Category: China Sourcing Fair

Eken 9.7″ for $130 and 7″ for $64

Posted by – April 15, 2012

Koho Tablets

Posted by – April 14, 2012

$110 7″ Boxchip Laptop (with capacitive screen) by Yones Toptech Co Ltd

Posted by – April 13, 2012

I’m in Shenzhen and Hong Kong this week!


I’m video-blogging 3 conferences this week, Shenzhen Electronics Fair (April 10-11th), China Sourcing Fair (April 12, 15th) and the HKTDC Electronics Fair (April 13-14, 16th). http://ARMdevices.net is the place to be, in the coming days I will post over a hundred videos of the latest upcoming Chinese Android devices, such as the coolest most affordable newest Android smartphones, tablets, ARM Powered laptops, set-top-boxes, e-readers, http://ARMdevices.net is the website to go to to get the most extensive coverage of the status of those technologies out of Shenzhen and Hong Kong China!

As last year, I’ll try to provide you with some behind the scenes videos showing how the factories, electronics markets, PCB design houses, that is, if I find some companies who invite me in for filming.

Let me know here in the comments of any awesome Shenzhen company that you think I should visit today, tomorrow, on the 9th, and let me know right here and to my email charbax@gmail.com if there are any awesome Chinese companies that you think I should video-blog in priority at the 3 upcoming conferences.

Here are some of the topics I expect to find here and film:

– MT6575 qHD 4.3″ ARM Cortex-A9 ICS smartphones, sub-$140? (also 3.5-5″ at variable pricing)
– MT6573 WVGA 3.5-5″ ARM11 ICS smartphones, sub-$80?
– RK2918 (other?) awesome ARM Powered laptops running ICS and Chrome for Android smoothly today, sub-$80?
– 9.7″ IPS (exact same screen as iPad1/2) Android ICS tablets, powerful Boxchip A10/Rk2918 and faster, sub-$120?
– Super smooth Boxchip A10, RK2918, AmLogic, i.MX53 ICS capacitive 7″ 1024×600 tablets, sub-$70?
– Smooth ST-Ericsson U8500 7″ 1024×600 ICS with built-in 3G, sub-$80?
– RK2918, AmLogic (other?) set-top-box, potentially Google TV ready, sub-$50?
More!

Of course it’ll be awesome to discover all those and much more. Things like flexible E Ink devices may be brewing somewhere in Shenzhen (to be shown already?), can I find some Pixel Qi devices? Which are the other affordable ICS Smartphone, Tablet platforms that are coming out of Shenzhen?

Let me know what you think is coming out of Shenzhen now. Let me know what you know is coming out of Shenzhen now. Give me company names, product names, component descriptions, send me everything and comment, thanks!

Latest Android Tablet/Smartphone Trends out of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, at 3 tradeshows


Following is my summary and my top-20 videos filmed during 10 days spent in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, at 3 tradeshows, filming, interviewing, uploading and posting 97 videos from the Shenzhen Electronics Fair (April 8-10th), China Sourcing Fair (April 12-15th) and HKTDC Electronics Fair (April 13-16th). With all those many videos posted, it can be hard for you to look through all of them to find out which are the best. That is why I now always summarise my best videos in a post in the Top Video Lists category. Many awesome new ARM Cortex-A9 tablets and cheap smartphones were shown.

New major ARM processor trends from the Shenzhen and Hong Kong tradeshows and markets:

Based on the overwhelming amount of new videos filmed related to those new processors, I added 3 new Chip provider categories to ARMdevices.net:

AmLogic, I filmed 9 new videos: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] (in order of most to least interesting), it’s a new low-cost Single-Core Cortex-A9 processor, clocked at 800Mhz for now, it can be found in the first sub-$100 Cortex-A9 tablets (resistive). The performance of these are likely better than 1Ghz Cortex-A8, but I will test this on my Kinstone AmLogic tablet sample (that I bought for $130 (850 renminbi)) and report in my upcoming second part video-review soon.

Mediatek, I filmed 10 new videos: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10] (in order of most to least interesting), this low-cost ARM9 processor seems to win big in the Chinese made emerging Android smartphones market. It’s absolutely amazing how cheap some of the Mediatek MTK6516 based Smartphones are being sold at, I bought a $87 FG8 Mediatek MTK6516 based Android Smartphone (that looks similar to a HTC Desire with its casing design). With Mediatek’s upgraded ARM11 3G-enabled MTK6573 Smartphone processor coming up, they may again make big wins in the Chinese smartphone market and bring sub-$100 maybe soon sub-$50 Android smartphones to the worldwide (not only emerging) mass market. Amazing.

NEC/Renesas, I filmed 7 new videos: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] (in order of most to least interesting), about 2 years ago, NEC Electronics and Renesas merged and out of that merger is coming this new NEC/Renesas EV2 ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-Core 533Mhz processor, the SoCs based on it are very low priced. Consider this to be the Japanese ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-Core entrant. Some of my reports claim that a nice capacitive tablet design based on this processor can be sold in bulk for as little as $110, $125 or $135. I bought a sample from Livall.cn for $171 which I will soon video-review further.

My top-20 best Shenzhen/HongKong April 2011 videos:

1. Archos 7c Home Tablet, RK2918 Capacitive, Archos are building amazing value tablets based on the Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz processor, with great capacitive touch screens, and they are bringing that to the definitely sub-$200 price range. As I am probably the biggest Archos fanboy in the world (I’m the admin and founder of http://forum.archosfans.com), I found it super fascinating to meet their expert staff and visit their Shenzhen headquarters.

2. Arnova 10 capacitive RK2918 to be released in May, at possibly $229 MSRP, for this 10.1″ capacitive Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz tablet, it’s hard to find better value 10″ tablet. Consider this kind of price is for a product that will be massively available at all retail stores in Europe and the USA, that price is the retail price, including all import taxes, fees, margins and everything. I believe Archos can make huge sales of their new Arnova line, especially now that they are able to bring ARM Cortex-A8 performance and nice capacitive screens to these entry-level priced devices.

3. Best of Shenzhen: $87 Android 3.5″ capacitive phone, MTK6516 FG8, that is my initial video review of my new FG8 $87 Android Smartphone. Mediatek MTK6516 based, with Android 2.2 Froyo and a 3.5″ HVGA Capacitive touch screen. This is amazing to see how cheap the Android smartphones are getting. Check back for my further video reviews coming up to show the performance and features of this cheap smartphone platform.

4. Shenzhen Behind the Scenes 1: Hongda Factory tour, a fascinating look inside of a small Shenzhen consumer electronics factory. That day they are manufacturing Intel Atom based netbooks, the day before they were making cheap Freescale i.MX51 based tablets for utopiacn.

5. Geniatech explains their AmLogic Cortex-A9 Single Core Set-top-box, an interview with the product manager on this sub-$100 AmLogic based set-top-box, watch this to get an idea how the potential upcoming Google TV on ARM based set-top-box makers are planning their global sub-$100 ARM Powered Set-top-box market entry.

6. $95 Cortex-A9 Tablet Review, Kinstone KS-UMD070A9, my initial review of this sub-$100 (bulk, resistive) ARM Cortex-A9 AmLogic 800Mhz Single Core tablet. I’ve got the review sample right here, so I will post a further full video review with benchmarks, video codec tests and other speed tests as soon as I get the time, check back for that.

7. Shenzhen Behind the Scenes 3: Richtechie.com, Freescale i.MX51/53 PCB designer, have a look behind the scenes at a PCB designer in Shenzhen. This PCB design house makes Freescale i.MX51 motherboards and they are working on their upcoming i.MX53 based PCB designs. They work with utopiacn.

8. Archos at the Shenzhen Electronics Fair, not much news in this video, it’s just interesting to see how Archos has a big booth at the Shenzhen Electronics Fair and uses it to do sales of their devices towards growing their sales in the Chinese mainland market.

9. Catwalk girls show Tablets and Smartphones in Shenzhen, just fun if you would like to see how the Tablets and Smartphones are the center of the trendy topic at the Shenzhen Electronics Fair.

10. NEC/Renesas EV2 ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-Core 533Mhz in videos with Livall.cn, Gaia, Ebot, Quality Industrial and TAL Electronics.

11. Rockchip Rk2918 in a Set-top-box, this could power a sub-$50 ARM Powered Google TV Set-top-box.

12. Honeycomb at the Rockchip booth (just keyrings for now..), once you get Honeycomb on the Rockchip RK2918 (could be happening by Google I/O on May 10-11th?), that could create the most explosive disruptive mix for the tablet industry. Also check-out my video of the Rockchip RK2918 based laptop which could also provide great value for an ARM Powered laptop running Chrome OS or Honeycomb.

13. Review: $120 Hero H2000 MTK6516 Android Froyo Powered iphone4-copy, my initial video review of my new $120 iphone4-clone that seems to run Android 2.2 super smoothly on this 3.5″ HVGA capacitive touch screen Mediatek MTK6516 based Hero H2000 smartphone. It’s probably manufactured by Karasnn.com.

14. Epudo Telechips Cortex-A8 tablets, the new Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz processor may be reaching stability for Android Gingerbread support. Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz Gingerbread also featured in videos with Digilink and huashiguang.

15. MID123.com Hummingbird Gingerbread Tablet, Gingerbread seems also to be reaching stability on the Samsung ARM Cortex-A8 Hummingbird processor platform.

16. Karasnn.com Hero Android MTK6516 Smartphones, interview with one of the potentially leading Mediatek MTK6516 based Android smartphone makers.

17. Meizu M9, $380 Android phone with Retina Display, interesting to see a 3.5″ Retina Display and the Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8 1Ghz processor in this new Meizu M9 phone. At $380 unlocked it’s expensive, but surely less expensive than an iPhone while having pretty similar hardware performance. Meizu has several stores in the Shenzhen electronics market area, they seem to be a relatively big smartphone brand in China.

18. Trend Technology (HK) Ltd does Android Tablets, discussion with an insider how to get those tablets made and distributed.

19. Performance test on AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 Android Set-top-box, testing the performance doing web browsing and more on this AmLogic development board. It seems fast!

20. Ramos booth tour, featuring Ramos W18, 9.7″ capacitive ARM Cortex-A9 AmLogic Android Tablet, Ramos has nice new products. Also check my videos of the Ramos T8Pro and Ramos V70/T11Pro/T11AD.

While in Shenzhen, I filmed following 5-part series of videos showing a bit of the Behind the Scenes of Shenzhen, the capital of the world for consumer electronics manufacturing:
1: Hongda Factory tour
2: utopiacn, Apad Android Tablet maker
3: Richtechie.com, Freescale i.MX51/53 PCB designer
4: Walking around the Shenzhen smartphone market
5: 3Gnet Factory Tour

Flying back from Hong Kong to Copenhagen using the excellent and cheap airline Qatar Aiways, they can provide free stop-over in Doha (that can be booked using their Multi-city online booking feature), also check these 3 videos that I filmed, they are not very tech related, but they show the atmosphere in an interesting Middle-eastern Golf country:
1. Arrived in Qatar
2. Walking the Souq Waqif, the Corniche and checking out the Doha skyscrapers at night
3. Desert Safari with Arabian Adventure Qatar (includes a fun Video-review of the NEC/Renesas based dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 533Mhz capacitive 7″ tablet from livall.cn)

Quality Industrial Technology Co Ltd shows NEC/Renesas Cortex-A9 Dual-Core tablet

Posted by – April 21, 2011

Quality Industrial has a $80 Rockchip Rk2818 resistive (+$15 for capacitive) and they are also showing a 1024×600 7″ capacitive 3G-enabled NEC/Renesas ARM Cortex-A9 533Mhz Dual-Core based tablet for about $200 a piece.

Shenzhen Sailing Digital Technology shows Marvell 166 powered Tablets


Tablets with GPS and cellphone function. With 3G the cost can be $184 in bulk. They also use the Telechips ARM Cortex-A8 for $130 without 3G. And they’ll use the next Marvell processor next month and Infotmic also.

Shenzhen Bly Electronics shows $60 VIA Wondermedia based laptops

Posted by – April 20, 2011

First seen a bit over a year ago such as in this video, the VIA ARM9 Wondermedia SoC and software solution is one of the platforms that makes it easy to make cheap laptops and tablets. Chrome OS software or Honeycomb seems to be needed for this type of $60 ARM Powered laptop solution to start to become viable solution. But probably also that faster processor with more RAM is also needed for full speed web browsing performance.

Dehoo shows a Skyviia based Android Set-top-box

Posted by – April 20, 2011

Here’s another new Skyviia ARM9 powered Android Set-top-box.

Video-review of the NEC/Renesas based dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 533Mhz capacitive 7″ tablet from livall.cn (desert safari and camel version)

Posted by – April 20, 2011

Since I know that you can’t wait for me to post more Android tablet videos, I decided to start filming my review in the desert while doing the desert safari and riding a camel, so you can further check out this cool new NEC/Renesas 533Mhz Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9 7″ capacitive tablet that I got from livall.cn. I’ll post my full real video-review once I am back in Copenhagen later today.

You can also watch these other Qatar videos that I filmed:
1. Arrived in Qatar
2. Walking the Souq Waqif, the Corniche and checking out the Doha skyscrapers at night
3. Desert Safari with Arabian Adventure Qatar (includes a fun Video-review of the NEC/Renesas based dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 533Mhz capacitive 7″ tablet from livall.cn)

JXD M1000 $40 PS One video games TV console emulator

Posted by – April 17, 2011

JXD provides this affordable games console based on the Actions G1000 processor for games emulation of several consoles up to Playstation One.

pipo.com.cn shows 8″ capacitive RK2918 tablet

Posted by – April 17, 2011

Rockchip RK2918 8″ capacitive tablet with 3G HSDPA.

Shenzhen Flying Technology shows AmLogic Cortex-A9 Tablet

Posted by – April 17, 2011

Another AmLogic Cortex-A9 Single Core tablet.

Shenzhen Honesty Electronics shows their Mediatek based Android smartphones

Posted by – April 17, 2011

Here are some Mediatek MTK6516 based cheap Android smartphones, some look like Droid X, others look like HTC Desire, Sony Ericsson X10 and more. They list the prices here for bulk orders with resistive and capacitive.

Rockchip Rk2918 is the first with Skype/QQ HD video chat hardware decode/encode

Posted by – April 17, 2011

Add a HD capable front-facing camera (1.3Mpix for 720p, 2Mpix for 1080p), and you can have HD video conferencing on a tablet, given also a HD resolution tablet screen, is this awesome? Rockchip says they are the first to hardware accelerate the decoding and encoding of HD video conferencing.

Honeycomb at the Rockchip booth (just keyrings for now..)

Posted by – April 16, 2011

The optimal thing for Rockchip would be that Google provide them with full Honeycomb source code access as soon as possible (if they haven’t already secretly gotten access to that source code), so that they can start working on optimizing the support for Honeycomb on their new RK2918 processor platform.

$125 Cortex-A9 Dual-Core 7″ Capacitive Tablet by Livall.cn

Posted by – April 16, 2011

NEC/Renesas 533Mhz Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9 based smooth looking capacitive tablet to be sold at $125 for bulk orders (of at least 1000 pieces). They let me buy one sample at $171, so let me know in the comments what you would like me to test in my upcoming video review of this NEC/Renesas Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9 based tablet.

Rockchip RK2918 powered Laptop

Posted by – April 16, 2011

OK this is cool. Put a Rockchip RK2918 in a laptop, add Honeycomb or Chrome OS on ARM, and you’ve got possibly one of the most affordable ARM Powered laptops right there.

Rockchip Rk2918 in a Set-top-box


Rockchip now provides a Set-top-box reference design based on their new RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 processor. This could power upcoming Google TV on ARM for cheap.

Alldo Cube $89 Cortex-A9 AmLogic 800Mhz Single Core 7″ resistive tablet

Posted by – April 16, 2011

The ARM Cortex-A9 AmLogic 800Mhz Single Core solution seems to be cheap.