Possibly inspired by Texas Instruments low cost Beagleboard (OMAP 3 – 129 USD) and Pandaboard (OMAP4 – 179 USD) and the large following in the development community, Freescale announced its own “Quick Start Development Board” based on i.MX53 for a cost of 149 USD. i.MX53 QSD Board Hardware Description Listed Hardware Features of the i.MX53 Quick Start Development Board: Processor i.MX53 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 Processor Power management IC 1 GB DDR3 memory Display LVDS connector VGA connector Parallel LCD add-on card (via expansion connector) HDMI add-on card (via expansion connector) Audio SPDIF output via HDMI add-on card Freescale SGTL5000 audio codec Microphone jack Headphone jack Expansion Connector Enables parallel LCD or HDMI output Camera CSI port signals I2C, SSI, SPI signals Connectivity Full-size SD/MMC card slot microSD card slot 7-pin SATA data connector 10/100 Base-T Ethernet port Two High-Speed USB host ports Micro USB device port Debug JTAG connector […]
Android C/C++ development with Android Native SDK
HyperDevBox is a Japanese based software development company, developing games for Android. They are presenting their new Android game called “Spectral Souls”, the first tactical RPG game for Android. The interesting part is that this Android gamewas not developped with Java, but only using C/C++ programming with Android Native SDK (NDK) (Currently revision 5). Using the NDK means you’ll have to adapt your software to several hardware platform contrary to java development. They now only support Qualcomm and PowerVR GPU for now, and they are working on supporting NVidia Tegra platform and other upcoming GPU. The advantage of native code is a potential performance improvement and code re-use if you have already applications developed in C/C++, the inconvenience is that more work is need to support different hardware. Currently the NDK is only available for ARM platforms (ARMv5TE andARMv7-A), future releases will support x86 instructions. The video below is an […]
Low Cost Android Tablets: Archos Arnova 8 and Arnova 10
Archos – a leader in low cost android tablet with its Archos Gen8 Series (Archos 28/32/48/70/101) – has just released the Arnova Series with the Archos Arnova 8 (149 USD), an 8″ inch Android 2.1 tablet and Archos Arnova A10HT (199 USD), a 10.1″ Android 2.1 tablet. Currently those 2 tablets are based on Rockchip ARM9 RK2818 @ 600 Mhz and use a resistive touchscreen, but in the next few months, they’ll release version with Rockchip RK2918 @ 1GHz (Cortez A8 based), a capacitive touchscreen and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) for the same price. The firmware of those tablets is apparently not directly supported by Archos, but is developed by a subsidiary in Hong Kong called Arnova (hence the name). Usually the IT (Internet Tablet) series are developed and supported by Archos (better support) and HT (Home Tablet) developed and supported by third parties. Have a look at Charbax’s video of the […]
Samsung at MWC 2011: Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy S 2
Samsung will showcase two highly expected products at Mobile World Congress 2011, in Barcelona: The Galaxy S II smartphone with a 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus display and dual-core processor and the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 (aka Galaxy Tab 2) with a 10.1″ display (1280×800) running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). Samsung GALAXY S II Product Specifications are as follows: Network GSM 850/900/1800/1900 HSPA+ 21 850/900/1900/2100 OS Android 2.3 Gingerbread Display 4.27” WVGA (480×800) Super AMOLED Plus Processor ( BB& AP ) 1 GHz Dual Core Application Processor Camera Main(Rear): 8.0-Mega Pixel Camera AF with LED Flash Front: 2.0-Mega Pixel Camera Single Shot, Beauty Shot, , Panorama Shot, Smile Shot, Action Shot, Cartoon Shot Video Codec : MPEG4/ H.264/ H.263/ DivX VC-1 Playback : FULL HD(1080p)@30fps Recording : FULL HD(1080p)@30fps Audio MP3, AAC, AAC+, eACC+ 3.5mm Ear Jack & Speaker, Stereo FM Radio with RDS, Voice Recorder Hub Social Hub – Integrated Contacts, […]
Ziilabs ZMS-05 and ZMS-08 SDK and Development Boards
Ziilabs (originally 3DLABS) is Singapore company, subsidiary of Creative Technology, that provides media application processors for consumers electronics and has offices in the UK, China, USA and Singapore. Ziilabs Media Processors Overview Ziilabs has two media processors: ZMS-05 – A Low Power HD Programmable Media Rich Processor based on two ARM9 core (ARM9-EJS) mainly aimed at smartphones and tablets with the following media capabilities: High compute density SIMD architecture High resolution – decode to 1080p / 720p encode Simultaneous video encode/decode at D1 Wide rage of optimised CODECs and APIs Accelerated OpenGL ES 3D graphics Hardware compositing Advanced image processing 8 GFlops programmable compute ZMS-08 – A HD Media Rich Applications Processor based on an ARM Cortex A8 running @ 1GHz mainly aimed at media players, set-top boxes and digital signage solutions with the following media capabilities: Blu-ray Quality 1080p H.264 Video Decode 1080p H.264 Video Encode 720p H.264 Video […]
Android Event: Android 3.0 Presentation and MarketPlace Update
Google Android Event on the 2nd of February 2011 was divided into two part a demo about Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) features on Motorola Xoom (First 30 minutes) and an update on Android market place with the new Android market Webstore. The full event (below) lasts for around 53 minutes. If you are in a hurry, you can check the summary under the video and screenshots. During the Android 3.0 presentation, they showcased some of the platform new features such as the multitask button (e.g. to show recent apps), the grid widget, the stack widget and the new notifications mechanism. They also demo’ed backward compatibility of older apps development for Android 2.x by playing Fruit Ninja game. Then the used Gmail app to show the new features of the application framework suh as fragments, drag and drop and the application bar. They spent a fair amount of time boasting 2D and […]
Ayuda Splash Digital Signage Player Becomes Open Source
Ayuda Media Systems announced OpenSplash – a free, open source digital signage player at ISE 2011. Press Release Excerpt: Ayuda Media Systems (“Ayuda”) announced today at ISE 2011 that it will be open sourcing its Splash Digital Player. Dubbed “OpenSplash”, it is a free, multi-platform open source player that can be driven by any content management and scheduling system. “Offering a free, open source media player will enable a new wave of innovation in the signage industry” said Andreas Soupliotis, President & CEO of Ayuda. “There are a multitude of software vendors in the space that basically all do the same thing – push content from a content management system (CMS) to a network of players. Some do it a little better than others but the differentiation of identity is just not there. If there were a standard open software player that the industry rallied behind then everyone could focus […]
Android 3.0 SDK Preview and Platform Highlights
Google has just released Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) preview SDK and platform highlights. Android 3.0 Highlights Summary New User Features: New UI designed from the ground up for tablets (larger screens) System Bar, for global status and notifications Action Bar, for application control: access to contextual options, navigation, widgets, or other types of content in the Action Bar, displayed at the top of the screen. Five Customizable Home screens with widgets, app shortcuts, and wallpapers using a dedicated visual layout mode. Recent Apps, for easy visual multitasking Redesigned keyboard to improve typing speed/accuracy on tablets. Improved text selection, copy and paste New connectivity options such as Media/Photo Transfer Protocol, USB / Bluetooth keyboards Updated set of standard apps for larger screens. Browser Improvements: Multi-tabs support, “incognito” mode, better browsing experience at non-mobile sites through an improved zoom and viewport model, overflow scrolling, support for fixed positioning, and more. Camera and Gallery: […]