Category: Tradeshows

Huawei D1 Q Diamond Series teased

Posted by – February 18, 2012

This one uses the new Huawei HiSilicon 1.5Ghz Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 and is also of only 6.68mm of thickness! Huawei seems to claim that their 1.5Ghz Quad-core processor is 2x faster than a Tegra3! Huawei has been manufacturing ARM Processors for a while, but I had only seen some slower Single-core HiSilicon 3716 ARM Cortex-A9 versions used for Set-top-boxes (such as in the Coupoint at $65 and Blue Times at $50), this is the first Huawei HiSilicon processor for Android Smartphones as far as I know! The Tegra3 runs at 1.3Ghz so if this one really runs at 1.5Ghz in Quad-core mode, it really might be the fastest processor yet! The question is how soon Huawei is going to be ready to release this one. It’s really awesome to see Huawei be so aggressive and innovative with their designs, it’s going to be very interesting to follow what types of price segments Huawei plans to aim this device at.

Check back for much more on this High-end Quad-core Huawei phone and on plenty moire Huawei Android devices to be shown at Mobile World Congress next week!

Source: xataka.com

Some of my expectations for Mobile World Congress

Posted by – February 17, 2012
Category: Opinions, MWC, Android, Windows

The MWC is the ARM conference, all the latest fastest newest ARM Processors are unveiled, all the biggest Smartphones of the year are demonstrated, the Smartphone and Carrier industry generating Trillions of dollars of yearly economic activity converges in Barcelona between February 26th and March 1st, expect the best video coverage to be posted right here on ARMdevices.net!

Please help me in getting well prepared for this event, send me an email with any tips for awesome things to be shown at MWC that you think that I should video-blog. You can also post here in the comments what your expectations are for MWC, interesting leaks and prediction articles to check out, please let me know what you think I should film in priority.

Here are some of the topics which I am looking forward to see:

– ARM Cortex-A15 demonstrated by Texas Instruments, Samsung. Maybe Nvidia shows Project Denver for the first time. ST-Ericsson may show it also. Does Qualcomm have an equivalent Mega-Krait on demo?

– Single-core ARM Cortex-A9 becomes a huge deal. I expect sub-$100 Cortex-A9 smartphones based on MediaTek MT6575 and ST-Ericsson U4500. It’s a big deal it brings performance to the sub-$100 unlocked smartphones market which can be hundreds of millions of phones per year.

– Samsung upgrades Galaxy Nexus up to OMAP4470 1.8Ghz. Samsung upgrades Galaxy S2 to Plus with latest Exynos4 at 32nm (Dual 1.5-1.8Ghz or Quad 1.2-1.5Ghz?). Samsung upgrades tablets with 1200p screens, newest Exynos, TI OMAP4470 and/or Nvidia Tegra3?

– Sony goes crazy on Android. Expect powerful and good looking Sony Xperia phones with latest screen and processor technology. Sony needs Android for its economic recovery. Expect a new range of Sony branded phones.

Panasonic launches its ARM Cortex-A9 processor for other than Set-top-box/HDTV use? Maybe they use their dual-core for a Lumix phone. For people who care about the smartphone camera this is going to be good. Real point-and-shoot optics with a full Android smartphone integrated.

– Google acquires Motorola. Motorola announces new OMAP4460 1.5Ghz and OMAP4470 1.8Ghz phones and tablets with ICS. Makes Lapdock hardware system an open standard. Lapdock devices are now more powerful at Laptop productivity use than the Intel Atom netbook. Does Google use MWC to launch its Google Entertainment System for cheap Android@Home Hubbing, ARM Powered Google TV platform upgrade, new level of support for ARM Powered Native Code video-games and advanced ARM Powered Google Desktop software.

– LG aims very high, showing stuff even better looking than their LG Spectrum phone. Using fastest processors and latest IPS LCD HD screen technology. There is talk of Optimus 3D2 and X3.

– Huawei positions themselves as potential top challenger for smartphone volume of sales throughout the world. Launches the awesome OMAP4460 super slim P1S at (I guess sub-$300 unlocked) and shows their new Diamond series with even faster processor and even larger screen (I guess at sub-$400 unlocked). Also, launches range of low-cost sub-$100 Android phones with up to approx 4″ screen sizes and single-core ARM Cortex-A9 processing, thus near Galaxy S2 performance at sub-$100 unlocked pricing. Huawei wants to be one of the best value for price makers worldwide.

– ZTE does it like Huawei, cheap, good value, innondates the market with mid-range sub-$200 unlocked and sub-$100 low-cost.

– Microsoft shows off Windows 8 on ARM Tablets/Laptops convertibles, for the first time, journalists are allowed to actually play with it. They probably are going to give a thousand Windows 8 on ARM Tablets to developers at the conference. Expect Samsung, HTC, ZTE, Nokia to show Windows 8 on ARM Tablets/Laptops Convertibles. Microsoft announces plan to acquire Nokia.

Toshiba ramps up their tablets. Toshiba shows a successor to the AC100 ARM Powered Laptop, this time OMAP4470 1.8Ghz or Tegra3, ICS with an awesome Chrome for Android support.

– HTC shows Tegra3 and Qualcomm Krait stuff. May expand Wildfire to approx 4″ screen sizes and Single-core ARM Cortex-A9 level of performance for the sub-$200 unlocked smartphones market.

– Fujitsu joins the Android market with a new slim Tegra3 smartphone.

– For expensive high-end, 720p is the new standard for smartphones and 1200p is the new standard for tablets.

What do you expect from MWC?

CES 2012 Highlights

Posted by – February 1, 2012

I filmed 92 videos at CES 2012. Here are some of my Highlights:

1. The Motorola Kopin Golden-i Headmounted computer for wearable computing

Being able to borrow this setup for the past 2 months, among many other that I’ve been able to meet and demonstrate it to, this allowed me to meet Google co-founder Sergey Brin at CES 2012, Sebastian Thrun (Google X, Stanford Artificial Intelligence, Udacity, Inventor of the Google Self-driving Car) and Steve Lee (Manager of Google Maps for Mobile, Latitude and Google X), I was speaking with them for about 5 minutes!


Thanks Robert Scoble for taking this photo! I interviewed Robert Scoble about his CES impressions a few minutes earlier.

I am really lucky to be one of the first few people in the world to be able experiment with this headmounted computer (they have manufactured less than 250 prototypes thus far). That caught the attention of Google co-founder Sergey Brin who approached me and asked me what it was! I got them to try some of the headmounted voice command software demos in the headset, talk about my $199 Archos 70b Internet Tablet with Honeycomb (and ICS later) which Archos claims to have nearly the third largest worldwide tablet market share with their 2 million Android tablets sold in 2011 (Sergey Brin knows Archos perfectly well it seems, Archos has been making Android tablets for over 2 years but has only gotten fully Google certified since using Honeycomb on their G9 tablet generation released 3 months ago).

Sergey Brin and his colleagues asked me if I thought headmounted monocular wearable computing was going to be big, I said yes of course. I consider it can be like the dashboard for ones life. Positionned a bit below the eye, it can provide augmented informations about your surroundings, display your emails, social media updates, search news alerts, chat messages and more, without the need to pull out your phone or tablet from your pocket. Of course for the mass market consumer audience, it needs to be nearly as compact as a bluetooth headset with a retractable micro-display and a priced below $500 to become an accessory interfacing by bluetooth to any Android phone or tablet. I expect this to start becoming huge later this year or soon after. Kopin is working with Motorola Solutions to mass manufacture an industrial version and they want to work on consumer oriented uses. I also expect wearable computing to become huge in the form of intelligent Android wrist watches such as the DVIP Phaeton and the I’m Watch (Casio GB 6900 G-Shock, Sony-Ericsson Liveview and Motorola Moto ACTV also qualify as early attempts)

I wish I had thought to suggest to Sergey Brin and his team when they asked me what was my CES highlight, that I could guide them 20 meters around the corner of the Samsung booth to the Texas Instruments booth that was showing the OMAP5 development kit and the $30 BOM OMAP4 Always Innovating HDMI Stick (similar to the more expensively priced FXI Tech Exynos 4 stick), instead I could only think of telling them that I liked the $75 Eken AllWinner 7″ ICS tablet in the Hilton China hall which was so far away from Central Hall they probably didn’t spend the time to go there.

2. E Ink provided me with a new demonstration of their latest technology in my E Ink On Every Smart Surface video. Featuring the 300DPI 11.5″ E Ink screen, new high-speed stylus on E Ink demos (with the right collaborative text editing and collaborative stylus annotations software, this could be huge!), on devices like the Eton Rukus, E Ink for digital signage. All your local supermarkets may soon be using E Ink for showing prices in stores.

3. All Camcorder companies seem to wake up to the idea of including low power high performance WiFi streaming and upload into consumer camcorders. See my videos of the Sony Bloggie Live, Toshiba Camileo Air10, Canon HF M52. This is awesome! WiFi in camcorders has been on my wishlist of camcorder features since my post of August 2nd 2008 and my updated camcorder wish-list post of January 31st 2010. Finally the camcorder makers are waking up and differentiating! There still are a bunch of features that I would like from these camcorders. High-quality wireless (multi-Bluetooth) and wired external microphones support. 1080p recording and at the same time live WiFi video streaming, Google+ Hangouts live streaming video upload. Automatic resumable YouTube WiFi upload in between takes. Touch screens to edit Titles, Descriptions, Tags right from the camcorder. WiFi upload must be as fast as using a Laptop. But for sure they are on the right track! I’m looking forward to Panasonic’s Sanyo HD3000 level entry into this market, hopefully with all these WiFi features and more!

4. Ice Cream Sandwich on every device! On Rockchip (2, 3), Telechips (2) , AmLogic (2, 3, 4 ) (ICS on AmLogic Set-top-box by Geniatech), Boxchip AllWinner A10 (Cortex-A8), ST Ericsson U8500 (2)

5. Pixel Qi shows latest status. 10.1″ 1280×800 and 7″ 800×480 in mass production, a lot of design wins, big brand products to be announced soon.

6. OLPC XO-3 shown for the first time!, OLPC does it again, this time revolutionizing the use of tablets for education, pricing it below $100 for mass orders, building it sturdy, unbreakable, sunlight readable with a 8″ Pixel Qi, with a solar charger in the screen cover.

7. ARM Powered Google TV has finally been launched! Featuring solutions shown using the Marvell Armada 1500 platform, Mediatek has an ARM Processor for it, LG showed their new ARM Powered Google TV L9 Processor and platform. Sony shows their second generation Google TV, now ARM Powered for cheaper/better and more revolutionary and awesome! I expect we’ll hear about Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, Sharp, Toshiba all will announce ARM Powered Google TV within months from now. By the half of 2012, most new HDTVs will come with ARM Powered Google TV built-in by default! I also expect as soon as the ARM Powered Google TV software is open sourced that we’ll see it run on cheaper ARM Processors that don’t do 1080p60fps, overlays, IR blaster and HDMI input.

8. 4K HDTVs are comming! Yeah! 4K 55″ HDTVs are always the most awesome demonstrations at trade shows and have been for the past 3-4 years! The arguments by supposed home theater experts that 4K is not usable in living rooms are not true! 4K is fantastic, fenomenal technology to have in the home! Just put your 8 megapixel pictures on an SD card, see those pictures on that 4K 55″ HDTV, and be ready to faint, standing up close to the screen the quality is spectacular. Consumers and even professional photographers never get to see the full detail and resolution of their high megapixel photography. Unless you zoom in on pictures, you never get to see more than 2 megapixel of your pictures quality! With a 4K screen in your living room and that you can use as office desktop monitor, the 4K screens are going to be revolutionary. At CES 2012, Sharp claims their 4K-ICC 55″ TV is to be mass manufactured and launched at consumer oriented pricing later this year! Samsung showed a totally awesome 70″ 4K TV. I have a feeling that Sharp, Toshiba, Samsung and others are just about to launch 4K at hopefully way below $10 thousand, hopefully below $2000 soon! If it’s going to be $1999, I recommend everyone save money to get one. As source, all Hollywood movies are already digitized to 4K and that can fit on a regular Blu-ray disc, streamed from YouTube 4K or over 50 4K movies can fit on a 2TB hard drive.

9. Panasonic launches consumer priced HC X900M camcorder with 4K video sensor! But still a 1080p engine for now. The 4K consumer priced camcorders must be very close! My JVC GC-PX10 also has a 4K video sensor! But mine with its Falconbrid 4K processor also is for now only setup to record it to a 1080p (up to 36mbitps) file.

10. Acer shows 10.1″ Iconia Tab A700 1920×1200 Tablet. Purely amazing super high resolution tablet displays and Ice Cream Sandwich works amazingly smoothly on it! Retina Tablet resolution has been achieved! Toshiba seems to want to do lots of weirdly sized HD tablets also.

11. Lenovo shows Tablet Dock MSM8960 Qualcomm Krait Tablet convertible. Qualcomm shows MSM8960 for gaming.

12. iRiver Kibot, the small new robots are cool, basic stuff for now. Within 10-15 years we’ll be having ARM Powered Robots take care of everything in our homes, washing dishes, take out the trash, cook the food, everything else!

13. 55″ OLED screens shown by Samsung and LG. Those are cool for sure! But I expect they are way more expensive to manufacture than 4K LCD screens of the same size today.

14. Freescale launches 2 new skews of their ARM Cortex-A9 i.MX6 processor platform (for E-readers and certain In-Car infotainment segments).

15. New Samsung Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note clones are invading China! Kente shows some examples. Consider that excellent 4.3″ capacitive WVGA 3G-ready Android phones are being sold below $100 in China by now. Check back here on ARMdevices.net during the next few months for a lot of news and coverage on these. Also a cheap new Android phone design by ZTE.

16. Virtualization on Android for Enterprise by VMware, smooth remote desktopping PCoIP protocol on OMAP4 shown by Teradici.

16. LG Spectrum, nice 4.5″ 1280×800 IPS-LCD LTE Android phone! LG for sure plans to play an always bigger role in the high-end smartphones market.

17. The Huawei Ascend P1 and P1 S are awesome looking OMAP4460 1.5Ghz 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus 6.65mm thinnest Smartphone in the world. I think Huawei plans to be a huge player in the worldwide smartphones market. Look for this and much more awesome Huawei Android Smartphones coming out. Their main advantage may be their aggresively competitive pricing. If this phone is sold for $299 unlocked, who wouldn’t buy it?

18. I did my first live Google+ Hangouts On Air from CES, but because of the interference I couldn’t reliably do it at the CES show floor with my headmounted augmented video-blogging system. But I did it every morning on my way between my hotels and the CES showfloor in my series of CES 2012 Monorail Hangouts: 1, 2, 3. I hope to soon do much more impressive things with the Google+ Hangouts On Air features! Expect quality live and on-demand Hangout entertainment from my website at the level of the Hangouts with Barack Obama and Desmond Tutu!

Teradici PCoIP, optimized remote desktop on TI’s OMAP4460

Posted by – February 1, 2012

Teradici is doing software optimization using the PCoIP (PC-over-IP) protocol to run a full x86 desktop remotely over the Internet onto an OMAP4460 device. Here in this demo remotely using an x86 desktop that is over 2000 miles away (and considering that Internet connections at trade shows can be unreliable).

ARM Powered Sony Google TV NSZ-GS7 launched

Posted by – February 1, 2012

Sony is launching this cheaper and better ARM Powered Google TV Set-top-box, it may be using the new Dual-core Marvell Armada 1500 ARM Processor, let me know in the comments if you know which ARM Processor Sony is using.

Sony Bloggie Live, WiFi-upload pocket camcorder

Posted by – February 1, 2012

This is the new Sony Bloggie Live, with WiFi-upload streaming to Qik, on-demand video uploads directly to YouTube and more.

Texas Instruments shows latest Augmented Reality Tablet demos

Posted by – February 1, 2012

Using software from Total Immersion and Metaio, Texas Instruments is showing their latest status of hardware acceleration on the DSP, Still Image Co-processing for Augmented Reality applications, games, navigation and more.

The Libri by BlueLibris, wearable connected health sensor

Posted by – February 1, 2012

The Libri by BlueLibris uses the Freescale Xtrensic MMA9550 solution, the Freescale Xtrinsic MAG3110 Magnetometer and the Xtrinsic MPL3115A2 Pressure Sensor, fusing together all the sensor data for Activity Monitoring, Voice Monitoring, TeleHealth Gateway, Location, Fall Detection and more. They say it’s the worlds smallest, simplest 3G speaker phone.

Diesel Dogs Smart Weights

Posted by – February 1, 2012

Diesel Dogs develops Bluetooth Smart Weights, records the movements of weights into an Android application, to be used for people working out and who want to try to optimize their workout. They were invited by Freescale to exhibit at CES 2012 as being in the top-10 winners of the Freescale Third Annual Bluetooth Innovation World Cup.

Monbaby Baby Health Monitor

Posted by – February 1, 2012

Remnart Technologies presents the Baby Health Monitor, they want to use Freescale sensors and low energy Bluetooth to make it thin and light enough to be put on the wrist of babies to monitor their health signals in realtime. Monbaby was also in the top-10 at the Third Annual Freescale Bluetooth Innovation World Cup.

NDS Snowflake Set-top-box user interface demo

Posted by – January 25, 2012

Using the AmLogic single-core ARM Cortex-A9 with Mali-400 graphics, here is a showcase of the NDS Snowflake Set-top-box user interface on top of Android. NDS recently won the TV Innovation Award for this ARM Powered Set-top-box user interface.

Fortrend capacitive touch panel modules

Posted by – January 25, 2012

Fortrend of Taiwan makes capacitive touch panels, here they are showing the different sizes and types up to 12.1″ dual-touch.

Lenovo SmartTV K91 55″ Android ICS TV

Posted by – January 25, 2012

Using the Qualcomm APQ8060 Dual-core 1.5Ghz processor, Lenovo is releasing the Ice Cream Sandwich 55″ HDTV in China.

UbiDuo by sComm, communication device for deaf and hard of hearing

Posted by – January 25, 2012

This ARM Powered device is for deaf and hard of hearing people to communicate with hearing people to interact with each other face-to-face.

Orchard Inc Toughlet, Pixel Qi tablet for commercial ruggedized outdoor use

Posted by – January 24, 2012

Orchard Inc raised $4 Million for a tablet startup, here showing their titanium aluminium enclosure design, water resistant, unbreakable, with Pixel Qi and OMAP4 Powered Android, designed for outdoor use.

Tobii eye tracking demo

Posted by – January 24, 2012

Tobii shows their latest eye tracking technology in the form of a thick bunch of cameras and detectors to be placed under a screen, after calibration, it can detect where you are looking on the screen, providing a new type of user interface for computing. Do you think we’ll soon have this technology automatically-calibrated and into all computer screens, into all smartphones and tablets also?

Obigo Browser on TV, Smartphone, Tablet and more

Posted by – January 24, 2012

Obigo shows their web browser running on a smart TV, on a Smartphone, Tablet and more. Their software solution on Android also enables to customize home replacements for Android based on HTML5.

AQ Corporation NFC solutions

Posted by – January 24, 2012

AQ Corporation shows some of their latest NFC solutions for tablets, they sell tablets which stores can buy to receive NFC payments in store.

HuinTech touch panel mouse

Posted by – January 24, 2012

Huintech presents their latest RF based touchpointer device, to use for presentations, for putting mouse functions and certain controls in a remote.

Lenovo IdeaTab S2110, Android ICS Qualcomm Krait MSM8960 Tablet with Keyboard Dock

Posted by – January 21, 2012

Lenovo showed a prototype of their next generation Android tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich on the 1.5Ghz Dual-core Qualcomm MSM8960 Krait processor and supporting a keyboard dock that looks similar to the Asus Transformer Prime.