This is Nvidia’s next generation Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 implementation that will be clocked at the minimum at 1.2Ghz but could be clocked higher by the time they start shipping these, with 12x faster graphics compared to Tegra2, huge video decode power at something that might look like Quad-HD video decoding. In this video I try to launch some of the early demonstration apps, animations and games that Nvidia uses to showcase their Kal-El performance in that prototype tablet.
Hands-on with Nvidia Kal-El Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 1.2Ghz (or more) prototype tablet at Computex 2011
Posted by – June 1, 2011
Acer Iconia Smart, 4.8″ 1024×480 wide screen Android Smartphone
Posted by – June 1, 2011
Acer I think makes pretty cool Android phones that cover low end but also like this one pretty differentiated high-end in the Android smartphone space. This is the first time I see this aspect ratio in a 4.8″ capacitive LCD screen, nice.
Honeycomb is shown on the Intel Oak Trail Atom at Computex 2011
Posted by – June 1, 2011
Here I filmed a video with one of Intel’s software product managers who worked on porting Android Honeycomb over to the Intel Atom platform. Those reference tablets shown at Computex 2011, they are heavy, hot, fat, battery runtime is probably short while battery is much larger, some seem to run really slow through the UI, they are probably expensive. Though it’s interesting that after Google TV, Chromebook, Google is also not making it impossible for Intel to try to do whatever they can to try to keep up with change. I’ve tried to ask some Intel people if they plan to licence the ARM architechture, or/and to start manufacturing ARM Processors for Apple, Sony or others, and they seem to tell me that why not, could be possible, just rumors, but who knows..
Gigabyte Gsmart G1310, G1315 and G1317D Android phones launched
Posted by – June 1, 2011
Those are using the cheap Qualcomm MSM7225 platform with dual-sim card support for one 3G sim card and one 2G sim card. Thus this type of phone, that could start retailing at $220 unlocked or that could be sold for even cheaper locked on pre-paid plans could be great to be used as a combination of basic Android smartphone, Mifi, using a cheap 3G data sim card and at the same time being used as your basic phone for your cheap pre-paid phone number. Gigabyte are first launching these in some eastern european countries.
Texas Instruments OMAP4430 Memory Bandwidth, Desktop Computing performance
Posted by – May 31, 2011
They can do Android on the phone and at the same time output Ubuntu on a HDTV or Computer monitor. In this video, TI answers some of the questions regarding the OMAP4430’s memory bandwidth for desktop computing level of performance in web browsing and other apps as well as other details about the status of this platform for use to run a full desktop/laptop OS. TI also claims to have the best Flash support, doing up to 1080p Flash video in the Android browser just software based today on OMAP4430, and Flash 11 for Honeycomb coming out in August or September should be taking full use of GPU hardware acceleration providing even smoother Flash support. OMAP4460 is the platform that TI currently is using with Google for TI’s full Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich support working on fully optimizing hardware and software.
HD Video Conferencing on Texas Instruments OMAP4430
Posted by – May 31, 2011
Category: Tablets, Smartphones, Set-top-boxes, Exclusive videos, Texas Instruments, Computex, Android
Wow awesome. A few years ago I would film the HD video conferencing solutions that required $15 thousand setups (Lifesize, Sony Ipela, Cisco Telepresence..), now TI is showing HD video-conferencing that works on your next ARM Powered smartphone or tablet. Just connect your smartphone to your HDTV, use WiFi is available, but even over 3G and LTE, with just 512kbit/s you can do 720p video-conferencing on SIP or Skype, and with 1mbit/s upload or more you can even do 1080p video-conferencing using the latest OMAP4460 platform. This also can support up to 8 simultaneous videos. Sorry, but I am pretty much amazed. Soon enough, HD video-conferencing using just cheap ARM Powered devices will be a piece of cake.
Full Netflix support on Texas Instruments OMAP4430
Posted by – May 31, 2011
Texas Instruments supports the full required security features to support Netflix HD on an ARM Powered device. They are the first to showcase it.
Citadel 3D game on the OMAP4430
Posted by – May 31, 2011
Citadel is a very advanced 3D technology demo, it can be regarded as a way to benchmark the 3D performance of devices. So here it has been ported to the Texas Instruments OMAP4430 processor with SGX540 to showcase how advanced the 3D is that it can support.
VIA WonderMedia Prizm WM8710 ARM11 Gingerbread solution
Posted by – May 31, 2011
VIA’s subsidiary WonderMedia launches this new ARM11 platform for tablets, with a new much faster DSP for improved video playback, improved UI responsiveness, better graphics and 3D, the target still being to cheap low cost tablets which is a rapidly expanding market.
VIA WonderMedia SmartStream WiFi Direct to HDMI output
Posted by – May 31, 2011
VIA’s subsidiary WonderMedia is doing this ARM9 based platform to stream screen content to your HDTV wirelessly using WiFi Direct technology. It sounds like it ccould be a cheap way to wirelessly connect your Laptop, Tablet, even Smartphone to your HDTV without needing a cable. I wonder how WiFi Direct compresses stuff and how it manages high bitrate HD video, advanced 3D games and other such stuff.
Pixel Qi launches 10.1″ super thin 1280×800 screen
Posted by – May 31, 2011
Here’s a new comparison between Pixel Qi and the iPad followed by Mary Lou Jepsen’s status report on the latest Pixel Qi news, their first showing of the new 1280×800 thinner 10.1″ wide view screen.
MHL now in several phones at Computex 2011
Posted by – May 31, 2011
Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) is now presented in several of the newest coolest smartphones and Tablets, including the Samsung Galaxy S2, HTC Sensation, HTC Flyer, Samsung Infuse, HTC Evo 3D, HTC Evo View 4G and more are going to be released soon.
Asus Memo, worlds first 7″ Honeycomb, they make it 3D even
Posted by – May 31, 2011
Check out this awesome 7″ Honeycomb UI, they had to put a 1280×800 7″ screen to support the current Honeycomb software, that’s the first time I see such high pixel density in a 7″ screen. Honeycomb will be further customized for 7″ and smaller screens, as they will resize icons so they get to be big enough for smaller screens, and all kinds of other screen size optimizations that Google and their partners are working on. The Asus Mimic is a cool Bluetooth headset basically, but feels more like an external mobile phone. You can dial on your tablet and talk in the bluetooth phone. I really like the idea of improving the Bluetooth accessories to function with 7″ tablets that thus can stay in the jacket pocket when you receive calls or when you dial numbers. For some reason, Asus does not want to release this product with a normal 2D screen, they want to wait and ship it with this 3D parallax barrier 7″ IPS screen. Let’s hope that does not add too much cost, thickness and weight and other worse screen quality artifacts to this otherwise pretty awesome 1280×800 7″ screen experience.
Asus Padfone, put the phone in behind the tablet
Posted by – May 31, 2011
This is Asus new announcement. Put their phone in a slot behind the tablet. I have tried to ask some of their representatives if this means only the phone has a processor, or if both the phone and the tablet have the same Qualcomme Dual-core processor, some have told me it’s got two processors, but someone else told me they both share the same processor. Logically there is a HDMI output and a USB Host connector in there. Dos this make sense to you? Or does it make more sense to put your phone in the pocket and the tablet wherever else you want to have it and a full power ARM SoC in each. Maybe it’s just Asus who doesn’t really want to charge double the price for this combination but prefers to try to provide the processor-less tablet as a $200-$300 accessory. This may be their Atrix dock.
Asus Slider, to be released in June
Here’s a look at the Honeycomb powered Asus Slider to be released in June. Asus says their Eee Pad Transformer is popular, is this one going to be as popular? Are they going to price this one as much as the Transformer plus the keyboard add-on?
ARM President Tudor Brown Computex 2011 keynote
Posted by – May 30, 2011
Tudor Brown, President of ARM, delivers a keynote speech on the status of the ARM industry and where it’s headed. Here at the Computex 2011 trade show in Taipei Taiwan, look forward to a whole bunch of new ARM Powered devices. As 25 Billion ARM processors have been shipped thus far, look forward to even more uses for these ARM Processors, with the Internet of Things and infinite other uses to turn everything smart.
Linaro update at Computex 2011
Posted by – May 30, 2011
Linaro provides an update on the latest Linaro news at Computex 2011 in Taipei.
Samsung Origen, the new $199 Exynos 4210 development board
Posted by – May 30, 2011
Linaro and Samsung announced the new $199 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 development board featuring the 1Ghz Exynos 4210 processor, 1GB DDR3 memory with fast memory bandwidth.
CUPP Computing transforms all Laptops to ARM Powered laptops
Here at Computex, CUPP Computing just released their first ARM Powered module. You take out the hard drive and replace it with this Texas Instruments ARM Powered board, one keyboard shortcut to jump instantly from your x86 OS to any ARM Powered OS, be it Android, Ubuntu, Chromium OS and other.
Read more here: http://www.jkkmobile.com/2011/05/punk-this-module-from-cupp-computing.html
Google Marketplace needs subscription plans for better monetization of content
Posted by – May 28, 2011
Category: Opinions
There are some talks in some blogs about Android app revenues versus iOS. While it’s true iPhone users usually are the types of people ready to spend more money on things like the Apple appstore and iTunes for on-demand paid app and content downloads. Android on the other hand does show they can generate more revenues for example for the creators of Angry Birds who are making 2x more money today every day being a free app on Android compared to being a paid app on iOS.
While Google can improve monetization through advertising and Google Wallet features, carrier billing and more, that is great. But here is how Google will totally dominate in the world of Apps, Music, Movies, eBooks and more.
Google can implement an app subscription plan in the Google Marketplace, $3/month for unlimited apps (developpers can opt-out or opt-in in a one-click email..), and the whole paid app business model will be removed. $3/month for unlimited access to apps including automatic app updates is fair. It’ll be paid automatically through carrier billing in most cases. Google can thus have an extra $5 Billion in revenues per year for Android app developers, considering 150 million Android users can opt-in to pay $3/month ($36/year) for unlimited apps.
That $5 Billion per year can get distributed to all developers based on the popularity and based on the amount of use (can be counted by the second if the Android user allows Google to monitor that). As well as by the ratings, comments and other types of measurable user feedback. Creators of free Android apps will receive a windfall of new revenues from this subscription model, and creators of paid apps will also actually discover that being part of the $3/month subscription access, they will also make significantly more revenues as long as they make quality apps that many people download and use.
That would be just the app subscription plan revenue.
Google can do the same for eBooks, Music, Movies, Chrome Web Store Web-apps and more. Here are the fair subscription prices that I expect Google to introduce:
– $3/month for unlimited Apps (Android and Web Apps)
– $5/month for unlimited Music
– $10/month for unlimited Video (YouTube, Movies and TV)
– $2/month for unlimited Text (eBooks, Blogs and Newspapers)
Google can thus provide an all-content subscription plan: $20/month for unlimited access to everything.
This is where Google either waits for Governments to implement this, or else they can implement it now themselves as a private corporation, but as a corporation that is interested to provide open platform for better monetization of content. Google could thus suggest that they don’t have to be the only ones thus handling the subscription money. Where Google may or may not take a 2-5% transaction fee on the subscription plan, the important thing is that the majority, more than 95% needs to get distributed to the content makers. Thus Google wouldn’t mind if other reliable companies charge the same subscription fee, and Google still contributes to provide their statistics on the popularity and rated quality of all the content. Google could even suggest that it would be most fair if this type of monthly subscription plan was even at some point automatically collected as a tax by fair Governments on all citizen of the world. If everyone pays through taxes, unlimited access to content online may end up being closer to $10/month per person or less.
The big established Labels, Movie Studios, TV Networks, Book Publishers, Newpapers and Proprietary app makers initially may want to opt-out from the cheap global subscription model, sure they might. On one hand Google cannot prevent users from still using as much alternative BitTorrent dowloading as they want. On the other hand, the pure economics of the subscription model will prevail, and while old content monopolies loose their control on content distribution, they will also realize that the subscription model is the best way to proceed and is the best way to increase content revenues and at the same time discourage piracy through a fair subscription pricing. Also, Google can provide content owners the choice to offer their on-demand paid content not for free but at a rebate for people who have that all access subscription. Thus new movie releases could be $2 instead of $4 for all-access subscribers, ebooks could be $5 instead of $10 for all-access subscribers. But content owners can quickly calculate that it mostly makes more sense to provide free access to content for the all-access subscribers, as new releases get more demand, those content creators also in turn automatically get paid much higher share from the global all-access subscription system.
Google can also continue to provide advertising revenues for all content makers which they will also work to increase through Google Wallet easy payments thus much higher advertising revenue.
Related articles
- Android app sales skimpy, sluggish, slack, scanty… (go.theregister.com)
- Android Still Trails iOS As A Money Maker for Devs (gigaom.com)
