Geeksphone Revolution Multi OS Smartphone Supports Android, Firefox OS, and Soon More…

Geeksphone, the company behind the earlier Firefox OS developer’s phones, and the privacy-enhanced Blackphone, has now officially launched the Geeksphone Revolution powered by a dual core Intel Atom Z2560 processor and supporting Android, Firefox OS, or more exactly Boot2Gecko (B2G), and potentially other OS supported by the community such as Sailfish OS. Geeksphone Revolution specifications: SoC – Dual core Intel Atom processor Z2560 up to 1.6GHz System Memory – 1GB LPDDR2 Storage – 4GB EMMC + MicroSD support, Up to 32GB Display – 4.7″ IPS LCD Multi-touch, qHD resolution. Cellular network – HSPA/WCDMA: 2100/1900/900/850 MHz, GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, HSDPA up to 21Mbps, HSUPA up to 5.76Mbps, GPRS Class 12 / EDGE Class 12 Connectivity – WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth Class 3.0, GPS, AGPS Camera – 8 MP rear camera with LED Flash, 1.3 MP front camera System I/O – 3.5mm audio jack, micro USB Sensors – G‐Sensor + E‐Compass + […]

Mele X1000 Android Media Player Supports Blu-Ray Navigation, 3D Video Playback

Mele X1000 is an Android TV Box based on Telechips TCC8935 dual core processor, 1GB RAM, and 4GB Flash that claims to support Blu-Ray navigation and 3D Video playback, something that is seldom supported in Android devices, but can still be found in a few products including HiMedia Q5 II (Hisilicon Hi3716) and VidOn.me A200 (AllWinner A31). Mele X1000 specifications: SoC – Telechips TCC8935CG dual core Cortex A9 @ 1.2GHz + Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4GB NAND Flash, SATA, and SD card slot Video Output – HDMI v1.4, CVBS (AV out) Audio Output – HDMI, AV out, optical S/PDIF Video Codecs – MPEG-1/2/4, MPEG-4 ASP, H.264, DivX 3/4/5/6, XviD, VP6, H.263, WMV9, WMV3, VC1, RV 8/9/10 Video Containers – AVI, ts, tp, trp, vob, mkv, mp4, mpv, iso, asf, flv, dat, mpg, mpeg, swf, ogm, wmv, asf, rm, rmvb up to 1080p Audio Support – […]

STMicro Unveils $10 mbed-enabled and Arduino Compatible Nucleo Development Boards

STMicro already announced a $24 NFC development kit a few days ago, and they’ve now announced new ultra low cost STM32 development boards. STMicro Nucleo development boards are based on different STM32 MCU based on ARM Cortex M0, M3 and M4, feature Arduino headers, and are supported by mbed platform. There are currently four boards available: NUCLEO-F401RE – Based on STM32F401RET6 ARM Cortex M4 MCU @ 84 MHz with 512KB flash memory, 96 KB SRAM NUCLEO-F030R8 – Based on STM32F030R8T6 ARM Cortex M0 MCU @ 48 MHz with 64KB flash memory, 8KB SRAM NUCLEO-F103RB – Based on STM32F103RBT6 ARM Cortex M3 MCU @ with 128KB flash memory, 20 KB SRAM NUCLEO-L152RE – Based on STM32L152RET6 ARM Cortex M3 MCU @ 32MHz with 512KB flash memory, 32KB SRAM All four boards share the following specifications: STM32 microcontroller with LQFP64 package Two types of extension resources Arduino Uno Revision 3 connectivity STMicroelectronics […]

AllWinner Linux-sunxi Community Presentation and Status Report – FOSDEM 2014

Oliver Schinagl, a member of linux-sunxi community working on open source kernel and bootloader for AllWinner SoCs, has given a presentation of the community at FOSDEM 2014 to give an overview, and show what progress has been made to date. I’ll write a summary in this post, but if you want to watch the video and/or access the slides scroll down at the bottom of the post. After explaining what sunxi is, and introducing himself, he gave some information about AllWinner and their SoCs: Founded in 2007 in Zhuhai, Chiang now with 550 employees including 450+ engineers 15% market share in 2013 for tablet SoCs, only behind Apple. Products: F-series SoC (2010), A10 (2011), A13, A10s (2012), and A20 (2013). (cnsoft He skipped A31(s) and A80 here as they are not really supported by the community). They list “Open Source Source” and “GPLv3” in their marketing materials although they clearly […]

Xtreamer SideWinder4 is an XBMC Android TV Box with a DVB-T2 Receiver, and Google Cast Support

Xtreamer, a Hong Kong based company specialized in digital media products, is now taking pre-orders for Xtreamer SideWinder4, an Android media player powered by AMLogic AML8726-MX dual core processor, featuring a DVB-T2 receiver, and pre-loaded with XBMC and Cheapcast Chromecast emulator.   Let’s get right to the specs: SoC – AMLogic AML8726-MX dual core ARM Cortex A9 @ 1.5GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB NAND Flash (32M bit nor flash + 32Gbit MLC flash), micro SD card slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4 Audio Output – HDMI 1.4 + optical S/PDIF. Dolby & DTS 2ch output, 5CH & 7CH pass-through Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi with AirPlay, Miracast and DLNA support, 10/100M Ethernet USB – 3x USB 2.0 host ports Power Supply – DC 5V, 2A power adapter (CE, FCC, CCC certified) Dimensions – 18 x 8.2 x 3.5cm The device runs Android Jelly […]

Applied Micro X-Gene X-C1 ARMv8 Server Development Board is Now Available for Pre-order

Applied Micro X-Gene is the very first processor to use ARM 64-bit architecture (ARMv8), not Cortex A53 or Cortex A57, but a custom implementation, and last year we’ve seen the company’s ARMv8 development board running 4 Linux virtual machines via KVM. The platform, called X-Gene X-C1, can now be pre-ordered to develop private cloud, public cloud, and enterprise applications. There’s limited public information for now, but I could derive specifications from a few places on the web and available pictures: SoC – Applied Micro X-Gene eight core ARMv8 processor @ 2+GHz System Memory – 2x DDR3 memory slots Storage – 4x SATA 2/3 ports + SD card slot Connectivity – 3x 10 Gb Ethernet ports USB – 2x SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports, 1x mini USB port Expansion – PCIe Gen 3 Monitoring  DB9 Serial port Power – ATX I don’t know what’s the metallic connector with holes between the two […]

IGEPv5 OMAP5432 Development Board is Now Available for 149 Euros

ISEE IGEPv5 development board announced in October 2013, and powered by Texas Instrument OMAP5432 dual core Cortex A15 + dual core Cortex M4 SoC, POWERVR SGX544MP2 and Vivante GC320 GPUs is now available for as low as 149 Euros. There are two versions: “IGEPv5 OMAP5432 Communication Edition” for hobbyists with limited support, and “IGEPv5 OMAP5432” directly supported by ISEE. There’s also “IGEPv5 Custom Design” if you have specific requirements for your product. Hardware specifications are shared by both versions but with significant differences (CE = IGEPv5 OMAP5432 Community Edition, ISEE = IGEPv5 OMAP5432): SoC – Texas Instruments OMAP5432 dual core Cortex A15 up to 1.5 GHz (CE) or 2 GHz (ISEE), dual core Cortex M4,  with POWERVR SGX544 dual-core GPU, Vivante GC320 GPU, and TMS320DMC64x DSP System Memory CE – 1GB DDR3 @ 1066 MHz ISEE – Up to 4 GB DDR3 RAM expandable to 4GB Storage CE – No eMMC, […]

Intel Bay Trail Z3700 Series Overview, Benchmarks, Hardware, Documentation and Linux Support

After seeing the discussion about ARM vs x86 (Bay trail) for the future Dragon Pyra open source game console, I’ve realized many people, including myself, do not know about the different resources available to develop hardware and software for Intel Bay Trail SoCs for tablets such as Atom Z3740 and Z3770, so I decided to have a look. Intel Atom Bay Trail Z3700 Series Overview Intel Z3600 series and Z3700 series are respectively dual core and quad core Bay Trail-T SoCs for Android and Windows 8 tablets. There are 4 quad core models: Z3740, Z3740D, Z3770, and Z3770D, and 2 dual core processors: Z3680 and Z3680D. The dual core versions are reserved for Android only, and there’s no product page on Intel for now, so I’ll focus this post on Z3700 series only. I have no idea what the “D” in Z3740D is for, except it;’s not related to Desktop, […]

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