Anandtech tests Qualcomm Krait S4 MSM8960, it’s super fast!

Posted by Charbax – February 22, 2012
Category: Smartphones, Qualcomm, Android

Anandtech got their hands on the 28nm Qualcomm S4 Krait MSM8960 Dual-core 1.5Ghz reference development platform running Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich and they put it through some benchmark tests posted here. It looks to be extremely fast! Consider benchmarks aren’t always relevant nor reliable to measure performance, some setups can be more optimized to look better on benchmark. Actual in-app and in-use performance is what counts and can be hard to measure. This new Qualcomm 28nm processor looks awesome though, look forward to lots more Qualcomm S4 Krait MSM8960 video-coverage here on ARMdevices.net this coming week as plenty of new phones and tablets are likely to be shown using this processor at Mobile World Congress!

You can see a couple of my MSM8960 videos filmed last month at CES:
Lenovo IdeaTab S2110, Android ICS Qualcomm Krait MSM8960 Tablet with Keyboard Dock
Qualcomm S4 MSM8960 Tablet Gaming performance

Source: anandtech.com

Related articles

Huawei D1 Q Diamond Series teased

Posted by Charbax – February 18, 2012
Category: Smartphones, HiSilicon, MWC, Android

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

Related articles

Renesas MP5232 1.5Ghz Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 released!

Posted by Charbax – February 17, 2012
Category: Tablets, Smartphones, Renesas, Android

Here’s the press release:

TOKYO, Japan, February 15, 2012 — Renesas Electronics Corporation and its subsidiary, Renesas Mobile Corporation, a leading supplier of advanced cellular semiconductor solutions and platforms, today announced the availability of the MP5232, the first single-chip, high-performance, scalable smartphone platform optimised to address the US$150-300 range device market. The MP5232 platform is designed to enable OEMs to accelerate the creation and delivery of high volume LTE/HSPA+ capable smartphones, tablets and mobile Internet devices the industry requires to deliver the full potential of LTE.

The MP5232 platform sets a new benchmark in terms of levels of integration and performance for fully featured high-volume LTE devices. At its heart, the Renesas Mobile modem, deployed in over two billion devices to date, delivers the industry’s highest throughput and low power multi-mode FDD and TDD-LTE Category 4 capabilities. Combined with a state-of-the-art application processor the platform delivers a no-compromise user experience with multi-core computing power, industry-leading graphics, video and imaging capabilities. The platform also includes advanced RF transceivers, power management and audio solutions. This highly integrated smartphone platform is delivered fully tested and certified to enable customers to bring new generations of fully-featured LTE/HSPA+ smartphones to market in as little as six to nine months.

“We are seeing a number of US$600+ LTE super phone devices being launched in the market, but the industry needs a wider penetration of LTE devices for the business case for LTE to pay off,” commented Jean-Marie Rolland, CTO and Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Renesas Mobile Corporation. “The MP5232 platform represents a new category of mobile platform optimised to increase the number of fully-featured, LTE high volume smartphones in the market. By integrating high performing, proven technologies the platform offers a low risk path for device manufacturers to create high volume, premium capability LTE multi-mode products for multiple market segments quickly and effectively, without having to make any compromises in terms of features or user experience.”

“The whole mobile industry is undoubtedly committed to LTE as the technology of choice for 4G services. However, it becomes increasingly challenging adding LTE to an already packed mobile devices that are required to support different legacy modes and bands,” said Malik Saadi, Principal Analyst, Informa Telecoms and Media. “In order to achieve global economies, vendors are keen to offer LTE multiband and multimode devices capable of roaming across different networks and regions, without compromising price, user experience, form factor, or power consumption.”

Renesas Mobile has brought its extensive consumer electronics industry expertise to the development of the platform, ensuring that the MP5232 benefits from the latest process technologies, methodologies and multimedia capabilities. The resulting platform is smarter by design with the lowest possible platform cost compared to current generation chipsets and an extremely high level of integration. In addition, the platform benefits from a unique modem architecture designed to consume the lowest possible power. Scalability and flexibility are baked in, allowing OEMs to create devices that address multiple price points and segments with minimal development time and maximum hardware and software reuse. Certified and proven technologies ensure that development, certification and maintenance costs are reduced.

Based on the Renesas Mobile’s state-of-the-art application processor technology, the MP5232 platform delivers a no-compromise user experience with 1.5GHz dual-core computing power, industry-leading graphics, video and imaging capabilities. The platform supports differentiating features including multi-camera and multi-display support, full HD 1080p multi-format video encoding/decoding, stereoscopic 3D (S3D) video and advanced graphics to deliver a console-like gaming experiences and engaging user interfaces.

Renesas Mobile consulting and support services leverage the company’s extensive system and production expertise to provide assistance at all stages of implementation, from design through to production. This support significantly reduces not only development time, but also production tuning and test time.

Availability
Samples of the MP5232 platform are available Q1 2012 to lead OEM’s in the form of reference designs together with supporting documentation, software and hardware. Pricing is available on request.

Related articles

Some of my expectations for Mobile World Congress

Posted by Charbax – 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?

Archos sells more tablets than Asus and Acer, has Europe’s number one sub-400€ tablet market share

Posted by Charbax – February 16, 2012
Category: Tablets, Rockchip, Texas Instruments, Archos, Android

Archos worldwide revenues increased 106% in 2011 compared to 2010. For the tablet sales in Europe, Archos is the second biggest tablet maker tied to Samsung. For the sub-400€ tablet market in Europe, Archos is the number one. Archos yearly tablet sales in Asia has exploded 464% going from 4,4M€ to 24,9M€ in revenue.

Think about it for a second. Archos is a 250-employee company based in Paris, and they are the European leader for the sub-400€ tablet market, they are virtually tied with the Samsung tablet sales in Europe and they are far in front of giants like Asus, Acer, Motorola, Toshiba, LG, Huawei, ZTE, HTC tablet sales in Europe.

Archos revenue from US sales “only” increased 57% year/year from 18,2M to 28,6M, my theory is because Archos has to prioritize where to spend their cash for production and distribution. Just as the Samsung Galaxy S2, Galaxy Note were released in Europe and Asia before the USA, Archos also has to choose to prioritize shipments to the European and Asian market, some markets also where Archos may be able to extract larger margins and satisfy resellers more evenly (a US reseller constantly having to be out of stock gets angry..). Over the past 3-4 months, monitoring the forums at http://forum.archosfans.com one can see hundreds of messages of American consumers being somewhat dissapointed not being able to buy the latest Archos G9 series of tablets, and due to Texas Instruments OMAP4460 1.5Ghz Processor being delayed, Archos can only really start shipping that promised 1.5Ghz tablet speed since recently. Also to consider, Archos has yet to annonce a 3G/4G/LTE USB Stick carrier for the US market, as the US market isn’t compatible with the rest of the worlds open unlocked 3G/HSPA+ SIM card USB stick system (I do believe some carrier, at least an MVNO should soon be allowing Archos provide a USB stick compatible with their network).

Consider this, Archos is a 250-employee company, with currently their record yearly revenue at 171,4 Million Euros ($224.669 Million). Apple has 60400 employees and a 2011 revenue of $108.249 billion. That means Archos makes 481 times less revenue than Apple. Yet, Archos manages to be second largest tablet seller in Europe behind Apple and tied with Samsung.

My theory is that if/when a company like Archos can get access to more cash, they can increase the mass production of their products and I think Archos has no problems selling out of all of their inventory, pretty much regardless of the worldwide region. The likely upcoming Socialist French President Francois Hollande (likely to be elected April 2012 instead of Nicolas Sarkozy) can make it a National priority to use State cash to invest in promising high-tech companies like Archos, France can heavily and rapidly invest in Archos to help Archos grab even more worldwide market share in a tablet market analysts predict to more than double again in 2012 compared to 2011. More investments can create a situation where Archos can expand R&D and Marketing/Sales efforts in Paris, thus upgrading firmwares even faster, developing new hardware skews faster, optimizing manufacturing and BOM techniques faster, something Archos can use to increase the value for money even faster making it even easier to sell all stock regardless of volume produced. With significantly more cash for more production, faster R&D, I believe Archos can grow and be the French high-tech company to seriously compete with Apple worldwide.

The Android tablet market has exploded in 2011. I believe the daily Android tablets activations worldwide has now overtaken the iPad2. The regular stack of analysts will only demonstrate that when they estimate Q1 2012 tablet sales in early April. I base my estimation on the fact most major latest Android tablets were released not before December 2011 (Archos G9, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, Motorola XyBoard, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, etc), thus counting since December 2011 (and not October 2011 as the latest analysts have) positions Android tablets even more favorably against the iPad2. If you count the Samsung Galaxy Note as a tablet (which most analysts aren’t), it’s even more obvious that Android tablets daily activations have overtaken the iPad.

With excellent value for money in Archos ICS-capable tablets, such as the $279 Archos 101 G9 Turbo 1.5Ghz, the $229 Arnova 9 G2, the $199 Archos 70b Internet Tablet and the $149 Arnova 7b G2, all of them imminently fully running Ice Cream Sandwich, (all those are MSRP prices, street prices can be 20-30% lower than MSRP with volume) I believe Archos is well positioned to continue their growth in tablet market share. It’d be awesome to see Archos find the time to also provide an OMAP4460 1.5Ghz 7″ Kindle Fire killer (at around $249) and a 5″ Galaxy Note killer (at around $199) tablet with USB 3G/4G/LTE stick support as my favorite tablet sizes are 7″ jacket pocket sized and 5″ pants pocket sized.

Revenue for the fourth quarter 2011

In M€ non audited Q4
2011		 Q4
2010		 Var
(M€)		 Var
(%)
EUROPE 46,3 24,6 21,7 88%
ASIA 8,7 2,2 6,5 300%
USA 10,2 8,8 1,3 15%
TOTAL 65,2 35,6 29,6 83%

 

Total revenue for 2011

In M€ non audited 2011 2010 Var
(M€)		 Var
(%)
EUROPE 117,9 60,7 57,2 94%
ASIA 24,9 4,4 20,5 464%
USA 28,6 18,2 10,4 57%
TOTAL 171,4 83,3 88,1 106%

 

Yearly revenue (Million €)

2009 : 57,9 ($76M)
2010 : 83,3 ($109.5M)
2011 : 171,4 ($224.7M)

Source: Archos Q4 2011 earnings press release on abcbourse.com, boursier.com, easybourse.com and investir.fr

MediaTek MT6575 single-core ARM Cortex-A9 launched!

Posted by Charbax – February 14, 2012
Category: Smartphones, MediaTek, Android

Here’s the third generation MediaTek ARM Processor for low-cost Android phones! This can make the sub-$100 Android phones (no contract, not subsidized) better than the performance of a Nexus One. With support for dual-SIMs, qHD displays, 8MP camera, 720p video playback/recording, 3G/HSPA modem, SGX Series5 GPU (SGX540?). MediaTek claims:

MT6575 offers over 35% improvement for browser applications and over 20% improvement in graphics capabilities for gaming when compared to competitors’ best offerings in these segments.

I don’t know which competitors best offerings MediaTek is comparing with. Are they talking about AmLogic AML8726-M? ST-Ericsson U4500? Freescale i.MX6Solo?

The MT6575, delivered in 40nm CMOS technology, builds on the proven track record of the 2nd generation MT6573 platform – i.e., the platform that powers the Lenovo A60, China Unicom’s top selling handset in the sub‐RMB 1000 (approx. $160 USD) smartphone category.

The MT6575 is currently being incorporated into the latest smartphone offerings by many of MediaTek’s leading customers and the first smartphone models based on this new platform will hit the market in the first quarter of 2012.

Source: mediatek.com

Related articles

Google Wallet should use ARM TrustZone for 100% security

Posted by Charbax – February 13, 2012
Category: Opinions, ARM, Android

Google Wallet should rely on ARM TrustZone to make the pin code authentication system 100% secure. I filmed about ARM TrustZone a couple years ago. (I suggested this last May when Google Wallet was launched). The way ARM TrustZone works is to create a separate 100% trusted OS used just to enter the pin code on a hardware level separation, thus a little secure-mode light diode can light up when in it, the main purpose is to prevent software snoopers/fake logon screens etc. I expect something like this is enabled by the NXP PN65 security chip that Google has suggested using on the initial couple NFC-enabled phones on the market, but actually using ARM TrustZone is the best idea. I expect to see new ARM TrustZone enabled phones at Mobile World Congress in a couple weeks from now. Here’s a latest news item about ARM TrustZone for Mobile Wallets: ARM to add NFC mobile wallet support (NFCworld.com)

Related articles

Google Entertainment System (GES)

Posted by Charbax – February 10, 2012
Category: Set-top-boxes, Opinions, Google, Android, Google TV

Can be as cheap as $49 or $99, run a full ARM Powered Google TV with advanced 3D video-gaming. For example using Mali-T604 graphics, the graphics are comparable to an xbox360. It basically plays all Android games on the TV. Use a Bluetooth or RF Keyboard/mouse and you’ve got a full Chrome Desktop on your HDTV. It also includes the Android@Home RF protocol for connecting all your home appliances to the web. USB host for hard drives, becomes a WiFi hotspot, may also dock a White Spaces modem/router later so you share your unused home bandwidth to your whole neighborhood. Google can brand as much hardware they want, and I think they should, they just also make that hardware and software open source and let any other hardware makers sell it also.

You can discuss this and share it on Google+: https://plus.google.com/106075758531242552855/posts/YSLEdSYj5aj

Source: my logic/speculation and the Wall Street Journal

Windows 8 on ARM comes with Desktop (of course..)

Posted by Charbax – February 9, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Opinions, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Windows

There has been false rumors going around the web for the past 2-3 months, spread by Mary-Jo Foley of ZDnet and Paul Thurrot of winsupersite.com, that somehow Windows 8 on ARM wouldn’t be getting Desktop mode and full Desktop apps. Those rumors are wrong. In the following video, Microsoft demonstrates (again) how Windows 8 on ARM is going to come with a full Desktop mode with full Desktop apps such as Internet Explorer and Office.

The question of course is how does Microsoft plan to support more Desktop apps on ARM. For example, can we install a full Chrome browser on Windows 8 on ARM, how about apps like Photoshop and Ulead video studio? I expect Microsoft to have support for some recompiled desktop ARM apps in Windows store and support for PC over IP remote desktop for some x86 apps that can work smoothly over remote desktop which I expect Windows Azure to host as a cloud service.

To simplify compatibility, Microsoft is promoting the new Metro style HTML5 based apps system. Sure enough, Metro style apps all work on ARM and x86. But I am also sure that Microsoft carefully plans to also allow recompiled desktop apps on Windows 8 on ARM, they will for sure provide recompilation tools, specifications for use on PCoIP protocols, even partly use some parts of emulation and an ARM based Virtualization hypervisor.

Related articles

Archos 101 G9 Turbo 1.5Ghz for $279 at Woot.com today

Posted by Charbax – February 9, 2012
Category: Tablets, Texas Instruments, Archos, Android

It’s basically as powerful (or more powerful) than a Tegra3 tablet, but at nearly half the price. The normal MSRP price (for the 16GB 1.5Ghz version) is $399 so this is a good deal! It’ll support Ice Cream Sandwich through an official firmware update probably coming later this month. Support for US-compatible 3G/4G/LTE USB sticks is possibly also soon to be announced (depends just on US carriers or MVNO’s allowing Archos to use their networks I think).

Check it out at http://www.woot.com/

Found via: androidpolice.com

Chrome for Android now released

Posted by Charbax – February 7, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, Opinions, Google, Android

This confirms my expectation for Ice Cream Sandwich, that Chrome OS and Google TV are being merged with Android. I’ve been talking about it since my October 5th ICS predictions and way before in May 2011, January 2011 and February 2010.

A full Chrome Browser in Android can be the key to see the huge market for ARM Powered Laptops explode.

Look forward to having a full ChromeOS-like Laptop experience on your ARM Powered Android Tablet as soon as you plug a Keyboard dock to it. Look forward to having a full Chromebox-like experience when you connect the HDMI output of your Smartphone to a PC monitor or HDTV and use a Bluetooth or USB Host Keyboard and mouse.

The main question is now to test the performance of the full Chrome browser on Android, I’d like to see its performance on the Galaxy Nexus that has the high memory bandwidth OMAP4460 1.2Ghz and 1.5Ghz processor. I’d like to see its performance on OMAP4470 1.8Ghz, and Tegra3 1.3Ghz. I think the Chrome browser performance on those Android devices can now be faster than on a Netbook.

Mary Lou Jepsen presents at Google X event: Reading images from your brain’s visual memory

Posted by Charbax – February 7, 2012
Category: Displays, Google, Pixel Qi

At the new Google X event project, http://www.wesolveforx.com/, Pixel Qi CEO and founder Mary Lou Jepsen presents the idea of recording images from the human brains memory. With a bit of investment in the right technologies to record higher resolution signals from human brains, it can soon be possible to record images from human memory. As far as I understand the presentation, you can soon wear some special glasses that have small sensors on your retina, or some sensors on your head, then just think of some images and those can get recorded with high detail and precision. Seeing an image and thinking about that image is the same thing, our brains record every image that we see for ever with great detail and it is soon be possible to read from our brains visual memory.

I was on The White House Google+ Hangout yesterday

Posted by Charbax – February 3, 2012
Category: Opinions, Google

You can see my question on yesterday’s Hangout with The White House at 19 minutes and 36 seconds in followed by the answers of Steve Case, co-founder and former CEO of AOL and Aneesh Chopra, the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States. This was The White House’s second Google+ Hangout after the one 3 days before with President Barack Obama.

I think everyone in every company should have 20% time to work on their own ideas, and successful ideas can then get resources and funding required to create new startups (within or outside of the companies that can decide to fund those new ideas), create more and better jobs, give people time to create the big projects that can make the world a better place. Isn’t it time for 20% time to become bigger than just Google?

CES 2012 Highlights

Posted by Charbax – February 1, 2012
Category: Smart Glass, 4K UHD, Energy Harvesting, Top Video Lists, CES, Geniatech

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 Charbax – February 1, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Software, Exclusive videos, Texas Instruments, CES, Android, Windows

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 Charbax – February 1, 2012
Category: Set-top-boxes, Exclusive videos, CES, Google TV

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 Charbax – February 1, 2012
Category: Cameras, Exclusive videos, CES

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 Charbax – February 1, 2012
Category: Tablets, Software, Exclusive videos, Texas Instruments, CES, Android

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 Charbax – February 1, 2012
Category: Wearables, Sensors, Other, Exclusive videos, Freescale, CES

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 Charbax – February 1, 2012
Category: Other, Exclusive videos, Freescale, CES, Android

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.