Here’s a low cost 3D camcorder with a 3D auto-stereoscopic viewfinder display. The camcorder has a built-in HDMI output to output the resulting 720p 3D video to a 3D enabled HDTV. The resulting video can also be converted on a computer to the Youtube 3D video format before uploading.
Archos 43 Internet Tablet, $199 4.3″ Android Tablet
Posted by – September 2, 2010
This 130gr super compact FWVGA 854×480 Android 2.2 tablet with ARM Cortex A8 1ghz 45nm omap3630. Although it’s a resistive touch screen, it is the most reactive and best looking resistive touch screen that I have seen thus far. This Android 2.2 device is extremely compact, offering comparable Android 2.2 experience to the HTC EVO and Droid X, though at a fraction of the price, for $199 for the 16GB model, it comes with HDMI output and support for all video codecs at up to 720p and with pretty high bitrates even for advance profile encodings. In this video I also try to demonstrate some of the performance for web browsing.
Archos 101 Internet Tablet, 10.1″ capacitive Android 2.2 Froyo $299 Tablet
Posted by – September 2, 2010
Probably one of the most affordable 10.1″ capacitive Android 2.2 ARM Cortex A8 45nm tablets, with beautiful built-in HDMI output and full sized USB host, it’ll come starting at $299 for the 8GB model with MicroSD slot, it’s amazingly thin and light, 480gr that is 30% less heavy than the iPad and it’s got 12% more screen surface area than the iPad.
Archos 28 $99 Android Internet Tablet
Posted by – September 2, 2010
The world’s cheapest Android 2.2 device with ARM Cortex A8 45nm processor. It’s got a 2.8″ QVGA resistive touch screen. But, it can really do most things basic Android users want. It’s less than half the price of the iPod Touch.
Archos 70 Internet Tablet
Posted by – September 2, 2010
Archos first 7″ capacitive Android tablet, with ARM Cortex A8 omap3630 1ghz processor, it’s 300gr in weight, very thin and it costs $275, that is less than half the price of the similar Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Archos 32 Internet Tablet, sub-$149 Android 2.2 3.2″ iPod Touch competitor
Posted by – September 2, 2010
This is the new Archos 32 Internet Tablet, with a 800mhz ARM Cortex A8 omap3630 processor based on 45nm process, it playsback all video codecs at up to 720p requiring no video convertions, suport composite video output, bluetooth, WiFi b/g/n, comes with 3.2″ resistive (but good) touch screen.
Huawei IDEOS U8150, 2.8″ capacitive Android low cost phone
Posted by – September 2, 2010
This is the first 2.8″ capacitive Android 2.2 smart phone, targetted by Huawei as a new low cost Android phone.
Samsung Galaxy Tab at IFA 2010
Posted by – September 2, 2010
This is Samsung’s new 799€ Android tablet. Comes with a glass capacitive 7″ LCD touch screen, a back facing and front facing camera, 1080p video playback support on the HDMI output of the Docking Station connector (codecs and bitrates specifics are to be confirmed). It’s quite compact for a 7″ tablet and it’s quite light at 380 grams.
Here are the full specs of this Samsung tablet:
Network: 2.5G (GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE) : 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
3G (HSUPA 5.76Mbps, HSDPA 7.2Mbps) : 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz
OS: Android 2.2 (Froyo)
Display: 7.0 inch TFT-LCD, WSVGA (1024 x 600)
Processor: Cortex A8 1.0GHz Application Processor with PowerVR SGX540
Camera: 3 MP Camera with Auto-Focus and LED Flash
1.3MP front camera for Video Telephony
Value-added Features:
■Android Market™ and Samsung Apps for more applications and contents
■Readers Hub, Media Hub, Music Hub, Social Hub (nicht überall verfügbar)
■Adobe Flash 10.1 player support
■Full HD video playback, Thinkfree Office, Swype, Hybrid Widget
Connectivity: 30 pin connector
WiFi 802.11n / Bluetooth® 3.0
Sensor: Gyroscope sensor, Geo-magnetic sensor, Accelerometer, Light sensor
Memory: 16G / 32G internal memory with up to 32G external memory slot
RAM: 512 MB
Size: 190.09 x 120.45 x 11.98mm, 380g
Battery: 4,000mAh (7 hour movie play)
More hands-on videos:
http://www.newgadgets.de/17983/samsung-galaxy-tab-hands-on-video/
Toshiba AC-100 ARM Tegra2 Powered Android Laptop
Posted by – September 2, 2010
This is probably so far the coolest looking ARM Powered laptop to be released broadly on the market. The first ARM Cortex A9 based laptop. Runs an optimized Android OS with custom web browser from Opera Mobile and I am guessing, the full Chrome browser for ARM may be able to run on this eventually as well. This laptop is being released right now for around 299€ or $299 with WiFi and a bit more for the version with built-in 3G modem.
Philips GoGear Connect Android Media Player
Posted by – September 2, 2010
Philips is launching this new Android based media player. It is based on the Freescale i.MX51 ARM Cortex A8 based processor and officially comes with support for the Google Marketplace and is going to be sold for 249€.
Toshiba Folio-100 Android Tablet at IFA 2010
Posted by – September 2, 2010
This is Toshiba’s new 10.1″ capacitive Tegra2 powered Android tablet.
Toshiba Places, content on all screens
A synchronized cloud based content browsing and streaming system that works across set-top-box, laptops both ARM powered and Intel powered, and on Toshiba’s new Tegra2 based Android laptops and tablets.
I will post 50 videos of the best ARM Powered devices at the IFA consumer electronics show
Posted by – August 30, 2010
Category: IFA
Subscribe to this blog, cause I will be bringing you the best videos of the best ARM Powered products to be shown at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin on September 2nd to 8th, here is the RSS feed: http://ARMdevices.net/feed/
Marvell powered pogoplug/sheevaplug community gets Amahi software applications platform
Posted by – August 24, 2010
Category: NAS
Marvell is developing awesomely cheap network attached storage and home cloud computing terminals called Pogoplug and Sheevaplug. Those are most often $99 or cheaper, based on open source hardware designs, manufactured by several manufacturers, they are probably the cheapest most cost effective ARM Powered NAS and media streamer home cloud computing solutions. You can buy one of those, plug them to your electricity, connect them to the web using ethernet or WiFi and run some Linux software on it from an SD card and access and do stuff such as hosting and media streaming with the files on a USB hard drive or flash drive.
Amahi is now releasing an open source software, with components from Fedora for ARM and a bunch of other stuff. It can run free software such as web-chess, gallery, wikis, blogging software, groupware that can be installed in a one-click install process. You might not really be able to do this kind of easy one-click Applications marketplace thing using some of the more expensive NAS devices on the market by companies like Synology, Qnap and Netgear.
Source: http://blog.amahi.org/2010/08/11/amahi-for-the-marvell-plug-computer-released-get-yours-free/
shanzai.com: HeroTab RK7 Android 2.1 Tablet unboxing
Here’s a new Telechip TCC8902 based Android tablet that can output 1080p video in some limited way. It is still unclear what if any 720p and 1080p video playback limitations Telechips might have. Playback of 1080p MKV H264 high profile with DTS audio at very high bitrates using HDMI output might not be totally smooth. Web browsing isARM11 powered which makes it slower than the ARM Cortex A8 and A9 tablets that are coming out for more expensive prices.
This video was released at http://www.shanzai.com/index.php/bandit-gadgets/tablets/1665
PocketBook to release 5 new e-readers
Posted by – August 21, 2010
Category: E-readers
The worlds third most popular e-ink device maker (after Amazon and Sony) is PocketBook Global (recent merger of PocketBook and Netronix). PocketBook has been releasing nice unlocked and open e-ink readers for a few years now, here Pocketbook’s new generation of e-readers is to be released on the worldwide markets around November, which they will demonstrate at IFA in Berlin on September 3-8th in Berlin, at which I will be making sure to film extensive video coverage from on this site.
Amazon’s $139 WiFi 6″ e-reader accelerates the expansion of the e-ink market and I don’t think it will hurt competition. The e-ink e-reader market is expected by some analysts to achieve sales of 15 million units this year, up from 5 million units last year. It’s a market in full boom. Those e-readers make people read again in times of TV and Internet distractions. Google Editions very likely will provide an alternative source of revenues for alternative e-ink e-reader makers to also be able to subsidize their devices based on content sales, I don’t think the Kindle store has to be the only e-book store in the world that can subsidize an e-reader hardware ecosystem. PocketBook also has their own BookLand.net content store with tens of thousands of e-books available. And the alternatives such as PocketBooks have attractive hardware features that Kindle doesn’t have such as not being locked into Amazon’s DRM walled garden, with a more open embedded Linux user interface, wacom touch screens are awesome and unlocked 3G/wifi/bluetooth and more really can be very great features for an expanding e-ink e-reader market.
PocketBook 603 Pro:
6″ e-ink with Wacom touchscreen, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, 2GB built-in, battery for 14000 page turns
PocketBook 903 Pro:
9.7″ e-ink with Wacom touchscreen, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, 2GB built-in, battery for 7000 page turns
PocketBook 602 Pro:
6″ e-ink screen, WiFi and Bluetooth, headphones, 2GB built-in, battery for 14000 page turns
PocketBook 902 Pro:
9.7″ e-ink screen, WiFi and Bluetooth, headphones, 2GB built-in, battery for 7000 page turns
PocketBook IQ:
Android 2.X on a color 7” TFT touchscreen (resistive?), WiFi and Bluetooth.
Those e-readers are based on Linux software which PocketBook announces as Open Source and they say there are already a lot of user-made apps and games. Here’s an application suggestion which I would recommend for PocketBook or the Linux open source community around it to create:
– Integration of Chrome to Phone functionality.
Hopefully that functionality can be extracted from Android 2.2 and included into an application to run on PocketBook’s embedded Linux OS. If this requires Android 2.2 and cannot be installed easilly enough on any other embedded Linux, then hopefully Google will release a version of Android for e-ink e-readers soon enough, which PocketBook could thus integrate. Another feature in Google’s Android for e-ink e-readers is I think the integration of Google Editions in a multitude of e-ink e-readers to compete with Amazon. This way, Google can also pay such third party device vendors a share of the profits then made on e-book and article sales.
I think it would be awesome if one could wirelessly beam any website, any article, properly automatically reformatted to be read on the e-ink e-reader. This would make these connected e-ink devices I think perfect companion devices with any laptop for people who like to read a lot. Google has I think open sourced the whole Chrome to Phone functionality since a few days ago.
ARM Powered Google TV, how soon?
Posted by – August 20, 2010
Google needs to announce the ARM Powered Google TV to compete with the rumored Apple iTV. Google TV could be sold for less than $99 using ARM instead of $299 using Intel.
Here’s a recent demonstration of Google TV showing its integration with Dish Networks services as reported by Engadget.com:
What hardware requirements will the ARM Powered Google TV have? ARM cortex A9 with DDR3 at the minimum for fast HD 1080p resolution browsing and interfaces? HDMI input and output (pass-through)? IR-blaster?
My guess is that there could be 2 different versions of Google TV for ARM Powered devices:
1. The full version: with full integration with existing cable/satellite box (HDMI in/out and IR blaster) plus same functions as the basic version.
2. The basic version: that only does the IPTV, Internet-only and media streaming features.
Using ARM, the Internet-only basic Google TV version could be sold at or below $49 while the fully backwards compatible with cable/satellite channels Google TV experience could be sold at or below $99.
I don’t think Google has signed any “exclusive” partnerships with Intel, they have a partnership for sure, just as Google has a partnership with Intel powering the more than a million Google servers that are out there. Intel feels left out of the whole Android ecosystem, so they are the ones who have been most desperate to at least be a part of the Google TV initiative. I think it’s more about Google waiting for the next generation ARM Cortex A9 to be ready to support full HD 1080p interfaces smoothly before they announce ARM support. Early next year, Google TV will be open sourced anyways, so by that time all the ARM vendors will have it.
Smooth-Stone ARM Powered Servers to disrupt cloud computing server market
Posted by – August 16, 2010
Category: Servers
ARM Powered Servers could be cheaper and consume less power and still provide the same performance as Intel. Smooth-Stone is developing some specific ARM processors and system on chip hardware configurations for use in servers to power cloud computing. Smooth-Stone has just announced that they have raised $48 Million from investors including ARM, ATIC (owner of Globalfoundries and part of AMD), Texas Instruments, Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners.
Smooth-Stone will make it possible for data center managers to increase the density of their computer resources while significantly reduce need for power, space and cooling. At the same time, Smooth-Stone technology will contribute to the reduction of the CO2 footprint of the data center in a significant way.
In a previously announced project, Marvell is also working on Server specific versions of their Marvell ARM processors. This is going to be fun!
My guess is that these new ARM server processors may be based on ARM Cortex A9, come at as little as very small 28nm process size, come with many cores for server-optimized parallel processing. More speculation:
Server chips won’t need the graphics and signal processors that most high-performance ARM chips have (as the latter are targeted at media applications), but may need larger caches and MMUs capable of addressing more than 4GB of physical memory. Even if ARM has only 4GB logical address space, you can let different processes have different 4GB chunks of a larger physical memory.
What specific hardware configurations and SoC designs do you think these ARM Servers should include? What do you think the power consumption will be for a given performance level compared to Intel? What do you think the price difference will be between an ARM Powered server-park and one powered by Intel? You can post in the comments.
Source: http://www.smooth-stone.com/smooth-stone-48m-funding/
Found via: techmeme.com
Net Neutrality logic
Google owns the most servers of any one company out there. Literally, it is rumored to be in the millions. Youtube streams out more than 2 billion video views per day. If an average video view is 30 megabytes, that means Youtube uses at least 60’000 Terrabytes of bandwidth per day. As I am not sure where to find the current estimate of global bandwidth capacity to all home Internet lines, let us compare that with the current reported trans-atlantic bandwidth capacity at around 10 to 20 Terrabit/s, that means a maximum bandwidth between Europe and the USA of 108’000 Terrabytes per day. 2009 price per trans-atlantic 10Gbit/s was $14’000 per month. If Google had to transfer half of Youtube’s daily bandwidth over the atlantic, that would cost $11 Million per day in bandwidth costs. Obviously, that scenario would be totally impossible.
The only way Youtube can provide up to 1080p and even 4K video to everyone, for free, on demand, is by cleverly distributing all the most popular videos on many, hundreds, maybe thousands of sort of caching servers that deliver the Youtube videos to every ADSL, Cable, Fiber to the home users around the world. What Youtube does, is that it tries to deliver the video from a Youtube cache as close to the user as possible. Most likely, that for the past years already, Google has been negociating with all the worlds major ISPs to build those Youtube caching servers right onto the local fiber optic backbones and server centrals of every major ISP.
This means, Google already has had to pay ISPs and major backbone providers for preferential access to its contents. This is the only way Google can provide a service that is fast enough for everyone to experience full bandwidth and fast buffering on all these high quality videos and have it all work smoothly in prime time, and when everyone wants to watch the same popular videos.
I’d like bloggers who critisize Google for it’s stance on Net Neutrality to consider that Youtube may account for about half of current global web bandwidth consumption excluding peer-to-peer like BitTorrent. And that Youtube’s share of global bandwidth consumption can only increase fast as Google TV comes out. What I think is the core issue we have to consider, is that it would be the worst if ISPs somehow because they might be more interested in staying with the status quo, that they may prevent an expansion of web video distribution by limiting the way high quality videos can be distributed freely on-demand to everyone.
While I think it is important to make sure startups don’t have any barriers to present their new ideas and new technical solutions to the web, I also think it is kind of logical that a startup won’t be able to afford distributing HD quality video as smoothly as Youtube does it, a startup cannot afford to buy thousands or even millions of servers and install them on every ISP and backbone around the world. AS once the cache server is embedded directly onto the ISPs backbone, that bandwidth, no matter how much it is, costs very little for the ISP to provide, at least compared to a scenario where the ISP would have to fetch all that data from the other side of an ocean.
I want to see a scalable solution that basically allows Youtube to expand even much further and provide even higher quality. It would be great if 720p 2mbit/s HD, 1080p 4mbit/s HD and even 24mbit/s 4K was streamed at full speed to every user. And imagining a scenario where a larger and larger share of everyone’s 5 hour daily TV watching did stream on-demand from the web. This means that the current 60 Petabytes/day that Youtube consumes today could turn into 6000 Petabytes/day within months.
As for Net Neutrality on wireless networks. I have often tried to ask Telecom companies how much bandwidth there really is in those base stations. The answer I kind of got, was that the bandwidth is not much, maybe only in the tens of megabit/s per base station. So obviously, it may not really matter what generation is used, be it 3G, 3.5G, 3.5G+, 4G/LTC, WiMax, as soon as more than 2 or 3 people start to want to have several megabit/second in an area of a neighborhood or so, the technology just won’t be able to handle it all. So for sure, I think Wireless networks need to be regulated. Especially as there isn’t really enough bandwidth for everyone to stream video on 3G nor LTE networks. Most importantly, I want to see regulation enforce that bandwidth for VOIP usage may not be blocked or down-graded compared to the exact same quality of the bandwidth used for “normal” voice calls.
The only solution to the bandwidth limitations of wireless networks, is to install smaller base stations closer to every user, so called micro-cells, also called Fem2cells. I believe the best spectrum that we should all install those base stations for would be the 700mhz white spaces spectrum, that is why I would like to hear someone say that it would be possible to build a FON.com like network using unlicensed and free to use White Spaces 700mhz. Everyone would install a $20 White Spaces micro-cell routers onto their home wireline ADSL/Cable/Fiber connections, sharing the bandwidth into their neighborhoods, using one same browser based access authentication system worldwide, that will provide enough wireless bandwidth for everyone to do whatever they want.
An upcoming era of revolutionizing $99 set-top-boxes
Posted by – August 12, 2010
Americans watch in average 5 hours of TV every day. Imagine a revolutionary $99 set-top-box which you add to your living room. This one increasingly brings more and more content from the Internet to the HDTV. This one even improves the experience of regular TV channels by overlaying search features and better targeted ads (which can finance better TV content).
Engadget is reporting on the rumored $99 Apple iTV set-top-box. It will basically be like an iPod Touch, without the screen and with an HDMI output and a remote control. It’ll have the latest Apple A4 processor which is based on the Hummingbird 45nm ARM Cortex A8 processor (similar to the one used by Samsung in the Galaxy S) designed by Intrinsity before they were bought by Apple. As usual, I don’t expect Apple to include support for many video and audio codecs and a proprietary iTunes synchronization over the network is more likely than support for the Samba and Upnp local file sharing standards.
The idea here is that by using the optimal ARM processor of the market, a very powerful yet very cheap set-top-box can be made. One that brings full 720p web browsing to the HDTV, but also re-designed and optimized graphics accelerated user interfaces to the HDTV, basically smooth interfaces for Youtube and other video-on-demand sources, to thus be watched directly on the HDTV.
I’ve video-blogged about Android based set-top-boxes such as the $50 design by Webia Technologies and Bonux and the $129 (retail target price) one made by Keenhigh mediatech. Both can run the latest Android 2.2 software (when available) with full 3D graphics acceleration even though their processors are likely ARM9 or ARM11 based.
As Google goes along partnering with Intel to release Google TV soon, I expect the Intel based designs to be sold at $199 or likely above that. I think it would be nice to know how soon the customized Android software that represents the Google TV disribution would also be optimized for use on cheaper ARM Powered solutions. As Android on those cheap prototypes looks great, it would be good for those devices to know they can rely on a Google OS optimized for use with a remote control and optimized for easy access to revolutionary HDTV features. Including the support of Youtube in HD quality on all those cheap boxes.
The basic hardware features needed for full Google TV support on cheap ARM Powered set-top-boxes I think are HDMI input and output (pass-through) for overlaying features to contents from existing Cable/satellite set-top-boxes as well as the IR blaster to control that other set-top-box. But for Internet and media streamer features only, all that is needed is just a Google TV for ARM software release.
