Tegra2 T20, AP20H, 1Ghz Dual-core, 4600MIPS, 1080p@30fps (limited) in current Tegra2 Tablets and Phones like the Motorola Atrix 4G and LG Optimus 2X.
Tegra2 3D, T25, AP25, 1.2Ghz Dual-core, 5520MIPS, which may possibly mean 1080p@60fps (full) support, or 1080p@30fps in 3D on HDMI output, it might mean 1080p@30fps (full) with 720p@30fps in 3D on HDMI, to be produced Q1 this year, which may mean it takes another few months for products to ship on the market with this.
Tegra3, T30, AP30, 1.5Ghz Quad-core, 13800MIPS, sampling Q4 this year, 3x faster graphics, ULPC CPU Mode (what does that mean?)
What kind of performance do you expect from Nvidia’s next generation processors and how soon do you think they will be in devices that consumers can buy? Post in the comments if you have any informations or guesses for what its performance may be.
The Vstone Robovie, also known as Kumotek KT-X is sold for $1500 and provides for some pretty impressive programmable moves, it’s bluetooth controlled. The robot comes with an easy to use (so they say) programming interface for inventing new moves, triggering more sounds and doing more fun things with it. You can find more information about this robot and more robots being made by this manufacturer at http://kumotek.com/products/humanoid.htm
At CES 2011, Sharp showed their 3.8″ parallax barrier 3D screen in their Android powered 3D phone on the Softbank network. Sharp is making the 3D screen that is in the upcoming Nintendo 3DS, it allows for amazing 3D screen without the need for 3D glasses. Thus as Sharp is ramping up mass production of that “parallax barrier” 3.8″ WVGA 3D screen, they are able to put it in Smart phones as well, which is how they are now shipping in Japan the Sharp 003SH and 005SH (with slide-out keyboard). Sharp is also entering the Tablet market with their new Tablet optimized screens at 5.5″ and 10.8″ super sharp high resolution LCD screens in the Galapagos Tablets now released in the Japanese market.
Here’s a 3.2″ 480×320 resolution capacitive touch screen. Has an ARM11 600Mhz Qualcomm MSM7627 processor with Adreno 200 graphics acceleration (also called AMD z430) it has smooth Android 2.2 support. The really cool thing is you will be able to buy this in ever super market, CVS Pharmacy, Wallgreeens, for $150 with no contracts required, it uses the pre-paid Virgin Mobile network. And the same phone is also available as “LG Optimus M” on MetroPCS (seems to be $229 on there no contract required) and it’s also on Sprint and T-Mobile, but I don’t know if those networks offer pre-paid plans with no contracts required.
As more and more Android phones reach sub-$150 pricing on pre-paid plans, this is becoming a big deal, especially when those get to approach or overtake the 3.5″ capacitive form factor, most consumers might think the experience with Android on those is just as good as any iPhone or other expensive Android phone on 2-year $2400 contracts, this is a big deal, look forward to more on cheap Android phones leading up to my Mobile World Congress coverage.
So the AT&T iPhone exclusivity is finished. This allows AT&T to broaden its range of Android devices to be promoted and sold, including such awesomeness as the Motorola Atrix 4G coming up.
Analysts have calculated AT&T’s price per iPhone to have been as high as $600 per user, while Verizon is paying less than $400 per new customer that they sign up with an Android phone.
At estimated Bill of Material for manufacturing a high-end smart phone like the latest Androids and iPhone to be as low as $150 per phone and at the highest $200 for the phones with the more expensive components such as dual-core processors, more RAM, larger high quality LCDs, Super AMOLED or new 4G/LTE antennas.
With the end of AT&T’s exclusivity, there is no guarantee Apple will be able to make as much as $600 per iPhone any longer, as both AT&T and Verizon would then much prefer promoting the use of Android which thanks to competition, they can get for cheaper. This could mean Apple might have to lower cost per iPhone towards the $400 to carriers, thus loosing about half of its profit margins per iPhone, and the iPhone is estimated to make up more than half of Apple’s yearly revenues and profits.
Now there is information that AT&T is starting a trade-in exchange service on customers old phones:
This could mean old iPhone customers on AT&T could get further rebates on upgrading to new Android phones by bringing in their old iPhones.
For example, if Motorola Atrix 4G is $199 on a 2-year contract with AT&T, for a previous iPhone customer, if they bring in their old iPhone they could get the Motorola Atrix 4G for free. And AT&T may still offer some kind of recycling of old iPhones by turning them into low cost refurbished devices for pre-paid use.
After the end of the exclusivity, it is likely that AT&T will sell more Android phones than Verizion will sell iPhones.
Hexus.net speculates that Tegra3 might launch during Mobile World Congress, that is to be seen. As the event likely is going to be a launch platform for plenty Tegra2 devices, Nvidia might not want to pre-announce Tegra3 too early, as it could maybe be argued it did announce Tegra2 a bit early at CES 2010 compared to when devices are actually shipping nearly a year later using the processor.
One thing to look for in Tegra3 may be faster memory bandwidth, faster memory I/O performance, DDR3 RAM (if that’s not supported in Tegra2?) all of those for smoother multi-tab web browsing performance. As far as I’ve tested using Firefox on Motorola Atrix 4G and Toshiba AC-100 that multi-tab web browsing can cause slow-downs. Tegra3 could use full 1080p@60fps full codecs full bitrates playback (Tegra2 seems to have problems even with smoothness at 1080p@30fps).
Larry Page is the new CEO, here’s what I think Google should do.
1. Make White Spaces happen. Things are moving far too slowly. I want to see White Spaces deployed to provide free wireless broadband to the whole world as an alternative to the proprietary 3G/4G/LTE networks. It should be deployed using the FON.com model, Google can invest meager $50 million or whatever is necessary to mass produce the first 1 million routers to activate White Spaces sharing all over the world. The idea should be this, users get these routers that may initially cost $50 to manufacture because the White Spaces chipset is new, but could eventually cost below $20 per router. They install it in their homes, connected to whatever ADSL, Cable, Fiber that people already have in the home. This router creates a White Spaces hotspot that reaches much further than within their home, to cover their whole neighborhood with bandwidth. The router is clever in that it can dynamically throttle bandwidth, if you are at home and you need to use your own bandwidth your bandwidth is 100% prioritized for you to use, thus it does not feel at all like you are sharing your bandwidth, that bandwidth sharing is only of the bandwidth which you don’t need yourself. The whole global network uses OpenID and such with increased level of verification of every users real ID, to authenticate each user on that network, so this is not used as an untraceable anonymous global Internet access, but where any illegal activity could be traced back by local authorities if needed (obviously, proxies and encryption can always be used if someone really wants to be anonymous).
Listen to Larry Page talk about White Spaces, this is more than 2 years ago. What has happened since?
2. Open Google Marketplace to all devices. If there is one point where I think Google might be evil, it’s in their policies to hamper innovation with Android. It’s been about a year and a half that Archos has put Android tablets on the market, still they are not allowed by Google to install the full Google Marketplace on the device. Google needs to stop now. Open several versions of the Google Marketplace if they want, for different types of devices. Or basically just add a settings menu in Google Marketplace that allows apps to be filtered and highlighted differently in terms of how they have been tested (mostly by users themselves) to work better or worse on every different type of device. Allow in those settings for the user or device to present itself automatically for example “without 3G”, “without compass”, “without back camera”, “without android buttons”, “at this specific screen resolution”, then filter apps from there, but never block access to all apps on all devices, if some apps don’t work correctly on certain class of devices, so be it. I believe 99% of the 200’000 apps in the Google Marketplace work 100% just fine on about 100% of the cheapest Android tablets on the market.
I understand that Honeycomb should be opening up Marketplace for more devices. For tablets it’s kind of a certain. But still, will Google allow even the cheapest ARM9 Tablets full access to Honeycomb OS and Marketplace? Honeycomb for Laptops is a possibility. Honeycomb for e-ink e-readers, maybe.
In any case, it’s kind of sad that it took Google more than 2 years to open up Google Marketplace for more devices. This has let Apple all alone in the market of iPad and iPod Touch.
3. Campaign for Net Neutrality on wireless networks for VOIP access. There has been a lot of rage on the blogosphere about Google’s partnership with Verizon in the USA leading up to a Net Neutrality proposal that exempted wireless networks.
It is understandable that bandwidth on wireless networks such as 3G, 4G and LTE have to be managed because it only takes a few users to download some BitTorrents at full speed on one base station for a whole area of up to 1km in diameter where users might experience dropped calls and the like. As far as I understand, even for LTE, bandwidth is limited, although it could be argued that carriers should then just build more base stations closer to users, if they do spend significant money to expand their networks or not, it’s understandable that wireless networks need to be throttled somehow.
But, that should absolutely not allow carriers to block voice-over-IP usage. That is pure evil. Wireless bandwidth shall be used HOWEVER the user wants to use it. If carriers don’t like the idea of becoming dumb pipes of data, that is their problem. They should have considered that possibility when they decided to become carriers.
Carriers have made enough trillions of dollars of profit already, not for them to justify that they should be allowed to continue to gouge the consumer of thousands of dollars per year in completely data bandwidth prices. When you consider the price of 1MB of SMS messages sent costs about $10’000 to the consumer. We are in the year 2011, 1MB of wireless data SHALL NOT cost $10’000 to the consumer.
4. Destroy Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Foursquare and other over-hyped social networks and location based services. This is a call from a user who gets tired of these boring, unoptimized, wastefull, meaningless excuses for social networking and location based services. What a waste of time! Google has to fix this now!
Twitter only benefits famous people. That’s why they keep talking about it. For 99% of users, twitter is absolutely useless, for anything else than to follow whichever famous person you like following, in lists of garbled, meaningless, unoptimized, spammy, messy 140-character messages. Make it stop, please.
Facebook is the newer type of Myspace that is a trend in high schools globally. It’s for not much more than grouping school kids together and have them waste time on farmville, a tool for massive stalking of a bunch of people you never spoke to for 10 years or more. Make it stop, please.
Social networking will be extremely useful eventually. Location based services will revolutionize everything that we do. Just not in those forms. Google needs to make a social network with location services in a way that absolutely makes sense. Make it so people get to do constructive things in the world, people move more, do more things, people get to be more productive, meet more people. End the global era of wasted opportunities, wasted efforts, mutual disdain, rejection and loneliness that can be felt by everyone.
Social networking that makes sense changes organizations, it changes companies, it changes communities, it changes countries. It auto-regulates humans use of global resources and actually makes democracy work.
Yeah those may be high hopes for Google’s social network, but who else than a company of the worlds top 24 thousand Phd software engineers can we rely upon to make this work?
5. Merge Android, Chrome OS and Google TV into one ARM Powered software platform. Google needs to focus on bringing the full Chrome browser on top of Android, provide it with full Google TV features, make it all boot on one ultra optimized ARM Powered software OS image. Read my previous post “Recipe for the ultimate ARM Powered device” for more on how this all-in-one software should work.
6. Bring Internet access to the next billion people faster. It’s all good how Android is taking over the smartphone market. It eventually does bring cheaper Android devices mostly made by Chinese vendors themselves. Still it is not going fast enough. Google should make it a priority that a $50 Unlocked Android Phones shall become available globally. Google should invest billions of dollars in One Laptop Per Child, have it run open source software that is supported by millions of people. Reaching the $75 Tablet should be a priority. Invest billions of dollars in Pixel Qi to mass produce their screens as fast as possible, make sure all devices can last 10 times longer on a battery as soon as possible.
The thing is western countries have a lot of electrical power so they don’t care enough about not having to recharge a 2300mAh battery every night. Consumers in wester countries don’t care enough about the price of the smartphone as most are still buying smartphones subsidized by a carrier who charges upwards $3000 in 2-year contracts that for example most Americans feel are natural thing to sign up for when getting a smartphone.
Getting mobile computing to the next billion people within 2-3 years should be a priority for Google, and if that risks to disrupt the actual business models of the carriers in developed countries by the availability of $50 unlocked Super Phones, $75 Tablet/E-readers and $100 Laptops in every super market, so be it.
7. Monetize independent web video production and make VOD the worldwide standard through YouTube and Google TV. YouTube has already become the worlds largest bandwidth infrastructure, streaming out more than 2 billion video streams per day, hosting and encoding all the worlds video, it’s impressive. Yet, Google now has the opportunity to reach much further and completely monetize YouTube. The YouTube Partnership system is a drop in the bucket compared to what they should do. I’m not allowed to become a YouTube Partner even though I have over 12 million video views (including what I put on other channels and what I had put on Google Video), the reason being Google only allowes residents of G20 countries access to even apply to become a YouTube Partner.
Of those that are conservatively monetizing YouTube video views with overlay advertising, they could do so much more. Why not provide a one-click donation button under every video, on every channel page to allow viewers to sponsor the future productions of their favorite content creators? Why not embed price comparison links with commission payments on one-click sales under every video that talks about a product that can be bought by interested viewers? Why doesn’t Google provide a global subscription plan à la Hulu, but where it gives access to much more than just established Hollywood/TV contents, but where it also monetizes ads-free or higher definition viewing of all independent content? Why doesn’t YouTube offer pay-per-view solutions worldwide, for example, let viewers choose to pay very small amount of money to get a direct link to download any of the videos as an uncompressed video file or on-demand encoded to chosen codec and bitrate/resolutions?
YouTube needs to become much more than the worlds biggest bandwidth infrastructure project. YouTube has to become Google’s biggest source of revenues and profits. It needs to become a tool that changes media and ultimately that improves democracy.
What do you think Google should do now that they have a new CEO? Post in the comments.
ARM and IBM have been collaborating for 3 years on designing smaller and smaller processors for the industry, improving SoC density, routability, manufacturability, power consumption and performance. Just a year ago, the standard was about 65nm for most ARM Cortex-A8 processors in devices on the market such as the Nexus One. About 6 months ago, 45nm ARM Cortex-A8 processors appeared on the market such as in the ipad/iphone4, galaxy tab/s, droid x/pro. Recent devices with Nvidia Tegra2 are 40nm. The next step for ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core and quad-core processors to appear on the market this year are in designs of 32nm (50% shrink off 45nm node) and 28nm (50% shrink off 40nm node). What’s next? They are working on 22nm and 20nm designs for 2012 and have been announcing since ARM Techcon last November that they have 14nm designs for as soon as 2014 that are under work with IBM.
You have to consider, it’s not possible to make them smaller than 0nm, there are no minus nanometers. Their achievements in shrinking processor designs are insane. The investments are huge. They have to invest billions of dollars in fundamental research of materials and processes, they have to invent new mathematical tricks. Some of these technologies take 10 years from the lab research to something that can be mass manufactured. To make it feasible, the ARM industry has to collaborate (2).
The reason for wanting smaller process size is to consume less power, to increase performance and to potentially lower cost of devices at the same time (factoring out the increasing cost of R&D for smaller designs through very huge scale).
Watch my video of IBM’s Vice President of Semiconductor Research and Development, Dr. Gary Patton, keynoting on how they are getting to 14nm ARM Processor designs and smaller:
On June 26th 2010 I published this video which unveiled the Indian $35 Tablet project’s Bill Of Material for the first time:
India’s Minister of HRD, Shri Kapil Sibal, or one of his colleagues, watched my video.
On July 22nd 2010, the Government of India’s Ministry of Human Resources Development announces the $35 Tablet, announces they plan to have a Chinese manufacturer deliver a few million of these in India for education.
I would like to be serious a bit, as there are literally billions of children on this planet who are waiting for tools for a better education, they are growing old with a missed opportunity to learn. I don’t have anything against Governments watching my video-blog to find out what are the best ARM Powered devices on the market, but I would like to suggest a few more things they can do if they would like the project to be successful all the way:
1. Don’t work against OLPC, announce you want to join their efforts. Doesn’t mean you use OLPC’s Marvell 610 platform, just means you share all knowledge and collaborate towards a same goal. You are supportive of each others goals, this is not a competition, this should be a collaboration.
2. Turning a tablet into a successful educational tool is not a piece of cake. It’s probably not enough to just take whatever cheapest materials and deliver it like that.
3. Denounce Intel’s blatant corruption attempt, 4 days after the announcement of the $35 ARM Powered Android Tablet project, Intel India is quick to suggest the Government should rather (basically give up on the ARM Powered Tablet) and just use the “Donation of 1500 Intel powered tablets” for pilot project (to last a couple years or so preferably, enough time to delay all other real mass low cost deployment attempts), same thing Intel did all over the world to block OLPC from reaching developing countries. Intel has subsidiaries all over the world, they may not be instructed centrally by Paul Otellini for all it does all over the world, but they seize any opportunity at preventing other potentially disruptive technologies from catching on. I mean seriously, what could Intel seriously want to do helping a project to make a $35 ARM Powered tablet for education running Android? Intel can afford to buy India a couple million of these ARM Powered tablets to help get things started, but is that anything near what they had as intention?
4. If you are a Governmental Non-profit project, you setup a Website, open source the code, informations about potential suppliers (real-time information about manufacturing requirements). Tell me in the comments if India’s HRD has been open about this project, I haven’t seen it. If they chose to make their project secret, it would have a harder time to get implemented. Be open about the full Bill of Material. If you listen to my video, you can hear the AllGo Systems representative list these Bill of Materials:
ARM9 Processor: $5 (Freescale i.MX233)
Memory: $3
WiFi B/G: $4
Other discrete components: $3
Battery: $5
7″ 800×480 resistive touch screen: $15
Total bill of material: $35
If this is it, then clearly publicly say this is it. Let people know what alternatives there may be, let the community discuss what alternatives could be used.
For example, I am pretty sure an educational tablet cannot be made without a 7″ Pixel Qi screen. For one it’s the only way to hope it has low enough power consumption to last long enough for children in India who don’t have a lot of power, perhaps no power at all (let it be powered by Bicycles, hand crank, sub-$5 A4 sized solar panels..). A reflective screen is the only way the tablet can be used for reading ebooks, the only way it can be used outdoors during the day in places where a child might not even have a roof on the school or no school at all.
5. The Bill of Material should be calculated openly with the prospect of using that budget that you have for it. Meaning if you can produce 1 million units, that obviously affects the price of each Pixel Qi 7″ screens, perhaps making it as cheap as a normal LCD screen.
6. Be open with how you plan to finance the project. This whole deal with the Chinese manufacturer not wanting to pay HRD $13 Million just sounds weird. Why should the manufacturer pay India and not the other way? Usually, as far as I know, a manufacturer would be paid on shipping of completed product, and India’s engineers can work at the factory to monitor yield, quality and batches before mass production is started and while they are being mass manufactured.
7. Be open about how it is designed. The reports (2) on this tablet being a copy of some Chinese design may be true for the casing, but that does not mean that the cheap Freescale i.MX233 ARM9 based SoC on Motherboard, electronics, Android software porting to that specific ARM9 processor (perhaps one of the cheapest ARM SoC in the world), all that does not mean AllGo Systems didn’t actually do this original work. I believe they have. The fact is the Chinese market, Chinese manufacturers have so-called Open and Free designs for those cases that can be used for cheap ARM Powered Tablets, cheap ARM Powered laptops, cheap ARM Powered e-readers. But that does NOT mean that what is inside is always a “clone” of some other design. OEM’s might have turn key solutions, all ready made designs that they produce and deliver low cost, but they also produce the designs of foreign companies.
CES 2011 is the time when all the major Wintel PC vendors announced major ARM Powered projects to redefine the core of their business. Almost all of Microsoft’s PC vendor partners abandoned Microsoft exclusivity; and Microsoft’s next-generation operating system has abandoned its exclusivity with Intel.
1. HP who makes 19.8% of the Wintel market (*1) is doing their attempt at controlling an ARM Powered platform in trying to make the Palm WebOS (I think they will also have a plan B using Android and eventually go with that). HP just said WebOS is to be designed for Tablets and Laptops also.
2. Acer who makes 18.5% of the Wintel market showed the Acer Iconia Tab A500 (possibly the slickest ARM Cortex-A9 Tegra2 tablet yet), they also just showed one of the top designs for a 7″ Android Tablet using Qualcomm’s 1.2Ghz Dual-core MSM8660, Acer is already selling many among the best value Android smartphones too.
3. Dell who makes 11.5% of the Wintel market has the Streak and is ramping up with a 7″ Looking Glass and has plenty smartphones announced.
4. Lenovo who makes 8.7% of the Wintel market tried to announce ARM Powered Laptops and Tablets last year, but may have been intimidated or otherwise delayed (probably waiting for software), but they are back with a nice looking Android UI layer for their Qualcomm Powered U1 Tablet. Lenovo has also just announced that they have created a separate division to focus on smartphones and tablets.
5. Toshiba who makes 5.3% of the Wintel market is redoubling efforts in ARM Powered tablet and is already the first to have put an awesomely nice looking ARM Cortex-A9 Laptop hardware design on the market in the AC-100 (currently only in few European markets and not fully backed up with the productive software yet).
6. Asus who makes 5.2% of the Wintel market has shown an impressive 10″ Tegra2 Honeycomb Laptop/Tablet hybrid and is also the first to show a product with Qualcomm’s next big Dual-core Snapdragon processor. Even though Asus already had the best looking Snapdragon Android Laptop at Computex 2009 which mysteriously disappeared minutes after being mistakenly shown at a partners event.
7. Apple who makes about 3% of the x86 based Laptops in the world using their Mac OS, has based their whole wealth, generating most of their revenues and profits from their ARM Powered devices, especially the iPhone. Thanks to ARM, Apple has become the second largest company in the world after Exxon Mobile.
What made Microsoft decide to show Windows for ARM now?
Microsoft and Intel used to be the best buddies of Silicon Valley and rely on each others bloat algorithms to generate a steady flow of consumer demand, keeping PC prices high and keeping outrageous profit margins all along the way.
At one point, Intel somehow decided to make Moblin just in case OLPC went out of control against their Netbook. That merged into Meego with Nokia who also was desperate to get a major partner in platform.
That got Microsoft mad (*2). Steve Ballmer probably broke some windows in Redmond throwing chairs when Meego got announced. And even though Microsoft has been experimenting with full Windows on ARM for years, they decided to bet a pretty large farm on optimizing Windows for ARM all the way, to the point they can announce deep kernel integration and hardware acceleration partnerships with the major ARM Processor providers. Partnerships that could go from current Cortex to future designs and planning beyond.
My theory is, Microsoft could release full Windows 7 on ARM today for Cortex-A8 if they wanted (they probably even had XP running on ARM in their secret R&D labs a few years ago). Microsoft showed the full Microsoft Office fully working full speed on ARM already at the CES keynote. The rest of the whole x86 app and driver porting business can be fixed with cash injection (nothing that a few billions can’t accelerate), tell me in the comments if I am wrong, but that whole porting of apps to Windows on ARM could possibly be done with a bunch of free re-compiling automation tools that Microsoft could release and a new Windows on ARM Application Marketplace.
For now Microsoft is going to take their time, they had to announce Windows on ARM now to allow the industry to prepare and design for it. But they won’t actually ship the software until they really have to. And they might as well plan ahead to have it ready when all the super fast ARM Cortex-A9 processors with Laptop/Desktop optimized fast I/O memory bandwidth architechtures are on the market. That time could be approaching fast.
Will Intel make an ARM Processor?
Right after Steve Ballmer’s keynote, while people were walking out of the Hilton keynote hall, I asked Shmuel Eden (Intel Vice president, GM PC Clients group) if Intel is going to licence an ARM processor now. He stood up for a second, I don’t think he thought I was joking and said “Why should we? We actually think we have a good low power system”.
For that second he stood there, my theory is he instinctively was wondering if I “knew something” but I had to tell him I was just joking (even though I was not), then he said “well if you are joking that’s okay”.
I think Intel can afford to put a few thousand engineers on making the best possible ARM processor they can, based on Cortex-A15 or their own custom ARM compatible designs. Intel can afford to make both ARM and x86 at the same time. Just put the choice out there and let the OEMs and customers decide which type they want to use.
This increased competition in the processor market is the biggest threat to Intel’s very large profit margins, which is probably why they aren’t interested in encouraging it to develop even faster.
*1 Those numbers are on wikipedia’s list for the 4th Quarter 2009 Market share of leading PC vendors, let me know in the comments if you know of more recent numbers.
*2 Same thing happened between Adobe and Microsoft. When Microsoft started to make Silverlight, that made Adobe mad because they were purposefully not hardware accelerating Flash on other platforms to keep Wintel empire steady, so that triggered Adobe shift focus to optimizing Flash on ARM and Android platforms.
A rumor coming from nocutnews.co.kr is that Samsung may have its Dual-Core Samsung Orion ARM Cortex-A9 processor ready to put in their upcoming Galaxy S2 (and likely also Samsung Galaxy Tab2) to be presented February 13th at Mobile World Congress.
Other possible specs:
– Android 2.3
– 4.3-inch 800 x 480 Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen
– 1GB RAM
– 9mm thin
– 1080p camcorder
– Mali-400 means 1080p 60fps support, or 1080p 3D playback through HDMI output
Watch my video of the Samsung Orion processor. When I spoke with the Samsung representatives before shooting this video, they hinted that it could be ready earlier than June, thus a February unveiling and demo with mass production a bit later is a possibility.
There has been weird rumors going around some blogs that iPad2 would use a 2048×1536 display.
As Pixel Qi provides 3x higher resolution in reflective black and white mode, that should basically serve the marketing tag line of a pixel density that is “Retina display”.
iPad is very heavy at 680 grams. They could significantly reduce the battery weight using a lower power Pixel Qi display, thus saving on the weight of the whole device.
At CES 2011, Pixel Qi announced that they have a manufacturing partner making 9.7″ Pixel Qi screen. If that means Apple may be using it, and if Apple only wants to work with LG to make their iPad2 screen, that could mean that the new manufacturing partner would in fact be LG, and that would mean Pixel Qi may have reached out of Taiwan into South Korea as well.
Some bloggers complain about the quality of colors on Pixel Qi screens, describing them to be “washed out”. I didn’t ask Pixel Qi about their color mode quality, but I believe this is only because the screen coating is anti-glare Matte type which is the only correct way to use this screen 100% outdoors and for e-reading. While iPad1 and most other devices use Glossy type screen those have lots of glare and reflections when used outdoors.
Apple has the opportunity to make of Pixel Qi a mass market screen technology, they have the opportunity to use it for allowing their customers true use reading e-books without the eye straining of a back light, they have an opportunity to launch an iPad2 with 20 hours or longer battery runtime and a significantly thinner design and lower weight.
But if they decide not to, it wouldn’t be the first time Apple disappoint. Then Android Tablet makers will have that opportunity but uptake of the technology may not be as fast especially if Apple’s marketing continue to make it sound ok for e-reading and mobile computing use to have a regular backlit LCD that is unreadable for ebooks and unusable outdoors.
As you have seen here on ARMdevices.net during these past 2 weeks, I filmed and posted 106 videos of the 106 coolest products I could find at CES 2011 (6 are still to be posted in the next few days), this is my record for the number of videos filmed at a trade show since I started video-blogging at consumer electronics trade shows since CeBIT 2004.
Here is the top-20 best products that I filmed at CES 2011
1. Motorola Atrix 4G, this is the direction for this industry, convergence in the area of Mobile Computing.
2. Exclusive Honeycomb UI hands-on (not just video of the UI), I actually clicked through the reference Honeycomb OS UI for about a minute in that video while the Motorola representative was looking the other way. Anyone else posted a similar actual Honeycomb UI video and not just pre-recorded video?
3. ARM Powered OLPC XO-1.75 laptop, One Laptop Per Child already invented the Netbook market, now they are pushing the Netbook/Laptop industry into becoming ARM Powered to lower power consumption, lower complexity and lower cost. They are nicely using the high-end Marvell Armada 610 processor for full laptop performance.
4. Archos 101 Home Tablet, Rockchip is pretty amazing, they came from nowhere a year ago (as far as I knew), and now they are powering over 50 Android tablets at CES. This Archos 101 Home Tablet could be sold for as low as $199-$249 at retail when it comes out in a couple months (depends if you listen to what Rockchip or Archos says), it’s 10.1″ capacitive touch screen, HDMI output and very compact and light form factor, it comes with Rockchip’s new RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1Ghz processor which they claim is more powerful than Hummingbird/Apple A4, does 1080p playback, and most importantly, they say, allows for more affordable ARM Powered devices. And Rockchip is expanding into Laptops and Set-top-boxes as well, where they likely will provide their knowledge and experience providing an all-in-one turn-key-solution for cheap Chrome OS on ARM and Google TV on ARM solutions, to be provided by all the cheap Chinese manufacturer, possibly starting at CeBIT in March, or by China Sourcing fair in April, or Computex in June and beyond.
5. Pixel Qi shows 7″ and announces 9.7″ and 10.1″ 1280×800, these announcements hopefully give us a clue as to we soon may see mass produced devices like Kindle 4 or iPad 2 use this screen technology, and not only the nice Notion Ink tablet which may be reaching some few consumers now but not in large enough scales to fund mass manufacturing and real mass adoption of this new type of screen.
6. LG Optimus black, amazingly light 109gr OMAP3630 Android Super Phone (same power as Droid X) and also uses LG’s new NOVA super bright 700nit display.
7. Sony-Ericsson Xperia Arc, they dominated the Japanese 2010 smartphone sales, now Sony-Ericsson wants to dominate worldwide smartphone sales. The Xperia Arc is also extremely light at 117gr and uses Sony’s big push into mobile displays, their new Bravia LCD display. I wish they would allow for easy one-click Home replacement to become fully 100% Vanilla UI like on a Nexus S.
8. Windows on ARM, there were no booth demos yet, but the excitement at Steve Ballmer’s keynote was insane, this is the end of an era called Wintel.
9. Acer Iconia Tab A500 Tegra2 Tablet, seems to me Acer is showing one of the best looking new major Nvidia Tegra2 based Android Honeycomb tablets.
11. Joyplus, Pierre Cardin showed Samsung ARM Cortex-A8 7″ Capacitive low cost tablets. Those pretty much can perform like a Samsung Galaxy Tab, basically run the same Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8 processor with 1080p video playback (I don’t know what bitrate/codec complexity limitations it has), but instead of costing over $600, these are to be sold in bulk at $150 and possibly retail a bit over $200, depending on screen quality.
13. NEC LT-W Android Dual-Screen Tablet, it’s actually pretty cool to see such dual-screen Android tablet concept. Although text input is too slow, it probably still needs a real external keyboard solution for full speed text entry.
14. NEC Tegra2 Powered 7″ Laptop, there’s a 7″ capacitive Tegra2 with full keyboard Tablet/Laptop combination prototype. I’d like to see such form factor in a jacket pocketable size.
16. Polaroid, Yifang, Pierre Cardin, Match Tech, Yootechpros all presented 9.7″ Android Tablets, now Apple’s exclusivity on the screen is finished. Now all Android tablet manufacturers may use the exact same LG IPS capacitive touch screen as used in the iPad.
17. Freescale i.MX508, next generation platform for e-ink e-readers, shows 8fps fast e-ink refresh rates, Android user interfaces for e-ink e-readers. This processor platform will probably be in a large part of the future e-ink e-readers.
18. RIM Blackberry Playbook, most awesome thing about this demo is to experience the power of Texas Instruments OMAP4430 ARM Cortex-A9 processor, see how nicely QNX’s embedded Linux OS does multi-tasking. This specific tablet seems to be pretty great, uses a new bezel touch sensitive user experience, but that also increases the size of the bezel.
19. Seco srl’s Pico Projector in a Lamp concept, watch this one, it’s really fun. This concept could turn out to be in many lamps, adding pico projectors onto every wall, displaying informations and changing moods in your room. Texas Instrument’s new nHD Pico Projector is so small, so low cost, uses so little power, we may see it in many if not in all ARM Powered devices soon, in all mobile phones, all tablets, all cameras such as the GE PJ1. I especially am looking forward to the user interface of turning any pocketable device into a large screen computer projecting the desktop onto any table and having multi-touch sensors built-in.
20. Nvidia’s announcement of Project Denver, they are making a super high performance ARM Processor not only for super phones, super laptops but also for super computers. This may be Nvidia’s custom ARM Processor design or ARM Cortex-A15 based design. Get more infos from my interview with Mike Rayfield on this subject.
Android + Chrome OS + Google TV = All-in-one ultimate gadget.
The Motorola Atrix 4G gives us a taste of what’s coming. You get one pocketable product, that is, up to 5″ for normal pocket (passport sized), and up to 7″ for jacket pocket (you’ll see, almost every jacket comes with such a pocket), for this summer I think up to 5″ is the more likely size but for next Christmas sales the 7″ size may win, that device runs full speed Android no slow downs, and when docked to Desktop/HDTV Dock it outputs either Chrome OS for productivity or Google TV for entertainment depending on which mode the user wants to use, and also have this solution power the laptop dock.
Ultimate Pricing
– The ARM Powered brains, basically modular Android Tablet should not cost more than $200 at retail this year. Might add $50 for built-in 3G/4G modem. White Space support this year would be good if built in the FON.com model. If someone could miniaturize a reliable swappable and optional 3G/4G/White Space modem module that could be slided into the back of the device, including easily accessible SIM card reader in there, that could be nice. This way the same product is sold worldwide and the unlocked cellular modem would be an optional accessory that could be purchased for $50 separately.
– Desktop/HDTV Dock should be no more than $50. It’s just a bunch of connectors. Full Google TV support could also include HDMI input and IR Blaster in that Dock, as well as the multimedia RF remote. Ports should include at least 3x USB host, 1x HDMI, 1x mini jack input, 1x mini-jack output, 1x optical audio output.
– Laptop Dock should be no more than $100, include super good quality 10.1″ Pixel Qi screen, capacitive touch, so this also turns this into a 10.1″ Tablet.
Fast enough ARM Processors to do it all-in-one.
The ARM Cortex-A9 powering this device should have fast enough memory bandwidth, fast enough I/O, built in a way that it is fully fast enough to run dozens of tabs at the same time in Chrome OS mode, the overlaying features of Google TV mode should have to support full dual-view with overlays when using HDMI pass-through and support all codecs at fully highest bitrates and highest profiles 1080p 60 frames per second.
This may mean that the current Tegra2 in Motorola Atrix 4G may not be fast enough, but that this ultimate product may need to use the upcoming Texas Instruments OMAP4430 (as in Blackberry Playbook), Qualcomm Dual-Core MSM8660 Snapdragon (as in Asus Memo), Samsung Orion (as potentially in Samsung Galaxy S2/Tab2) and let’s see/analyse performance and availability of the upcoming Freescale i.MX6, Marvell Tricore, Nvidia Tegra3. Someone knows how Amlogic’s ARM Cortex-A9, Nufront’s ARM Cortex-A9 and others may perform comparatively? I’m looking forward to post or find web browsing, video playback, battery runtime and pricing benchmarks testings to be done comparing the performance of all these next generation ARM Processor platforms.
Waiting for Google’s software
The main problem for a platform maker at this point, is that Google has not yet released Honeycomb source code, not yet released Chrome OS for ARM, not yet released Google TV for ARM, thus a gadget maker not having real-time access to Google’s software R&D offices, would have to anticipate this evolution and prepare an all-in-one tablet/smartphone solution that would be compatible with integration of these multi-booting software convergence solutions once Google releases them within the next few months. I don’t know for sure how such Atrix 4G like solution would have to work, if each of the Android, Chrome OS and Google TV have to boot all at the same time offering instant swapping between one or the other OS in the user interfaces, or if all 3 of these OS have to be merged somehow first for this to work in an optimal way. Please post in the comments if you know how Motorola does it on Atrix 4G and how this using Android+Chrome+GTV has to work.
My favorite size would be the tablet using the 7″ Pixel Qi screen, allowing for smaller battery thus 200grams super light weight and thin form factor, the laptop dock should somehow allow for the tablet to be docked on the side of the 10.1″, 11.6″ or larger screen, thus actually extending the screen surface, you can thus touch the tablet part and work on the laptop screen. Basically the Laptop Dock could be like shown by Motorola where the pocketable tablet is either behind the laptop screen, but should be with a swivel to be positionned upright next to the laptop screen. Thus this device combines Tablet, E-reader, Mobile Phone, Laptop and Set-top-box functionality all into one.
Non-free, non-open-source alternatives to Android+Chrome+GTV? Fine.
– Someone in the industry thinks they can do it better than Android? Fine. They can try to put RIM’s Playbook OS, HP’s WebOS, Apple’s iOS, Microsoft’s WP7 or Nokia’s Meego on there if they think that is better or they feel they need to differentiate.
– Someone in the industry thinks another browser than Chrome is better? Fine. Like Motorola does Atrix 4G for now with Mozilla Firefox, Opera might have another browser solution, there’s Webkit, IE. All that matters is we get a full speed full resolution ARM Powered web browsing experience with flash and support for all HTML5 web standards including offline web apps, the Native Code and WebGL stuff coming out.
– Someone in the industry think they can do better than Google TV on ARM? Fine. They can load another media player UI on there if they want. Just make sure the user can sit back on a sofa, use a full sized RF keyboard on the USB host, and get near-instant access to all the IPTV, all the VOD, all BitTorrent/RSS downloads, with full codecs support up to 1080p60fps full bitrates, with full NTFS/ETX3 usb hard drive support, full Samba/Upnp/Dlna support, full YouTube 1080p leanback playback and more. Easy plugins for Netflix/Hulu and more is obvious as well. All the while, still sitting in the sofa with that keyboard or fancy lean back mouse pointer, and have a full overlay web experience on top of the video as well, launching overlay apps for chatting, finding other videos, looking up informations, tweeting, video-conferencing and all other features that could be imagined to be done in the living room HDTV.
Who invented this ARM Powered ultimate convergence device?
By the way, this taste of ultimate convergence is not a Motorola invention, although they may be the first to show a sleek ARM Cortex-A9 integration, Archos has been crazy about docks for many years and I’m one of the original Archos Fans (see my other site http://forum.archosfans.com). Archos made the first color screen PMP JBMM20 with Camera/DVR Docks and video outputs 9 years ago, the first embedded Linux Tablet PMA400 (then running Qtopia Linux) 5 years ago, the first Android Tablet Archos 5 Internet Tablet with HDMI 720p Android Dock over a year ago. And Archos has always booted their multimedia OS in parallel with the embedded Linux and more recently Android stuff, both in parallel, thus providing the best of both OS in one same device. But now I believe ARM Cortex-A9 provides enough performance and Google’s software is maturing fast enough so I think Archos and the rest of the industry is able to work towards this dream of an all-in-one device.
