update

Posted by – November 27, 2019

Planet Computers CEO Dr Janko gives an update on Shipping Status to Backers of the Cosmo Communicator and he said to look out for some great offers on Gemini and possibly Cosmo on Black Friday and Cyber Monday at http://store.planetcom.co.uk/ also Dr Davide shows a preview of the upcoming easy to use Linux multi-boot support inside Recovery Mode on the main Cosmo Communicator firmware to come in a next firmware update.

Cosmo Communicator shipping now to backers, Dual Display Backlit Keyboard Phone, MTK P70+STM32

Posted by – October 22, 2019

Cosmo Communicator is right now being mass produced and shipping out to the nearly 4000 backers of the nearly $2M Indiegogo project at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cosmo-communicator#/ here is an extensive interview with Janko Mrsic-Flogel, CEO of Planet Computers, the creator of the awesome Gemini PDA Clamshell Keyboard Phone (which I used for 9 months in 2018 as my main phone) and now following that up with the Dual Display Cosmo Communicator, integrating dual-SIM 4G LTE, supports Android 9, Sailfish and other Linux operating systems to come with a multi-boot support, a full physical backlit keyboard, dual colour touchscreen displays, 24MP camera, external 1.91″ touchscreen when the phone is closed and a large 6″ internally when the phone is opened in full productivity mode. It also integrated a toggle switch with backside fingerprint reader for quick secure unlocking. In this video, Janko shows some of the features supported on that secondary 570×240, 300ppi, 1.91″ external display which runs Free RTOS separately on an STMicroelectronics STM32 processor. With supported interactions such as music control, phone dialing, quick dialing, notifications and much more. The new processor is the MediaTek P70 Quad Arm Cortex A73 with Quad
Arm Cortex A53 with an Arm Mali G72 MP3 GPU.

BOE 12.3″ Rollable Phone, 7.7″ Foldable Phone, 65″ BD LCD, Printed OLED, 8K VR, Automotive, mini-LED


At SID Display Week 2019, BOE shows their latest 12.3″ Rollable Phone, 7.7″ Foldable Phone, many other flexible displays, UHD displays, micro-displays, other world-leading technologies and innovative applications such as their Smart driving experience brought by flexible display for the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) comprising a smart driver cabin and a spliced display screen of three units in three rows with only 0.99 mm bezels allowing visitors to experience a brand-new in-car display solution of the future. In addition to flexible display applications, BOE also displays the world-leading UHD display solution called the BD CELL UHD display which features an ultra-high static contrast ratio of up to 1,000,000:1, a bit depth of 12 bit, and a black field brightness of less than 0.003 nits, BOE also presents a host of 8K products, including 75″ 8K 120Hz display, a 3.5″ 8K VR display, and 0.39″ 8K spliced VR display. Under the “8425 Strategy” (promote 8K, popularize 4K, replace 2K and make good use of 5G), BOE is now speeding up the application of 8K in many fields. Other leading-edge technologies and solutions that BOE shows at this show include the first ever HDR notebook featuring mini-LED, the 15.6″ oxide display with an ultra-high refresh rate of 240Hz, the 55″ inkjet-printed 4K OLED display, the 0.39″ micro-OLED AR display that enjoys the world’s largest pixel density of 5,644 PPI.

In the smart Automotive cabin, the information required for smart travel becomes part of the actual scene with the help of AR technology, the head-up display (HUD) can project useful information such as speed per hour and navigation onto the front windshield for the driver’s reference. In addition, BOE replaces the conventional in-car LCD with flexible display. The 12.3″ three-unit flexible display is backed by the OLED pixel compensation circuit technology developed by BOE, which can effectively improve the brightness uniformity of mid-sized OLED displays and provide better audiovisual experience for car users, BOE applies flexible AMOLED displays to transparent A-pillars, rearview mirrors to solve the problem of driver’s blind spots in automotive design. The flexible display can perfectly match the shape of the A-pillar and show data with delay shorter than one millisecond. With the help of camera, the images blocked by the A-pillar can be shown on the flexible display, thus eliminating blind spots in the field of view. By applying flexible display, the rearview mirror can also be customized according to the interior shape of the car. BOE’s smart cabin is equipped with a 6.39″ flexible display as a built-in rearview mirror, which makes it safer to drive the car even on rainy and snowy days, BOE also exhibited some innovative applications of in-car display, such as center console solution that supports gesture-based interaction and V-shaped mini-LED for cars. BOE’s high-end in-car display panels have been supplied to automakers in the United States, Germany, the UK, Japan and South Korea.

CLEARink ePaper 2.0 at SID Display Week 2019


CLEARink ePaper 2.0 won the People’s Choice Award at SID’s Display Week 2019. They’re showing ePaper 2.0 for the first time, reflective displays using Electrophoretic Total Internal Reflection (eTIR), which has the goodness of previous ePaper technologies including sunlight readability, low power, along with color and video. CLEARink demonstrates 9.7” displays with 1:16 contrast, 227 dpi, 4096 colors with and without front light, monochrome and color modes running video content, 16 levels of gray, driven by less than 5V. Interview with Frank Christiaens CEO and Sri Peruvemba CMO.

Open Source Android Kernels with Todd Kjos of Google and Bero


Todd Kjos of the Android Kernel team at Google, and Bero of the Linaro Mobile Group, talk at Linaro Connect Vancouver, they talk about running Android on the mainline kernel, trying to get closer to mainline, enabling test boards and devices to run mainline Linux. Getting some of the Android specific things that were kept out of the tree into the Linux tree.

Samsung Galaxy S10 teardown, reveals the Samsung Exynos 9820

Posted by – March 14, 2019

ChipRebel has provided this video of their teardown of the Galaxy S10 (also see their Exynos 9820 photos here: https://www.chiprebel.com/exynos-9820/) which has the 8nm LPP Exynos 9820 with Samsung’s dual custom cores, dual ARM Cortex-A75 and quad ARM Cortex-A55 and Mali-G76 MP12 GPU and Samsung’s most advanced NPU. With LTE Category 20 for up to 2.0Gbps download speed with 8x carrier aggregation (CA) and up to 316Mbps upload speed support. This phone amazingly can support encoding and decoding of of up to 8K30p.

You can find the High-res images of Samsung’s Exynos 9820 SoC inside the Galaxy S10 at https://www.chiprebel.com/galaxy-s10-teardown/ and you can subscribe to ChipRebel on YouTube here

€2299 Huawei Mate X Flexible phone, with keynote

Posted by – March 10, 2019

Huawei unveiled their Huawei Mate X flexible foldable phone, the best such flexible phone demonstration yet, though they launch it way way too expensive at €2299. On the other hand they were able to position the flexible display based phone as the ultimate phone one would be able to get, pushing the industry towards making this form factor popular sooner rather than later. This might be a flexible display provided to Huawei by BOE, I filmed BOE’s flexible displays for phones here and here you can also see all my other flexible display videos that I have been filming for the past several years here

€449 Xiaomi Mi 9, Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, €599 Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G, MWC 2019 keynote

Posted by – March 7, 2019

Xiaomi Mi 9 is launched at €449, runs on the 7nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, with a 6.39″ display, triple cameras including a 2x telephoto optical zoom lens, it can record 4K60 and comes with a 3300 mAh battery. The 5G version of the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 is also to be available at €599. This video includes my highlights filmed at the Xiaomi Mobile World Congress 2019 keynote which you can also watch the official full video of here.

€299 Archos Diamond bezel-less, Archos Oxygen, Smart Speakers, Smart Lights and 101S Oxygen Tablet

Posted by – March 7, 2019

Archos Diamond has a 6.39″ HD+ 2160×1080 AMOLED display, powered by the MediaTek Helio P70 ARM Cortex-A73/A53 octa-core CPU with an ARM Mali-G72 GPU. Archos Oxygen 68 at 149eur, 63 at 129eur, 57 at 99eur. Archos also shows their Amazon Alexa smart speakers, the 19.90eur Archos Smart LED Lights that work with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Archos 101S Oxygen Tablet based on MediaTek X20 deca-core with 3GB RAM and 32GB Flash, comes with a special charging and speaker dock.

MediaTek Helio P90, dual ARM Cortex-A75, six ARM Cortex-A55

Posted by – March 6, 2019

MediaTek Helio P90 dual ARM Cortex-A75 with 6 ARM Cortex-A55 in an octa-core cluster, with powerful AI APU 2.0 with 1165GMACs performance, Imagination PowerVR GM 9446 GPU, LPDDR4X memory, supports up to 48MP camera sensors (44.7% larger than 8K), 48MP at up to 30FPS with zero delay (ZSD) or 480FPS in 16MP. Dual camera arrays of up to 24+16MP can do 30fps bokeh live-previews that are 6X faster and 2.25X higher resolution than competitor claims MediaTek. Upgraded triple ISP that’s now capable of 14-bit RAW and 10-bit YUV processing. CorePilot control that supports ACAO (all cores all open), AI-enhanced low-light noise reduction algorithm is 4X faster and is also the first ever AI-feature in CV (computer vision) performance. MediaTek’s latest 4G LTE WorldMode modem introduces 4×4 MIMO, 3CA and 256QAM that provides more reliable connectivity performance even in densely populated spaces such as stadiums, busy shopping districts, offices or at the airport.

Samsung Galaxy S10 Dex on Lapdock, faster, smoother, doesn’t take over phone display

Posted by – March 3, 2019

The new Samsung Galaxy S10/S10+/S10e/Fold enables the fastes PC Mode from a phone yet, here tested on upcoming http://lapdock.net project (check back for more videos on Lapdock and when it might be available for purchase). Galaxy S10 is powered by the extremely fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 855. There even is a 5G version to be available.

OXI on Gemini PDA, Cosmo Communicator, PC Mode UI with Windows apps on Android on external display

Posted by – February 27, 2019

At MWC 2019, Planet Computers CEO Dr Janko Mrsic-Flogel introduces Auxens who has ported OXI OS to the Gemini PDA and same will be available on the upcoming Cosmo Communicator. While the potential for Displayport support on the Cosmo Communicator is maybe yet still to be confirmed, as the Cosmo will start shipping to their Indiegogo backers in June.

Oppo 10x Lossless Zoom and 5G phone

Posted by – February 24, 2019

Oppo unveiled their 10x zoom phone, with that compact 160mm telephoto lens and software for a smooth lossless zoom from 16mm-160mm in such a thin phone. Oppo also had Qualcomm guest their keynote and they are launching 5G phones at this show.

USB-IF Standards Group promotes Lapdock and iPad USB Type-C Power Delivery and Display

Posted by – February 21, 2019

USB-IF Standards Group shows USB Type C enabling the HP Lapdock to use a phone to power productivity on a Lapdock display. And they also show the Latest iPad that uses USB Type C that takes advantage of charging via Type C and Display output.

OXI on Lapdock, runs Windows 10 apps in Android

Posted by – January 13, 2019

Laurent Alaguero of Auxens shows their latest version of OXI the Desktop productivity user interface for Android phone’s external displays, such as here demonstrating running on the BQ Aquaris X2 Pro which has Displayport USB Type-C support. Here demonstrating OXI running with the Lapdock launched on crowdfunding on Indiegogo starting at $100. OXI can bring in and run Windows 10 apps in resizable Windows inside of this Android user interface, no need to boot all the way into a Windows 10 remote desktop just pulling in the needed Windows apps over the Internet, using virtualization, streaming, with servers that can nearby and served through Enterprise’s existing Windows server infrastructure. The Windows 10 apps can feel like they are running locally on Android with minimal lag. Auxens is now reaching out to Smartphone manufacturers to try to pre-install OXI on shipping phones with Displayport USB Type-C support. Hopefully they can integrate by getting some API access with http://shadow.tech cloud PC service and hopefully OXI comes with the Cosmo Communicator that is being developed and which I filmed here

Colorii $4 USB-C to 4K HDMI adapter, Lapdock at CES 2019


Colorii CH1 is the world’s smallest USB Type C to 4K 30Hz HDMI adapter, it works with phone or laptop. Colorii also shows USB 3.0 to VGA adapter, USB 3.0 to HDMI/VGA dual display adapter, USB 3.0 to HDMI/DVI adapter and more at Colorii’s CES 2019 booth. Colorii also shows the Lapdock project which is now as a working sample crowdfunding starting at $100 at http://igg.me/at/lapdock

Distributors can contact Colorii for distributor prices here:
Gennie Peng, Sales Manager
sales@colorii.cc
Mobile: +8615013777080 (Wechat/Whatsapp)
http://colorii.cc

Cosmo Communicator display shown at CES 2019

Posted by – January 8, 2019

Planet Computers are showing their latest prototype of the Cosmo Communicator now crowdfunding for $569 on Indiegogo here which is an upgrade of their very successful Gemini PDA which I used as my main phone for the past 9 months and you can see some videos I filmed about it here the Cosmo Communicator upgraded the CPU to MediaTek P70, Memory, the keyboard gets backlit, an external OLED display is added to be able to use the phone without having to open it, a fingerprint reader is added that is a combo with being a selection button, an external high quality 24 megapixel camera is now also default. The new design also allows for better antennas for a stronger LTE signal and possibly also for a stronger Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support too.