Linaro Engineers present a bunch of optimizations they recently did in Android for ARM. These optimizations are in areas like BIONIC for Cortex C string routines, migrating to GCC 4.9, migrating the external projects to their latest versions, optimizing SQLite, optimizing battery life, also they discuss their progress building Android with CLANG, migrating Android to latest versions and how Linaro is planning to release these optimizations to the Android community through Linaro Android releases and upstream them to respective project repositories.
George Grey, CEO of Linaro, the not-for-profit engineering organization consolidating and optimizing open source Linux software and tools for the ARM architecture, announces that Qualcomm, Mediatek, ZTE, AllWinner and Comcast are joining Linaro to work together on bringing Linux on ARM forward together. They are joining the existing Linaro member companies who are ARM, HiSilicon, Broadcom, Fujitsu, LG, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, AMD, AppliedMicro, Canonical, Cavium, Cisco, Citrix, Enea, Facebook, Freescale, HP, LSI, Marvell, Montavista, Nokia Solutions and Networks, Red Hat and IBM who all are contributing engineers to all be working together to improve Linux on ARM for Mobile, Enterprise (servers), Networking, and now also for Home (Set-top-box) usage with the Internet of Things potentially also to be supported. Linaro just held its Linaro Connect Asia here in Macau this week and I will be posting many videos from there, interviewing Linaro engineers about some of the latest Linux hacking work they are doing to speed up all ARM Powered devices.
Samsung releases the Exynos5422, their fastest yet Octa-core ARM Processor, with optimized HMP Heterogeneous Multi-processing support with all 8 cores working simultaneously at up to 2.1Ghz reaching something like 20 thousand on Antutu benchmark (which is a lot). The performance for ARM Chromebooks may be extremely high. The Exynos5422 may have more than double the CPU performance over the Exynos5250 of previous generation Chromebooks (according to some online benchmarks for the dual-core Exynos5250 in Nexus 10 compared with the Antutu number Samsung shows for their Octa core Exynos5422 Antutu result), this should provide for some extremely powerful new Samsung ARM Powered Chromebooks! Samsung also announced the 6-core Exynos5260 with 2 big ARM Cortex-A15 cores and 4 LITTLE ARM Cortex-A7 cores, a design that may feed well for the mid-range market perhaps also better for Android Smartphone usage scenarios while the Exynos5422 may be best on Chromebooks that may need higher burst performance. The Samsung Exynos5422 is going to ship in the newly announced $399 Samsung Chromebook 2 with a 13.3″ FHD display, 4GB RAM, 16GB Flash and an ultra-thin and light form factor for a laptop.
MHL demonstrates the amazing Sony Xperia Z2 with 4K output through MHL 3.0 with HDCP 2.2 content protection (required by Hollywood for 4K playback), then they show a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 reference board with Silicon Image Sil8620 doing MHL 3.0 outputting to a MHL 3.0 Docking Board with the SIlicon Image SiI9394 MHL 3.0-to-HDMI 2.0 bridge IC. What’s also really awesome is they can stream fast data through the USB Host ports on the MHL 3.0 Dock and back through the phone. This is absolutely awesome and I have been waiting for this type of 600mbitps bandwidth on USB Host to be added to MHL, thus potentially using Smartphones as desktops and laptops when docked in desktop docks and laptop docks like the Acer Extend featured in my other MHL 3.0 video about productivity: http://138.2.152.197/2014/02/28/mhl-for-productivity-acer-extend-mediatek-mt6592-mhl-optimizations-and-dellroku-mhl-hdmi-sticks/
Shenzhen THL shows their latest high-end Smartphone on the MT6592 Octa Core, already in mass production with a 5″ 1080p display with Gorilla Glass, selling 200K per month out of their Shenzhen factory. They also show a 4.5″ and 4.7″ qHD on MT6582M and a 6.6″ FHD MT6592 Octa Core phablet.
Wiko shows their Octa Core Smartphone with a nice 5″ FHD display unscratchable with Gorilla Glass, 16megapixel Sony sensor camera, MT6592 Octa Core, it’s available now for 350€ in France and a few other markets in Europe. Wiko is the third biggest smartphone brand in France and they want to expand to other markets.
Nandan Nayampally, ARM VP of Processor Marketing presents ARM Cortex-A17. ARM expects over 500 million mid-range smartphones to be shipped in 2015. The ARM Cortex-A17 provides a product that will be defining the performance and feature set for that mid-range smartphone segment. ARM Cortex-A17 is the most efficient mid-range mobile solution for smartphones and tablets ARM has ever delivered, essentially delivering a new mid-range performance point for 2015 (and beyond) that matches today’s high-end phones and tablets at a mid-range price point. ARM Cortex-A17 provides 60 percent higher performance than the Cortex-A9 and by using big.LITTLE technology Cortex-A17 can be paired with the Cortex-A7 processor for full system coherency. ARM Cortex-A17 is launched as part of ARM’s new suite of ARM IP for mid-range mobile devices together with the Mali-T720 GPU, Mali DP500 DPU, Mali-V500 and ARM POP IP.
4.5″ qHD in affordable LTE for 199€ retail, and 3G version for 169€ retail price. Using the pin compatible (I guess) MSM8926 for LTE and MSM8212 for 3G.
Wiko Wax to be sold at 200€, with 4.7″ 720p, LTE using the Nvidia Tegra4i platform, to be available around April or so. Wiko is the third biggest Smartphone brand in France and they want to expand to more markets around the world. Wiko for example sells more than Apple and is second after Samsung in France at online retailers like rueducommerce, fnac, ldlc, cdiscount and more. 5megapixels front camera and 8megapixels back camera.
Sony’s new flagship phone on Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 records 4K video, has a 5.2″ FHD improved Triluminous Bravia LCD, possibly the best LCD yet in the world, features Live Color LED, red and green phosphor with blue LEDs and customized color filters to produce a brighter and more uniform light creating richer colors on the screen without over-saturation like on some AMOLED. Then there’s also the latest psychovisual algorithmic Sony X-Reality picture engine, which analyzes each image to optimize colors, sharpness and contrast while also reducing noise. The latest Exmore camera does impressive 4K video record and the phone also has MHL 3.0 to output the 4K videos to a 4K TV.
Since 2011, many of the MeeGo team left Nokia to form Jolla, a Finnish company that wants to make phones based on their Sailfish OS. Sailfish OS is what’s left of Nokia and Intel’s MeeGo and the N9 mobile phone, the Sailfish software is based on the open-sourced components of MeeGo, while the Sailfish user interface is closed-source and had to be developed from scratch. Sailfish is compatible with some Android apps done in collaboration with the creators of Alien Dalvik, the Myriad Group, known for running Android apps with the Nokia N9. At their MWC booth, Jolla shows Sailfish OS running on the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7.
This is 360 video, presented by Finwe Ltd CEO Juha Kela. 360 video is a special video production technology that utilizes multiple cameras to produce a full spherical 360×180 degree video experience. Video from multiple sources is synchronized, fine tuned and stitched together with a software called Autopano Video and Autopano Giga by Kolor. Kolor also delivers solutions for 360 video hosting and playback on a PC and web browser. Web player is based on html5.
Finwe ltd has developed a movement and touch controlled 360 video player for mobile devices, called 360 VideoBall. In collaboration with Kolor, they also just released a pre-version of free Kolor Eyes Android player. Beyond that, mobile player can also be used with Kickstarter funded goggles vrAse. This cool gadget has lenses and a special frame that holds mobile phones inside. The mobile phone is then used as a movement controlled display device, producing a separate image for both eyes. There is now an equipment based on 6 GoPro’s in a 360×180 formation to shoot 360 3D videos, which was used as a demonstration in MWC. The experience is really stunning and the image quality is very good thanks to the high quality and resolution of mobile devices.
Finwe CEO Juha Kela also demonstrated a special custom technology that enables 6k 360 video playback on a mobile phone. Current devices support only 4k resolution, but with the special technology they developed devices can play back videos even with 8k resolution! With this solution, user can zoom into the video without losing the quality.
To be able to provide a full turn key solution for 360 video production and to support the marketing of the mobile 360 video player technology Juha Kela founded a company called FinCloud Ltd. FinCloud has already done number of multi camera productions and one of their productions, a 360 music video for Finnish band Apulanta is currently nominated in Spotify “Innovator of the Year” category in Emma Gaala. Emma Gaala is an annual event, which rewards the most significant players in the industry during a year.
There is now an equipment based on 6 GoPro’s in a 360×180 formation to shoot 360 3D videos, which was used as a demonstration in MWC. Special camera rigs are manufactured by Freedom360 and 360 Heros. The experience is really stunning and the image quality is very good thanks to the high quality and resolution of mobile devices.
One of the most interesting aspects of MHL in my opinion is that MHL enables your Smartphone to run your PC/Desktop/Laptop experience. Now Acer is showing their Acer Extend prototype where it’s an “empty” good looking laptop shell as stylish as an Ultrabook, which only contains the display, battery, keyboard, mousepad and basic MHL support electronics, thus potentially being sold at a very cheap price, then you power that Laptop Dock with your Phone, in the similar way to the Motorola LapDock system of a couple of years ago. MediaTek is showing some Android software optimizations that they are doing to run this setup on their Octa Core MT6592 processor, thus switching the Android UI to a more Laptop-friendly orientation and configuration when the MHL connectivity to the Laptop Dock is triggered. Hopefully that Android 5 will feature optimized MHL functionality also, perhaps even enabling to instantly switch to a full Chrome OS like productivity state when the MHL to Laptop Dock is detected. MHL also demonstrates a couple of important HDMI sticks from Dell and from Roku which feature MHL support, making HDMI Sticks easy to use and clutter-free, automatically powered by the TV itself and running the full Productivity Suite or the Entertainment Functions directly on the HDMI Stick. Now with MHL 3.0, MHL supports up to 600mbit/s on the USB Host direction, something that I have been looking forward to since I started video-blogging about MHL in 2011. The potential here is to accelerate the adoption of ARM Devices for powering productivity.
Mozilla Principal Evangelist Tristan Nitot shows the latest Firefox OS devices that were launched at Mobile World Congress with Alcatel One Touch, LG, ZTE and Huawei. They even show a $25 phone running on the entry-level ARM Cortex-A5 smartphone SoC from Spreadtrum.
Archos presents their entry-level music enthusiasts phone, powered by the Mediatek MT6572 dual-core 1.3GHz ARM Cortex-A7 processor. 4-inch IPS display with a 800x480pixel resolution, 4GB of internal storage plus a microSD card slot, Wi-Fi, HSPA+, Bluetooth 3.0, and a 1400mAh battery. This phone is released now for 110€ in Europe. You can find out more about it here: http://www.archos.com/gb/products/smartphones/titanium/archos_40btitanium/index.html
P2i is a maker of liquid repelling coating for electronic devices. P2i’s nanocoating doesn’t absorb water but rather it repells water and makes whatever it is covering feel dry. P2i’s nanocoating is 1,000 times thinner then human hair. P2i’s nanocoating is based upon military technology. P2i offers coatings that protect against submersion and splashes. P2i will begin launching their technology later in 2014. P2i’s coating could in theory add only 1 dollar in cost to whatever device it is being added to.
Interchangeable into different back-cases and front-cases for a range of phones, OAXIS presents their InkCase Lite that gets its data from any smartphone over Bluetooth. OAXIS develops an SDK for Android apps to send data from the main LCD or AMOLED display to the secondary OAXIS E Ink display. You can for example read the web articles on your Smartphone’s E Ink back-cover, read an E-book on the E Ink, read your RSS feeds on E Ink and more.
