DaVinci Movile Kite Full-HD Tablet Boots Android and Ubuntu

DaVinci Mobile, an Italian company, has just announced a Samsung Exynos 4412 quad core tablet running Android 4.0 (ICS) and Ubuntu 12.04 Precise that should sell for 373 Euros in Italy, or just 29 Euros with a subscription. The specifications of this tablet are as follows: SoC – Samsung Exynos Quad-Core Cortex A9 processor @ 1.4 Ghz + Quad-Core Mali-400MP GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 32GB flash + microSD card socket Display  – 10.1 “IPS Multi-touch Capacitive Panel (1920×1200) with a viewing angle of 178 ° Connectivity Wi-Fi – 82.11 b/g/n Bluetooth 4.0 GPS-  A-GPS Sensors – Gyroscope Camera – VGA front camera, 2.0 MP rear camera USB – miniUSB port Audio I/O – 3.5 mm jack for headphones Battery – 5400mAh 3.7V Weight – 539g Dimensions – 258.3x164x9.5mm The hardware specifications appear to perfectly match Ramos W30HD tablet, sold for less than $300 on Chinese websites […]

Samsung Exynos Octa big.LITTLE 8 Cores SoC Announced at CES 2013

Samsung Electronics unveiled the very first big.LITTLE Cortex A7/A15 SoC at CES 2013. Exynos Octa will feature 4 Cortex A15 cores together with 4 Cortex A7 cores, and make use of big.LITTLE processing to optimize energy using In-Kernel Switching (IKS), where the kernel uses Cortex A15 or Cortex A7 cores depending on the load, or Heterogeneous MultiProcessing (HMP), where different tasks are assigned to different cores, and both Cortex A15 and A7 can be used simultaneously. Check my earlier post “Big.LITTLE Processing Implementations and Current Status” for an overview on how this all works. The new Intel processors for smartphones/tablets are now very close to ARM when it comes to power consumption, and ARM may regain a clear lead thanks to big.LITTLE processing technology, which is currently shown to consume about 40% less power than equivalent tasks run on Cortex A15 (only) processors. Samsung claims it may offers up to […]

$135 ARMBRIX Zero Exynos 5 Development Board Is Now Available for Pre-order

Ten days ago, I wrote about ARMBrix Zero, the cheapest Cortex A15 board (soon to be) available based on Samsung Exynos 5250 processor. It is now available for pre-order, and the company organizes a raffle to send a free ARMBRIX Zero board to the winner. I’ve received some updated specifications, although we don’t learn much more: CPU – Exynos 5 Dual  ARM Cortex A15 Dual GPU – Mali T604  Embedded GPU Memory –  2GB DDR3  X32, 800MHz Storage – MicroSD  slot Audio – ALC5631Q  Line In/Out, SPDIF  Coaxial type Video – HDMI A Type External Ports: 2x USB2.0 Host 1x USB3.0 Host 1x USB2.0 Device 1x SATA 1x Ethernet RJ45 Expansions – 3 Headers (Further details should be available later this week) CON16 – MIPI Master/Slave, 1x I2C, GPIO CON19 – 3x serial interfaces, 2x I2C, 2x ADC, JTAG, USB, MMC, and reset CON20 – I2S, Interrupt and GPIO pins, […]

Linaro 12.12 Release with Linux Kernel 3.7 and Android 4.2.1

Linaro release 12.12 has just been announced, and includes Linux Kernel 3.7 and Android 4.2.1. The tracking version (stable release) uses Kernel 3.4.22. This release upgrades Android to version 4.2.1, Ubuntu images are now based on Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) and Linaro U-Boot 2012.12 has been released with support for Origen 4 Quad and Arndale boards. Further improvements have been done for OpenEmbedded ARMv8, where they replaced the php Apache module by php-fpm among other things. On the kernel side, USB drivers have been refactored, and a kernel size analysis have been performed on several platforms. The power management team has mainly worked on big.LITTLE IKS and MP implementations, and it’s the first time LEG (Linaro Enterprise Group) is included in the release, and they worked on UEFI for ARM, GRUB for U-Boot, and provided a Ubuntu server image for Arndale board which can boot via UEFI or UBoot. Here […]

$135 ARMBRIX Exynos 5 Dual Cortex A15 Development Board

If you want to develop on a Cortex A15 processor, but Arndale development board is a bit expensive for you, don’t despair as ARMBRIX development board featuring Samsung Exynos 5 Dual processor is currently being developed and should be available in Q1 2013 for $135. The preliminary specifications include: SoC – Samsung Exynos 5 Dual Cortex A15 CPU + Mali T604 GPU System Memory – 2 GB DDR3 @ 800 MHz Storage – microSD slot Video Output – HDMI Audio In/Out – HDMI, SPDIF, Line In/Out. USB – 2x USB 2.0 Host, 1x USB 3.0 host and 1x USB 2.0 device Ethernet – Via USB to Ethernet hub. SATA – The connector is on the left of the micro SD slot. Expansions – 3 headers. Dimensions – 85 x 95 mm This board is based on Arndale design, and will be software compatible. Currently, Arndale officially support Android only, but […]

Running Ubuntu in Android with ODROID-X Development Board

I’ve had several people asking me about running Linux on Android in the last few months, but I did not look into it into details, because I thought we would just be able to run server apps. That is until Rohith left a comment on CNX Software Facebook timeline,  that it’s possible to run Linux in Android, and access the user interface via VNC (sort of simple, but I did not think of it). You probably need at least 1GB of memory and a multi-core processor to run this sort of setup correctly, so I finally decided to give it a try by running Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity interface in ODROID-X development board. I mainly followed the instructions available at http://linuxonandroid.org/ and inside the Android app. Most of the steps I followed can also be replicated on other rooted Android hardware platforms. Apart from Ubuntu 10.04 & 12.04, you can […]

$69 ODROID-U & $89 ODROID-U2 Exynos 4412 Development Boards

Hardkernel has just announced 2 tiny quad core development boards based on Exynos 4412 @ 1.4 GHz (as used in Samsung Galaxy S3) and Exynos 4412 Prime @ 1.7 GHz (as used in Samsung Galaxy Note 2) called respectively ODROID-U and ODROID-U2. The other difference is the U version comes with 1 GB RAM, and the U2 version with 2 GB RAM. Here are the specification the ODROID-U and ODROID-U2 boards: Processor – Samsung Exynos4412 @ 1.4 GHz (ODROID-U) or Exynos 4412 Prime @ 1.7 Ghz (ODROID-U2), which can be overclocked respectively to 1.8 GHz and 2 GHz. GPU – Mali-400 clocked at 400MHz (ODROID-U) or 440MHz (ODROID-U2), which can be overclocked respectively to 533 and 633 MHz. System Memory – 1GB LPDDR2 DRAM @ 800MHz (ODROID-U) or  2GB @ 880MHz (ODROID-U2) Storage – microSD socket, eMMC connector USB – 2x USB 2.0 Host ports, 1x USB 2.0 device for ADB/mass […]

Linaro 12.11 Release with Linux Kernel 3.7 and Android 4.2

Linaro release 12.11 has just been announced, and includes Linux Kernel 3.7-rc2 and Android 4.2. The tracking version (stable release) uses Kernel 3.4.19. This release upgrade Android to version 4.2, adds support for Origen 4 Quad board, and you can now use perf profiling utility in Linaro Android. Initial GRUB support for ARM is now available, the Ubuntu Precise server image is back online and lots of updates have been done on the kernel, mainly for Android, device tree and big.LITTLE. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Platform Enablement Android upgraded from 4.1.2 to 4.2 to all the platforms Android builds are available for Origen 4412 board setup Improvements to click-through license infrastructure MP3 playback enabled for ARM Versatile Express and Samsung Origen (4210 and 4412) Fixed riff USB issue on newer laptops Testing/LAVA Re-enabled Android CTS testing Integrated the new Methanol browser test Upstreaming Perf patch was […]

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