I am going to Computex

Posted by Charbax – May 16, 2010
Category: Computex, Pixel Qi

Computex in Taipei Taiwan June 1-5th is going to be awesome. Last year was my first Computex show and it was a great experience. While last year, I was lucky to be the first to see Pixel Qi in action (2, 3, 4), I saw Android on laptops and tablets, I saw Smartbooks demonstrated by Freescale, Qualcomm and Nvidia (2). I interviewed ARM about the status of Mobile Computing. Now finally, all those products are actually going to reach the market. For the past year, advances and optimizations in Chrome and Flash support is showing consumer-grade web browsing experiences for these products. Here are some of the main topics that I hope to film at this year’s Computex conference:

– Pixel Qi LCD in actual announced products “to be announced by half a dozen or more companies”, this technology is going to be the basis for the combination of E-reader, Tablet and Laptop markets.

– Chrome OS and Flash support on ARM Powered Laptops, makes Smartbook category ready to be a massive success.

– Android Tablet Edition, I trust that Google provides the full Google Marketplace on a whole range of Tablets to be shown.

– Cheaper Android Phones, I want to see cheaper phones shown by other manufacturers than just HTC, Motorola and Samsung (although those companies make nice Android phones).

– Youtube HD on cheap set-top-boxes, right after the Google TV announcements expected at Google I/O, I would like to see manufacturers showing cheap sub-$100 ARM Powered set-top-boxes that stream Youtube in HD quality directly on the HDTV, that may provide HDMI pass-through and overlay interactive features to existing TV channels as well.

– Connected E-readers, e-ink devices are great for reading, they make people read more again. But it’s important that all the worlds text contents reach those e-readers wirelessly.

Check back here on http://ARMdevices.net before, during and after the Computex trade show June 1-5th, to find me uploading 50 to 100 new awesome videos showcasing all those new ARM Powered devices that I think are going to change the world. If you are a blogger, subscribe to my RSS feed and make sure you check back here for the best Computex video coverage, you are of course welcome to embed my best videos on your blog with a link back to my blog post. If you are a fan of big technology news blogs and you like my videos, I appreciate if you submit my best videos to those sites.

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Nvidia to power Android 3 (Gingerbread?)

Posted by Charbax – May 15, 2010
Category: Nvidia, Android

In a conference call reported by theinquirer.net, Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia talks about following things:

Jen-Hsun knows where the competition will come from, but added that Tegra plus Android 3 will prove to be a winning formula. “Prior to Tegra, there are only two application processor companies out in the mobile space, right? Basically, it’s Qualcomm and TI, and they both make wonderful application processors,” he said.

“Our differentiation and our contribution to the space is where multimedia, high resolution snappy graphics [are] really necessary. And the first-generation smartphones had pretty low resolution displays. And so snappy graphics and high-performance multimedia and high resolution just wasn’t as much of an issue. But [now] resolution’s a huge issue. And so that’s our contribution and that’s our differentiation and that’s what people are seeking out in the market.”

That may mean Android 3 is being optimized for ARM Cortex A9 grade processors. Taking advantage of dual-core and quad-core high performance processing and especially of the much increased graphics and video processing features of these next generation ARM processors. Thus the optimizations of the OS code may look like this:

Android 1 = ARM9 and ARM11
Android 2 = ARM Cortex A8
Android 3 = ARM Cortex A9

Animated backgrounds, fancier 3D UIs are nice and all, but I wonder if those might be bloat. I’d rather the video processing and graphics performance stick to when users launch camcorder, video playback, animations or 3D games applications. Having the most advanced camcorder and console-quality gaming in our next pocketable devices, absolutely, why not. If the next generation web browsers can output 100% smooth Chrome browsers, possibly assisted by powerful graphics hardware acceleration, using a 720p HDMI output to a HDTV, for a full screen instant web browsing experience, full javascripts and flash support, then even better.

Qt development framework demonstrated

Posted by Charbax – May 15, 2010
Category: Smartphones, Set-top-boxes, Software, Exclusive videos, ST-Ericsson, MWC

Qt is a cross-platform application and UI framework for developing once, and deploying across lots of embedded Linux platforms, Windows CE, Symbian and Maemo without rewriting the source code. At Mobile World Congress, Qt was demonstrating their solution used in many different devices.

Qt Quick (Qt User Interface Creation Kit) is a high-level user interface technology that makes it dramatically easier for UI designers and developers with scripting language skills to quickly and easily create beautiful, pixel perfect UIs and lightweight, touch-enabled apps with Qt – all without requiring any C++ skills. It will be part of the Qt 4.7 release, which has had its first technology preview released in March.

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Alcatel-Lucent’s new systems for carriers and developers

Posted by Charbax – May 14, 2010
Category: Exclusive videos, MWC

Alcatel-Lucent is showcasing their new ecosystem that creates what they call “the developer innovation experience”. This includes services, content, and platforms that they say will drive the next generation of telecom.

Find more informations at: Venturebeat.com

Acer to launch Chrome OS laptops at Computex

Posted by Charbax – May 13, 2010
Category: Laptops, Computex, Pixel Qi, Chrome OS

Acer Incorporated {{lang|zh-Hant|宏碁股份有限公司}}
Image via Wikipedia

Venturebeat.com reports that it has heard from several sources that Acer is going to launch Chrome OS laptops at Computex in June.

Last year’s Computex, Acer really disappointed me with their “fake” Android netbook, one that booted Android as a dual-boot with Windows on an expensive and power consuming Intel Atom based Netbook.

The big questions are:

– Will Acer’s first Chrome OS laptop use an ARM Processor or will it be based on Intel?

– What type of price point does Acer plan to reach?

The answers to those questions I think could be found by answering following two other questions:

– Does Acer want to be innovative enough and be one of the first big laptop manufacturers to use an ARM Processor in a Laptop form factor to lower the price, increase battery runtime, lower the weight and size of their new Chrome OS line of laptops?

or

– Does Acer feel it needs to stay in bed with Intel and Microsoft, and thus keep any non-Wintel projects out of their marketing radar?

If they announce it with ARM and Pixel Qi at Computex, hear the drum rolls:

1. 50h battery runtime

2. Instant on, month of standby

3. Below 800gr, 1cm thickness

4. Below $199 retail, no contracts, they sell tens of millions?

5. Built-in 3G module (maybe not included by default) for always connected use

6. Native Code SDK and OpenGL for even advanced video-editing and 3D games

7. Maybe even a swivel screen and the device holds like an e-reader? Touch-screen not absolute necessity for cheap model. Next/previous page and enter/exit buttons on the side would be good enough.

Source: Venturebeat.com

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Native Client enables video-editing on cheap ARM Powered devices

Posted by Charbax – May 13, 2010
Category: Software

Google has just released a developer preview of the Native Client software development kit at http://blog.chromium.org. What this could mean is to run more powerful web apps, such that require C/C++ code to run smoothly with Javascript, CSS and other HTML5 features in the web browser.

This could be how very powerful authoring applications like video and photo editing may work on ARM based Chrome OS laptops or in Chrome on Android laptops and tablets.

Imagine uploading all your rough video files from your camcorder to the cloud, then launch a web app that combine offline web app caching features of HTML5 (previously called Google Gears) together with Native Code features, this will enable to download to cache storage and stream the thumbnail video from the server while editing, then when the edit is done in the timeline, the full quality video encoding and publishing happens on the cloud in seconds. This could thus provide powerful video and photo editing tools to professionals and enthusiasts, and actually provide a more powerful rendering and encoding performance using a basic and cheap ARM Powered device than would be achieved using any expensive machine with powerful local processors.

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ARM in servers

Posted by Charbax – May 12, 2010
Category: Servers, Marvell

Marvell is announcing the plan to offer 40-nm multicore ARM processors in servers. This is big news. It means ARM may not only power all phones, tablets, e-readers, laptops, TVs and desktops of the future, it may also power the cloud computing that serves all those devices.

In terms of price, there is a huge gap between Intel’s Xeon chips some of which sell for several hundred dollars and the typical multicore ARM chip that may sell for about $35. That gives Marvell plenty of room to carve out its own profits.

The new chips will offer more than a five-fold reduction in power consumption compared to x86 processors that dominate the server market, Marvell claims.

Marvell and ARM are working with “multiple Tier 1 companies” to build larger trial deployments to validate ARM as a server platform.

partners are working on ports to ARM of x86 virtualization software also strategic for the server market.

Source: Eetimes.com

Google could be one of the “tier one companies building larger server deployments to validate ARM as a server platform”. Torben Mogensen speculates:

I think Cortex A9 multicore would be fine for its purpose. But they may design their own chip built around this core. 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.
But, instead of designing their own, Google may just ask Marvell, Qualcom, Nvidia or TI to design a chip to their specifications. If Google promises to buy a million chips per year, I’m sure these companies would be quite happy to do so.

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What will Google charge for Youtube HD access on ARM Powered devices?

Posted by Charbax – May 11, 2010
Category: Set-top-boxes, Opinions, Google, Google TV

Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Youtube HD consumes lots of bandwidth, Google wants to kind of control which devices can access that. I spoke with some Realtek based set-top-box manufacturers that told me it actually costs $1 Million in licencing to get Youtube API support on a device. Check my video: http://138.2.152.197/2010/03/17/zinwell-cinematube-at-cebit-2010/

I don’t really believe it’s that expensive. It wouldn’t really make sense. But anyways, I think it’s got to do with something about Google changing the way the API works for devices to pull the Youtube videos to devices.

But that may change anyways and not be required anymore when Flash support is added in the next few weeks. That may be the solution for full Flash video support no matter about the Youtube API licencing issues.

Otherwise, I hope Google soon clarifies what they require for licencing out the Youtube HD access for devices, I wouldn’t mind if they require users to be logged in and pay a very small amount,

Something like $1 per 10GB
= 10 hours of Youtube playback at 720p 2mbit/s
= 5 hours of Youtube playback at 1080p 4mbit/s

of authenticated Youtube HD access or something like that, and that this should work on any device. This would then cover Google’s bandwidth costs for HD video streaming, and even provide the groundwork for Youtube to provide video-on-demand, video rentals, perhaps even scale up a new Live Youtube Streaming Service, also provide a one-click donation system and paying very small amounts to watch videos in HD quality without ads.

At Google I/O next week, Google is going to launch the Google TV initiative, I expect them to clarify the terms of Youtube access on devices by then.

Clearly defined specs of ARM Powered devices that may access Youtube in HD quality, and provide the full pay-per-view support with that, may provide a solid platform for one of the biggest revolutions for the TV media. People watch 3-4 hours of TV per day in average, the easy access to web video from Youtube on a sub-$100 set-top-box may revolutionize the content people will watch on their TVs. It may affect major election results. Youtube already represents perhaps as much as half of the worldwide internet bandwidth.

If Google makes this happen in the right ways, Google TV may become Google’s new largest source of revenues and profits. At the same time, I think, it may revolutionize media and democracy for the better.

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Smartbooks will succeed thanks to Flash (and Chrome?)

Posted by Charbax – May 6, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google

ARM’s marketing vice president, Ian Drew is quoted in an article at ZDnet.co.uk as saying:

“Our target is mostly internet machines — it becomes sort of a requirement that they run the internet,” Drew said. “[The delay in optimising] Flash has stalled it”.

Drew suggested that solving the issue of Flash optimisation had involved “lots of heavy lifting” but once the new version of Adobe’s rich media software is in place for smartbooks, that would be “very powerful” for ARM.

(…)

“I actually think we’re a lot stronger because of it,” he said. “We now know what we didn’t know two years ago. It has taught us a lot about how we work with software companies.”

So we know from my Interview with ARM’s Director of Mobile Computing and from my interview with Adobe Flash’s product manager that ARM, Adobe and other partners including Google, Nvidia, Freescale, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and others have invested hundreds and hundreds of engineers in working full time over the past many months to optimize and succeed in supporting the full Flash on the ARM processors of upcoming Smartbooks, Tablets, Phones and Set-top-boxes.

The Smartbooks are a big deal. Getting the full speed web browser experience working I think is the biggest job. Delayed Flash support on ARM Cortex A8 and A9 processors was one part of it, my theory is also that ARM has had to wait for the Chrome browser to come and smooth things up and optimize speed of Javascripts and AJAX-heavy websites as well. It wouldn’t look good enough for consumers if AJAX versions of Gmail, Facebook and Flash-heavy sites like Youtube and Hulu weren’t able to display correctly and feel like the browsing experience was as fast as on Intel.

Now though with Google Chrome for ARM and Flash for ARM being finalized, and also even the dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processors starting to become available, performance for a full PC web browsing experience on ARM should be real.

Once full web browsing performance is working, once all major websites load instantly on ARM laptops, from then on, advances in processors I think will be more about lowering cost and lowering power consumption further, then there would even be the need for any performance increases. The performance increases can be used in server parks powering the processor intensive tasks in the cloud, but the web browser access terminal just needs to have a perfect web browsing experience to unlock an experience that all consumers will like.

ARM Laptops to even support heavy Multimedia authoring applications on the cloud:

Clever cloud computing should even allow for very advanced video-editing, image rendering, even 3D graphics acceleration and 3D games can be streamed to a thin client that just needs to run some kind of 3D engine. Even professionals and advanced users will prefer an ARM laptop for video editing, if they have a fast enough upload speed to store the original native video files on the cloud, display AJAXified video-editing user interfaces and thumbnails in the web browser or in an app that interfaces with the cloud, and then you can have a grid of servers on the cloud processing, rendering and encoding the videos much faster than any multi-core local processor could do it. Imagine clicking a button and having 2000 servers on an FFmpeg grid encode your hour-long HD video for you in a minute. All video editing and encoding professionals would love to have that setup.

Found via: Techmeme.com

Windows 7 for ARM? (Microsoft calls it Windows Embedded Compact 7…)

Posted by Charbax – May 5, 2010
Category: Windows

Windows CE brand logo
Image via Wikipedia

So the Microsoft engineers have been working hard on their next generation of Windows for ARM processors, the next generation of Windows CE. Will it take advantage of all the ARMv7 features, ARM Cortex A8 and ARM Cortex A9 and other hardware acceleration features, such as using the GPU to accelerate its user interfaces? Windows Phone 7 Series is based on the Windows Embedded Compact 7 core.

I asked Olivier Bloch, Microsoft Embedded technical evangelist a few questions on how Windows Embedded Compact 7 is different from Windows 7 for x86:

Windows Embedded CE and its next version, Windows Embedded Compact 7 are not based on Windows binaries (vs. Windows Embedded Standard which is a componentized embedded version of Windows).

Windows CE has been developped from scratch with a different OS architecture and driver model ensuring hard real time and very small footprint. Windows CE is also disigned to run on different CPU architectures (x86, MIPS, SH, ARM). The other big difference is that you compile Windows Embedded CE when you design a CE OS.

(…)

Windows Embedded team is investing a lot in adding new features, creating new tools to support these new features, analyzing the Embedded market really seriously…

I also (jokingly) asked him if it was going to be open-source and free, to that he could not reply.

Anyways, it will be very interesting to see how much Microsoft is investing in this development of their embedded OS core that Microsoft would like to be used across ARM powered devices like Tablets, Laptops, Set-top-boxes, E-readers and more.

What will Microsoft price it at? And if they price Windows at a low price for future ARM Powered laptops, tablets and phones, as Android is free and open source, will the potential auto-cannibalization of Microsoft’s x86 based PC/Laptop be a problem for Microsoft to be able to keep its overall revenue and profits?

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Google activates new Search design

Posted by Charbax – May 4, 2010
Category: Web

I just noticed Google has a new design for Search. I don’t know if they switched this design on for everyone, or if they are just somehow testing it with some users for now. So I filmed this video featuring the new Google Search design:

Marissa Mayer and her design teams must have been busy working on this the last few months.

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Will Intel have to make ARM processors again?

Posted by Charbax – May 4, 2010
Category: Opinions

ARM’s advantage is not only a question of performance per milliwatt and price, it’s also mostly about it being a processor technology licenced by several processor makers. More makers of processors means lower prices, means more features. When manufacturers who are making the next Laptop, Tablet, Phone, Set-top-box, E-reader devices have more choices for the components that they can use, it helps bring prices down, it helps bring a more diverse set of hardware designs and features to the market.

As consumers and as fans of technology and progress, we should welcome more choice, more competition to the market.

While I can’t know Intel’s next generation performance and price, my guess though is that while they can probably bring something with their billions of dollars in R&D, it’ll likely still not be able to match the work done by the dozens of huge ARM processor makers all combined. As ARM is just a core set of processor IP, a lot of work is done on top of that by Texas Instruments, Marvell, Freescale, Qualcomm, Samsung, ST Ericsson, Nvidia, VIA, Broadcom, even AMD-spin-off Global Foundries is investing Billions in differentiating their way of doing ARM Cortex A9 multi-core using High-K Gate, 28nm process and more.

The performance we need is simply one that displays a web browser instantly on all screen sizes. So really, while we would like cloud computing performance to increase, the performance of our internet access devices only need to reach a certain magic level where all websites and web apps can be displayed instantly. From then on, processor improvements that bring savings on power consumption and price will be much more valuable than further increases in performance.

Sure Intel has lots of money and engineers in R&D, but one must question their motive; I think Intel wants to stay in control of the bulk of the PC/Laptop product categories than it really cares about value for consumers and about much improving access to computing for the more than 4 billion people who still don’t have access to the Internet.

Flash support on all ARM Cortex A8, A9 devices

Posted by Charbax – April 29, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google

Up until last year, I didn’t like the business model around Adobe Flash at all. My theory was that Flash was basically used by Microsoft, Apple and Intel to block mass adoption of open source Linux and embedded Linux operating systems as there was no good enough Flash support on open source computers and embedded devices.

On the other hand, and as I am not a developer with access to Adobe’s source code so I can’t really know how hard it is for them to optimize their proprietary source code, perhaps Flash isn’t as bloated as I thought, but that it really represents graphics intensive animations and embedding of videos which actually are really hard to process using multi-purpose processors and which really perform much better once it can be made to use the latest hardware acceleration.

Check out my video filmed with Adobe Flash products manager Richard Galvan at Mobile World Congress 2010 demonstrating Flash support on the ARM Cortex A8 based Nexus One and Motorola Droid as well as a very interesting demonstration of the controversial Creative Suite 5 authoring software suite on which Adobe is demonstrating the infamous “Export to iPhone” option, where developers can input any Flash application based on ActionScript3 and output it in the iPhone applications format. Thus develop once and output all hardware platforms.

The big talk right now on Techmeme is the funny war going on where Apple doesn’t want to support the Flash format on the ARM Cortex A8 based iphone, ipod touch and ipad. Even though technically, Flash certainly could work on those devices. It’s probably just a question of a few megabytes of plug-in code that would have to be installed with the Safari browser on those devices.

My guess? Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer are angry at Adobe’s Open Screen Project. Up until last year, Microsoft and Apple had the exclusive platforms to have hardware accelerated Flash support on X86. Nobody else could get full Flash support, especially as Flash 9 fragmented into ActionScript3 based Flash projects which more and more displayed either not at all on Open Source OSes or displayed really badly, without hardware acceleration. My guess also is that Microsoft’s attempt with releasing Silverlight may also be a provocation against Adobe which pushed them further to optimize Flash for embedded Linux and thus support Flash everywhere else than Microsoft/Apple/Intel.

My point? To some degree, one of the main reasons Linux hasn’t yet caught on for mass market mass consumer adoption on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones has so far been the lack of decent Flash support. Sure, there are many many other factors. But Flash support was an important problem that up until recently released Ubuntu 10.4, hardware acceleration of Flash wasn’t even available for Linux!!

Of course I still wish Adobe would bluntly just announce that they will open-source Flash and licence it out for free (they can still release proprietary authoring tools that they can sell for lots of money to developers). And for sure, I am a proponent of HTML5, Ogg Theora 2.0 (based on Google’s On2 VP8 codec), for sure I can’t wait to see Google’s Native Client plugin for Browsers, Google’s 3D plugin for Browsers (like the very impressive new Google Earth for Google Maps in the browser (not for Linux yet)).

For now, especially as I expect Flash support in Android and Chrome OS can be fully hardware accelerated, run smoothly and nicely as Adobe has been investing hundreds of full time engineers in optimizing this process over the last couple of years. As I don’t expect any other aspects of Android and Chrome OS will feel any slower or any more bloated by adding Flash support. I don’t think Apple’s choice of excluding Flash is a good choice for their users.

What will happen? I think consumers will enjoy Flash support on Android, Chrome OS and other embedded Linux it also looks very impressive and nicely hardware accelerated in Ubuntu 10.4. If Apple persists in wanting to exclude the Flash plugin for non-technical reasons, consumers will likely buy Android and Chrome OS devices instead. In any ways, competition is good and in the coming months, it will be very interesting for me to film demonstrations of Android Tablets, Phones and Laptops with hopefully full and smooth Flash support.

Vodafone 845, cheap Android phone (how cheap?)

Posted by Charbax – April 28, 2010
Category: Smartphones, Android

Vodaphone is releasing their first own-branded Android phone, described as a low-cost Android phone. It has got a 2.8-inch resistive screen, a 3.2MP camera and runs Android 2.1 Eclair. To be released in May. It also comes with a suite of Vodafone 360 Apps (for Facebook widgets integration and the like), it is to be seen how the Vodafone 360 experience as apps on Android compares with Vodafone’s previously released Linux Mobile Foundation based 360 phone.

How low will the price be? Will Vodafone go all the way and sell this phone for £99 on a pre-paid plan? Interestingly Vodafone is pointing out this feature in their press release:

2. Vodafone’s proprietary pre-pay balance indicator permanently displays the customer’s latest balance status – it is updated after each voice call, SMS, start up, and also every 12 hrs when idle mode. There is also a soft-key configured for convenient top up.

This type of task bar, status bar overview of pre-paid credit status with one-click top up could really accelerate the adoption of pre-paid plans for Android devices instead of buying them with very expensive 2-year contracts. The Android phone sold like this would still be locked to only work on Vodafone for 2 years, but would at least only require pre-paid services hopefuly reasonably priced for voice, sms and most importantly for data usage of web browsing and apps.

As manufacturing cost for this 2.8″ resistive Android phone might be below $100, this could really provide a taste of what is to come in terms of reaching huge worldwide market share for Android, reaching emerging markets as more than 4 Billion people around the world still don’t have a smart phone and Internet access. How soon the sub-$50 Android phones with sub-$3/month pre-paid Internet data access in all the developing countries?

Vodafone own-brand devices are available in 31 Vodafone subsidiary or partner markets. It is the world’s second largest mobile phone operator behind China Mobile. See an overview of Vodafone’s market share in this Wikipedia article.

Found via: techradar.com

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Android selling faster than iPhone

Posted by Charbax – April 27, 2010
Category: Smartphones, Android

The latest monthly report by AdMob on US-based web usage on smartphones (of sites and apps where AdMob is serving ads) shows that Android phones combined are now being used more than the iphone OS devices.

By these numbers, one can speculate if the overall share of Android devices sold per month in the USA is about to overtake the overall monthly share of sold iPhones, iPod touch and iPads.

Consider that most of the iphone OS share consists of iphones and ipod touch that were bought by consumers during these past 2 years. While most of the Android devices used at this point were purchased during the past 6 months. So this may increase the likelihood that Android sales per month have already overtaken the monthly sales of iPhones.

Consider that the Chinese market is getting several “Ophone” branded phones, which are based on modified Android OS source code. Consider also that the US and European market have not yet received significantly cheaper Android phones on their markets although many are planned to be released soon. Once pre-paid or totally unlocked Android phones are sold below $200 without contracts, those may expand the market share of Android phones even faster, as consumers likely much prefer a $200 unlocked phone or locked on pre-paid plans than a $200 locked phone that comes with a $3500 2-year contract.

In AdMob’s numbers the Google Nexus One device is only achieving a 2% marketshare. My guess is that Google doesn’t need to sell more Nexus Ones at this point. The Nexus One is only there to push the Android market forward. Google isn’t going to compete with its partners yet. Nexus One is basically like a Development Kit for the Android industry that is also available to early adopters who can buy it over the web. But the more interesting business models will come once Google is selling Android phones at http://google.com/phone at below $200 unlocked and out of contracts.

Source: metrics.admob.com
Found via: techmeme.com

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Dell is making ARM Powered Laptops too

Posted by Charbax – April 26, 2010
Category: Laptops, Android

Another leak released by androidcentral.com unveils that Dell also has plans for releasing a “true “netbook”” that is ARM Powered, to run Android probably customized for Laptop form factors.

The code-name is Athens, 11″ SVGA 1024×768 screen, optional 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity modules. There is also the code-name Sparta to be released perhaps as soon as June that may be a convertible Laptop and Tablet form factor.

Source: androidcentral.com

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Samsung is preparing ARM Cortex A9 dual core processors

Posted by Charbax – April 23, 2010
Category: Samsung

ARMnews has leaked some a slideshow document featuring Samsung’s roadmap for ARM Cortex A8, A9, single, dual and quad core processors to be released.

Found via: engadget.com

Hard Kernel Odroid-T, 10″ Capacitive Android Tablet

Posted by Charbax – April 23, 2010
Category: Tablets, Development Boards, Samsung, Android

Hard Kernel already has a 3.5″ gaming-oriented device which I filmed a couple of months ago (see here), now they are also announcing a 10″ tablet device named ODROID-T.

Here are the full specs:

Samsung S5PC110 Cortex-A8 1Ghz with 512KB L2 cache
3D Accelerator SGX540(up to 20M triangles/s and 1000M pixels/s)
512MB Mobile DDR 400Mega data rate

10.1inch 1366 x 768 LVDS interface(capacitive touch)
1080p video playback via HDMI cable

WiFi/Bluetooth
USB2.0 Host

Accelerometer
Android2.1

External GPS

Availability for worldwide shipping : Early June

Find more information at hardkernel.com

Dell is making a 7-inch WVGA Tegra 2 Android tablet

Posted by Charbax – April 21, 2010
Category: Tablets, Nvidia, Android

Today’s Dell Android product leaks continue with this 7-inch Android tablet design powered by the ARM Cortex A9 based Nvidia Tegra2 processor! It’ll also have an optional DVB-T and ATSC TV tuner module. 1.3 megapixel camera and an SDHC card slot.

Source: engadget.com

Dell Thunder, 4.1″ WVGA OLED Android phone

Posted by Charbax – April 21, 2010
Category: Smartphones, Qualcomm, Android

Dell is announcing (or leaking) this 4.1″ WVGA OLED based (probably Super AMOLED), to run Android 2.1, AT&T and worldwide HSDPA versions to be released this year also with Dell’s proprietary “Stage UI” overlay user interface.

Source: engadget.com