As I am going to be video-blogging the latest advances in Linux on ARM at the Linaro Connect Hong Kong conference next week, I just landed a few days early so that I can now again video-blog the latest news out of Shenzhen. It’s appropriate for me to video-blog the latest news in Shenzhen, monthly don’t you think? In this video, I got the Zopo staff at the Zopo store on Hua Qiang Bei Shenzhen to update the firmware on my Zopo ZP100 MT6575 ARM Cortex-A9 based phone because I had a hard time figuring out how to do it looking at the Chinese-only http://bbs.zopomobile.com (see how they talk on that forum about a re-upload onto Youku of my original Zopo ZP100 video) ICS seems to be extremely smooth on the MediaTek MT6575, I’m going to ask Zopo in the days to come what they expect to do about reaching the European, US markets and worldwide with this phone. Check back in the days to come for the latest news from Shenzhen as I’m hearing about an upcoming Dual-core MediaTek MT6577 to be in an upcoming Huawei 4.5″ low cost super phone (the rumor is 1499rmb = $237), the i.MX6 is being worked on by Shenzhen based PCB design houses, Rockchip is very close to take large market share for tablets out of Shenzhen with their new Dual-core RK3066 platform. Check back on http://ARMdevices.net for a lot of new videos about those. Let me know in the comments what you would like me to film and do in Shenzhen. I have some big plans to finally do something about group buys (through reliable and trusted Shenzhen based device makers and sellers) and I plan to launch some new special features here on http://ARMdevices.net during the next days and weeks so check back.
Forbes: Display Industry status/history Interview
Check out this interview on Forbes.com with Sriram Peruvemba CMO at E Ink Holdings. Here are some quotes from the interview:
The big five in the LCD industry based on 2011 revenues are Samsung, LG, CMI, AUO and Sharp. It costs upwards of $1B to build a TV-class LCD factory in Asia. A state of the art Gen 10 LCD factory might cost upwards of $3B if built today. In the past few years, the industry has been more in the red than in the black. Margins in the display business tend to be razor thin, particularly in consumer applications.
So what makes LCDs rule? There is one spec that LCD has that beats every other technology, and when I mention this to a room full of engineers, they think I have crossed over to the dark side. This spec is called “price,” which is the most important spec for displays.
Take your favorite TV or mobile phone, the display is what catches your attention. A significant portion of the purchase decision for a TV, Monitor or GPS unit is based on the impression created by the display, yet the average consumer has no idea who made the display. Being an ingredient display brand in the consumer electronics industry is very tough, I can tell you this from personal experience.
FXI Cotton Candy availability status interview
boredatwork.com published this interview with FXI Tech about the status of shipments for their awesome Exynos4 powered HDMI stick product.
Something to do with FXI adding USB host to the design causing some of the delay. Hopefully they start shipping in Scandinavia this month, and to all other pre-orders during the summer. I’d like to see this form factor mass manufactured and sold for around $69 retail and not $199. See the TI OMAP4 powered Always Innovating HDMI stick alternative where it’s said the BOM cost for such a platform may be as low as $30.
Source: booredatwork.com
Opera Mini 7 and Opera Mobile 12
Opera is being used by millions of people worldwide. Here’s the latest in Opera Mobile browsers technology. Opera Mini provides Internet access to hundreds of millions of feature phone users throughout the developing world, emerging economies, worldwide, and Opera Mobile is likely the third party browser of choice for smartphones. As smartphones become cheaper and cheaper, feature phones may quickly get replaced by cheap smartphones, Opera mobile merges Mini and Mobile to provide server-side web page compression and fast rendering technologies for a growing number of users worldwide.
The Inevitable Convergence, Exynos 4412 getting too powerful for just being in a phone, SGS3 needs to use MHL for ICS+Chrome OS+Google TV
The new 32nm Exynos 4412 1.4Ghz Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 with Quad-core Mali-400 (probably cranked up at a higher frequency than before) launched by Samsung in the Galaxy S3 looks to be totally amazing. It may be one of the absolute fastest ARM Processors to date. That brings awesomely smooth and fast Android 4 ICS user interfaces on the gorgeous 4.8″ 1280×720 pentile Super AMOLED HD screen. And with advances in Android, new features using hardware acceleration, they’ll always find a way to put to use the extra performance. But if these newest ARM Processors now come with enough memory bandwidth to run a full Laptop as smoothly as using x86, if these newest ARM Processors can run 1080p Set-top-box user interfaces at 60fps on any 55″ HDTV, if these newest ARM Processors have amazing GPU power that can in theory run console quality games even on a 1080p HDMI, then why aren’t there accessories and docks to allow for that? Why didn’t Samsung announce a range of Laptop Docks and Google TV docks for the Galaxy S3?
Here’s my quick concept image for an MHL LapDock accessory that I’d like to see accessory makers sell on the market at $99-$149 depending on the quality/size, it should be similar to the Motorola LapDock 500 Pro but designed for MHL phones:
MHL enables a new market for LapDocks similar to the Motorola Atrix series, where you dock your smartphone and it powers your ARM Powered Chrome OS Ultrabook, Google TV Set-top-box and Home Console.
I think it is important to notice the huge leap in performance year/year of these latest and upcoming new ARM Processors. The new Exynos 4412 is nearly 2x more powerful than last year’s Exnoys 4210. Not just by the doubling of cores, that doesn’t actually double performance but more like increases it by 50% (at same frequency, and only for very multi-threaded tasks), the main thing is the smaller process node design, the increased memory bandwidth, cleverer memory bandwidth architecture also enabling a faster higher clock speed Mali-400 GPU. Basically what you are getting is 2x more performance for less power consumption, that’s pretty exciting and pretty kick-ass in my book. And we are not even yet arrived at the ARM Cortex-A15 which then again upgrades the performance even more!
Now all that is needed is for Google and the industry to merge Android, Chrome OS and Google TV. When you dock it in a Laptop Dock or Desktop Dock, it should switch to a full Chrome OS mode (or Ubuntu, not to forget Microsoft is welcome to add the Windows 8 app for $29.99 in the Google Play store. Or somewhat pre-install “Windows 8 mode” as a secured dual-boot when partnering with the smartphone maker). When you dock it to a Multimedia Dock it should switch to a full Google TV mode, maybe even with HDMI input and IR blaster if the Dock supports that, and also the new GPU is now near XboX 360 power even though it’s not yet the Mali-T604 and Mali-T658 which increases graphics even further next year.
The issue is Samsung and some others are maybe afraid to disrupt their own existing markets of selling Laptops, Chromebooks, Set-top-boxes and new 3DTVs with built-in Google TV, so maybe, just maybe, at the corporate headquarters of Samsung they fear the inevitable convergence. But if Samsung doesn’t want to promote the convergence that these new post-PC ARM processors enable, then competitors have a wide open door to use that for marketing. One little pocketable soon enough wearable device can now power all your productivity, content consumption and entertainment. The performance has arrived, it’s only a matter of someone deciding to start making, selling and marketing the new user interfaces that enable the full convergence.
