Android News - Page 325 of 371 - CNX Software

October 30, 2012October 31, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

New Features in Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

As Google unveiled Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet, they also announced Android 4.2, the latest version of Google operating system, that brings the following new features. Photo Sphere Camera Going beyond panoramic photo shots, photo sphere allows you to generate a 360 degrees panorama by taking pictures in all direction, up, down, right and left. Head over Google maps to see a few examples. Keyboard with Gesture Typing You can now just glides over the letters you want to type, and the new improved keyboard will find the word you want to type. The keyboard is also said to be able to anticipate the next word allowing to type a full sentence by just selecting suggested words. Google also claims text-to-speech capabilities and voice typing have been improved, and you don’t need an internet connection to type with your voice anymore. Multiple User Profiles This is the most […]

October 30, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Google Unveils LG Nexus 4 Smartphone and Samsung Nexus 10 Tablet Running Android 4.2

Event though it had to cancel the media event due to bad weather, Google made several important announcements yesterday with the LG Nexus 4 Smartphone based on Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 and Samsung Nexus 10 tablet powered by the latest ARM Cortex A15 Exynos 5250 processor. The company also announced Android 4.2 (still called Jelly Bean) which will run on both devices. I’ll provide more details on the new features of the latest version of Android in a separate post. Let’s see what kind of hardware the Nexus 4 has to offer: CPU – Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro @ 1.5 GHz (Quad Core) System Memory – 2 GB RAM Storage – 8 or 16 GB internal storage Display – 4.7″ IPS display (1280×768) Camera – 8MP rear and 1.3 MP front cameras. Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, NFC (Android Beam) and Bluetooth Mobile Network – Unlocked GSM/UMTS/HSPA+, GSM/EDGE/GPRS (850, 900, 1800, […]

October 28, 2012December 16, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

$249 Samsung Exynos 5 (Cortex A15) Arndale Development Board

Samsung has announced the first Cortex A15 development board available for purchase. Like the Origen board, Arndale development board has been designed by InSignal and features a dual core Exynos 5 (5250) cortex A15 processor @ 1.7 GHz, 2 GB RAM, internal storage via eMMC and plenty of ports. The development kit is composed of a CPU module (Exynos 5 , RAM and PMC) and a baseboard. Here are Arndale development board specifications: CPU Board Exynos 5 Cortex-A15@1.7 GHz dual core 2GB 32-bit 800 MHz LPDDR3/LPDDR2 Base Board Sensors Accelerator : Invensence MPU-6050 Gyro : Invensence MPU-6050 e-Compass : AKM -AK8963C Camera Interfaces: ITU 601, MIPI CSI Video Ouput: HDMI 1.4 interface (micro HDMI) 1 channel eDP output Single WQXGA MIPI DSI interface USB: 1x USB3.0 Host 2x USB2.0 Host 1x USB 2.0 OTG SATA 1.0/2.0/3.0 interface 1 channel eMMC 4.5 1 channel SDIO 3.0 2 channel SD 2.0 (microSD slot) 4 channel […]

October 28, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linaro 12.10 Release with Linux kernel 3.6 and Android 4.1.2

Linaro release 12.10 has recently been announced, and includes Linux Kernel 3.6.1 and Android 4.1.2. This release provides further improvement to big.LITTLE architecture and Linux can boot on TC2 (A Test Chip with 2 Cortex A15 and 3 Cortex a7 cores) and an ARMv8 (Aarch64) OpenEmbedded community build is now available for download. Work has also be done on preparing demos for Linaro Connect (29 Oct – 02 Nov) in Copenhagen including a single ARM kernel booting on different boards. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro Android 12.10 has been upgraded to 4.1.1_r6 and then to 4.1.2. Linaro Android builds are now shipped with improved instructions. AOSP Galaxy Nexus builds are available from http://android-build.linaro.org and include DS-5 support. Linaro Android toolchain has been updated to Linaro GCC 2012.10. Dalvik benchmarked against Hard-Float Open JDK and Java SE. Power meter improvements for LAVA automation. Prepared Connect demonstrations benchmarking […]

October 17, 2012October 20, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 30 Comments

$89 Hiapad Hi802 Android mini PC Based on Freescale i.MX6 Quad Processor

The first (single core) mini PCs showed up in May, the dual core mini PCs in August, and the first quad core mini PCs should be available in November starting with Hiapad Hi-802 HDMI TV Stick powered by Freescale i.MX6 Quad Cortex A9 processor with 1GB RAM. The specs of the device are not available publicly, but based on diverse sources (including charbax video below), it should be as follows: SoC – Freescale i.MX6Q Quad Core Cortex A9 Processor with Vivante GC2000 GPU System Memory – 1GB RAM Storage – 16? GB NAND Flash Memory + microSD card slot Video Output – HDMI Connectivity – Built-in Wifi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth USB – USB Host + USB OTG A picture of the PCB (one side only) has been uploaded by Hiapad. There are 6 through holes at the top left of the PCB which might be some debug ports (TBC […]

October 10, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 53 Comments

Droid Stick A2 – AMLogic AML8726-MX Dual Core Android 4.1.1 mini PC

Since it was first announced in August, Rockchip RK3066 dual core mini PCs have been popping up everywhere, and AFAIK those are currently the only low cost (sub $100) dual core Android TV Sticks available. But according to a recent Kimdecent announcement, this is about to change with the release of the Droid Stick A2 based on AMLogic AML8726-MX Dual Core Cortex A9 processor with 1GB RAM and 4 to 8 GB Flash running Android Jelly Bean. Here are Droid Stick A2 specifications: CPU – Amlogic AML8726-MX Dual Core Cortex A9 @ 1.5 GHz GPU – Mali400 Dual Core, 2D/ 3D/ OpenGL ES2.0/ OpenVG1.1. System Memory – 1 GB RAM Storage – 4/8 GB Nand Flash + microSD card slot (up to 32GB) WiFi – 802.11b/g/n Video Output – HDMI (1080P) Video Decoding – Supports up to 1920x1080p@60fps Video Encoding – Supports encoding in H.264. 1080p@60fps, 720@100fps USB – 1xUSB […]

October 7, 2012October 7, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

$69 – $89 Wandboard Freescale i.MX6 Solo and Dual Development Boards

The Wandboard is a low cost Linux ARM Cortex-A9 ARM board comprised of a CPU module and an interface board. There are actually 2 versions of the board (single and dual core) which are developed by a team of engineers during their spare time: Wandboard Solo – $69 – Freescale i.MX6 Solo + 512 MB RAM Wandboard Dual – $89 – Freescale i.MX6 Dual + 1 GB RAM Both boards come with Audio I/O, Optical S/PDIF, HDMI, a camera interface, 2 micro SD cardslot, a serial port, an expansion header, USB and USB OTG ports, a SATA connector and Gb Ethernet. The dual version also adds Wifi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth support. There are not so many boards with native SATA support, so for those of you who need SATA this could be really be a good option. [Update: Although there’s a SATA connector on the baseboard, this is not […]

October 5, 2012October 5, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

FPU and Memory Android Benchmarks: RgbenchMM & RgBandwidth

There are already a fair amount of Android benchmarks such as Antutu or Quadrant, but how those benchmarks work exactly is unclear and the number they return have no direct meaning, until you start comparing results to other device results. This is why Rahul Garg, a PhD student at McGill University, has written 2 new benchmarks to test FPU and memory bandwidth with known benchmark procedures and results in MFlops and MB/s which are both available on Google Play Store: RgbenchMM– A benchmark to test the floating point performance performing double-precision matrix multiplication and fully multi-threaded to support multiple cores. It’s programmed in C++ using Android NDK, and works with ARM and x86 devices running Android 2.3.3 and greater. RgBandwidth– Asimple memory bandwidth test which tests memory copy performance (in “Simple” mode), and uses tests derived from the STREAM benchmark (“Misc” tests). This can be used to get an estimate […]