Imagine walking around with a head-mounted 15″ display to view informations available to you at all times. This system features a pretty cool six-axis position tracker from Hillcrest Labs that allows you to operate a cursor with nearly pixel-for-pixel accuracy by just moving around your head when for example panning around a large image or a map. There is a highly targetted microphone that understands voice-commands where you can for example zoom in on maps or images, you can exit back to the programs menu, launch specific applications and open specific files.
Here are the specs of this Second Generation Kopin Golden-i Motorola-branded Head-mounted Computer system:
Processor — TI OMAP3530 clocked at 600MHz
Display — Kopin SVGA (800 x 600) liquid crystal micro display (LCD)
Networking:
Bluetooth 2.0
WiFi — “Will be offered soon”
User interface — Includes speech recognition and motion sensing
Other I/O — 1 x USB
Expansion — microSD slot
Power — 1200 mAh battery provides more than eight hours of operation
Weight — 3 oz (85g)
Operating system — Windows CE
I am still slowly uploading my remaining 10-15 videos from Mobile World Congress to Youtube, as Internet upload speeds using Swisscom ADSL in Switzerland also are absolutely terrible, where uploads get disconnected all the time, I have to resume an FTP upload 100 times over many hours uploading with an average of 10kb/s and I have to ask someone else somewhere else to be nice enough to upload them to Youtube for you during these next few days.
After the Google keynote on the third day of Mobile World Congress, I was lucky to speak with Andy Rubin product manager at Google of the Android project of which I got several very interesting replies off camera to several of my Android related questions, until I also got to ask Eric Schmidt a couple of questions while he was walking with his team including Google President of Product Management Vic Gundotra to a secret meeting with secret people (that I didn’t try to guess who were) in a secret room behind the scenes of the keynote area:
Charbax:
– How soon are we going to see the Android laptops?
Eric Schmidt:
(big smile, everyone in the Google team around the CEO laughs, and looks at me like I know something)
(another smile and laugh from himselft and the Google team)
– I would have to say No Comment on this one.
Charbax:
– Do you think it’s bloated?
Eric Schmidt:
(smiling)
– No comment
What I take from those answers, mostly from what I saw in the faces of Eric Schmidt and his team, is that Android in ARM powered Laptops certainly is one of Google’s next big projects although the big tagline of his whole keynote speech was “Mobile First”. I would guess probably that Laptops and Tablets may be supported by Google with one of the next versions of Android. This is also the kind of confirmation that I got speaking to Andy Rubin in the following interview. This is not word for word what he said, he wouldn’t or couldn’t let me film him answer my questions, this is kind of what I remember him answering:
Charbax:
– Do you know the Archos 5 Internet Tablet? (I show mine to him)
Andy Rubin:
– Yes I know it. It’s nice.
Charbax:
– When are we going to see official Android Marketplace support on such kinds of devices that for example don’t have 3G and only have WiFi and also introduce a few new hardware features such as larger screens and Laptop form factors?
Andy Rubin:
– While we were initially asking manufacturers to stay within our hardware requirements and guidelines, we are also definitely going to be supporting Tablets and Laptop form factors as well soon.
Charbax:
– Can Chrome browser run within Android, and if it could, what would need to be done in terms of software engineering to make that work on Laptops and Tablets with WVGA or higher resolution screens.
Andy Rubin:
– Both Android and Chrome are open source, and we have released the Native Android SDK, so any developer could certainly try to port the Chrome browser for Android. But the Chrome browser is more adapted for larger screens such as laptops. It does make sense.
Charbax:
– When are we going to see Android phones sold unlocked below $200? I was the one to falsely circulate the rumor (which though I didn’t present as a rumor but more as a Wish in a simple comment) of the $199 unlocked Nexus One pricing.
Andy Rubin:
– Even for the Nexus One, we are not the ones setting the price. (I don’t know if he simply meant HTC is setting the price or if someone else at Google is setting the price. And I didn’t manage to ask if Google is making a large share of the profit margins on selling Nexus One unlocked or on contracts or if Google “only” makes about the same margin as any other reseller.)
That’s it, I didn’t really present myself as a video-blogger/press/journalist directly to Eric Schmidt in the brief few seconds that I was able to talk to him and I didn’t want to slow them down as I somehow got to be somewhere back stage where I was not really supposed to be. I left my business card to the press relations Google lady asking if there was any way for me to be allowed to Interview Google Engineers in a video for my video-blog about my Android and Chrome related questions.
I was politely contacted the same evening by a Google UK press representative telling me that “Thanks for our interest in doing a videoblog here at mobile world congress. I’m afraid that we don’t have the resources to do on-camera interviews this year. Apologies for any inconvenience.”
No problem, it was fun just to speak with Andy Rubin for a few minutes and to Eric Schmidt for a few seconds.
You have to consider that some of the leaders of the telecom industry were probably in the audience at that very packed keynote room at Mobile World Congress. I did find it slightly fun when some people (possibly with an agenda) did ask quite harsh questions to Eric Schmidt when there were some minutes for the Q&A, for example Danish Analyst John Strange asked if Google was trying to turn the Telecoms into dumb pipes when they rather would want to be intelligent pipes, which fueld several replies from Eric Schmidt and further discussions on the matter also when a Dutch Analyst asked if Google wanted to “steal the voice minutes” from the telecom industry. I found those questions very fun, especially since some in attendance seemed to be cheering against Google for those two questions. I certainly am rooting for Google to disrupt the established telecom industry business models. Sub-$100 fully featured Android phones could reach not only populations of rich countries, but those billions of people in developing countries, even people who currently live in slumps, in misery, and for whome I am convinced access to technology could be a faster solution.
While you wait for my next videos, you can watch Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in the following video:
Mobile World Congress does not want video-bloggers to upload videos after 4PM on the last day of the show (the press room was only opened until 7PM during the show days). If I was organizing the show, press rooms would be opened and 1Gbit/s for all 24h/day, I’d want videos about exhibitors and blogging to happen non-stop during the show. And I’d provide a map of the city with dedicated fast upload connections so video-bloggers would know where to go to get some work done. I tried a Net cafe by Urquinaoia called Work Center which has barely 512kbit/s upload speed. I don’t expect to find any upload connection until in about a day and a half.
Erik Helgerson is Technical Lead Product Manager on the Windows Phone 7 Series project at Microsoft. Here’s an overview of some of the Interface features, hubs, some talk about applications, multi-tasking, design, hardware requirements.
The latest most powerful ARM Processor by Marvell, it includes all the most advanced features that Marvell can deliver for a full ARM Powered experience device.
An amazing Super AMOLED screen by Samsung and also an amazing built-in DLP Pico Projector in this amazing Android smartphone to be released pretty soon. Awesome.
Here are some informations about the new low-cost Pantheon 910 and 920 full system on chip solution by Marvell that will make it possible to manufacture Android phones that can be sold below $100.
FON is creating an open WiFi roaming network to cover the whole planet. At Mobile World Congress they are showing the new FON router that will be used by 3G carriers to give to consumers and upgrade the software functionality of smart phones to be able to carry some of the heavy video playback over WiFi networks rather than using up all the 3G bandwidth for that type of activity.
My opinions on the Fonera SIMPL:
I think it’s awesome, it looks like a new mass market design for the Fonera+, with WiFi 802.11n, a faster processor, a built-in Mobile log-in user interface in the pre-installed firmware.
I think the courageous carriers who may be giving those out for free to their users, should also allow for full WiFi meshing on those routers. Thus really expand the range of the whole city-wide WiFi networks.
And I think that the Android phones need to get a very optimized auto-connect and WiFi city mapping software which should generate precise maps of WiFi coverage, thus a user-generated FON Maps not only generated by the information provided by Fonspot owners, but most importantly information about the range and quality of the signal and the available bandwidth (perhaps a small download and upload can be launched to test bandwidth speeds). This way if you want a map over available 10mbit/s download and 10mbit/s upload connections over WiFi in the city, that whole functionality should be built-in to the next generation of the FON WiFi Maps.
I think that the FON auto-connect app on Android should thus based on knowing where it is, know if it even needs to try to detect WiFi hotspots at all in the proximity. If the user wants to play a lot of video or high bitrate video, the 3G carrier could as well tell the user that only low bitrate may be available over 3G at that specific time but that full bitrate is available at the given FON compatible hotspots.
And also, to more quickly reach global coverage, FON should enable bandwidth specific roaming agreements, so Foneros should be able to roam on “competing” WiFi networks by paying small fees based on specific bandwidth usage. So for example roaming on a certain ISP’s WiFi network may cost 1€ per GB per user and where the Fonero should be able to pay instantly with the eventual FON WiFi money that may be available on the Fonero’s account. For example, Free should be able to auto-charge Foneros 1€ per GB to roam on the whole FreeWiFi network in France, then Orange may join with their Wannadoo Box network as well. And if all ISPs join in that network and do it by opt-out and not by opt-in, then 80% of French cities could be covered by FON compatible WiFi from one day to the next. By enabling roaming fees, the easy connection and affordable WiFi roaming charges are automatic making the connection simpler, and it also encourages ISPs to reach further with more bandwidth to thus make more money. So no credit card payments should be required just to check emails again.
Nuance is providing voice recognition technology now for mobile phones using apps and integration that uses the cloud to process and improve the voice recognition efficiency.
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