Android News - Page 355 of 371 - CNX Software

November 7, 2011November 7, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro Android Tutorial with the Pandaboard

Zach Pfeffer, the tech lead of the Linaro Android working group, gave a tutorial about Linaro Android at Linaro Connect Q4.11. During this tutorial, attendees were shown how to download a recent build for the pandaboard, how to make a bootable SD card image using the linaro-android-media-create command and how to boot the board with it. The full setup was composed of a Pandaboard connected to a HDMI monitor with a keyboard and mouse connected to the board as well as serial to USB cable to connect to the development machine. He also used an SD card reader to generate the bootable Android image. The images are available at Android Linaro Build Service. There are quite a few build named after the supported board (e..g panda for pandaboard, snowball for ST Ericsson Snowball etc..) and the kernel version (tracking = latest linaro kernel, staging = stable linaro kernel). Then an […]

November 1, 2011November 1, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

TI Unveils Sitara AM335x ARM Series Cortex-A8 Processors

Texas Instruments has just announced the new Sitara AM335X Processors and the low cost Beaglebone development board. The low cost Cortex-A8 SoCs start at 5 US dollars per piece and are aimed at upgrading ARM9 solutions (software compatible) and adding new features such as 3D interfaces and touch screen, high resolution displays with faster performance. Texas Instruments says you could take those new upgraded products to market within 6 months thanks to their inexpensive development board (Beaglebone) and complete SDK. There are six models in the Sitara AM335X series: AM3552: Cortex A8 up to 720 MHz. AM3554: Cortex A8 up to 720 MHz with 3D Graphics (PowerVR SGX GPU). AM3556: Cortex A8 up to 720 MHz with programmable real-time unit (PRU) @ 200 Mhz. AM3557: Cortex A8 up to 720 MHz with PRU @ 200Mhz and EtherCat. AM3558: Cortex A8 up to 720 MHz with 3D Graphics and PRU @ […]

October 30, 2011October 30, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Run 2 OS Simultaneously on ARM (OMAP4) with Codezero Embedded Hypervisor

B Labs, a company specializing in ARM Virtualization, was at ARM Techcon 2011 showcasing Codezero, their Embedded Hypervisor to run multiple Linux OS such as Android and Chrome OS on ARM processors. The main purpose of running 2 operating systems is to separate home and enterprise operating systems in mobile devices so that enterprise data is safe. Charbax (ARMDevices.net) interviewed Bahadir Baldan, founder of B Labs, and showed a demo running 2 Android instances and another running Android and Linux in pandaboard. The overhead is 10 to 15% according to B Labs, so the performance hit is minimal. They have already managed to run 4 OS on quad core processors with good performance. They are not able to run Windows operating systems (e.g. Windows Mobile 7.5/ Windows 8) yet, because Cortex A9 processors lack virtualization extensions. This will however be feasible with Cortex A15 processors as binary virtualization will be available. […]

October 29, 2011November 17, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Google TV 2.0 For Android 3.1 Released

Back in August, Google released a Preview of Google TV Add-on for the Android SDK. Google has now announced a software upgrade for Google TV a software running on Android device (Smart TV / STB) such as the Sony NSX-24GT1 Google TV that bring web video (e.g. YouTube, Netflix and more) to the TV. Google admits the initial version of Google TV wasn’t perfect and they even asked partners not to show product with Google TV at CES 2011. Let’s see what improvements Google TV 2.0: 1. Keep it simple The interface is now much simpler. The new customizable home screen gets you to your favorite content quickly. And within “all apps” you can see all of your shortcuts, similar to your Android phone or tablet. 2. Make it easy to find something worth watching Search has been improved across the board for content from Live TV, Netflix, YouTube, HBO […]

October 28, 2011October 28, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

I’m Watch: Freescale i.MX233 based Android Watch

I’m Watch is a wireless (Bluetooth) watch designed by an Italian Company http://www.imwatch.it currently showcased at ARM Techcon 2011. The device is powered by Freescale i.MX233 feature a capacitive touchcreen and runs Android. It can synchronize with any Android smartphone and iPhones via Bluetooth. The company developed an Android API for this watch. The product will be ready before Xmas and be available for 299 Euros (base version) in Europe, although you’d have to wait until January if you are based in the US. If you want to show off you can buy the Gold version for 12,000 Euros. There already have pre-orders for 30,000 pieces. The company will also announce other services at CES 2012 such as I’m Market, an app store to download apps for the watch and I’m Music an app to listen music via the watch. Watch the video below to see the Android watch in […]

October 21, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ARM big.LITTLE Processing Demo

ARM uploaded a big.LITTLE demonstration by Nandan Nayampally, Director, Product Marketing. The demo runs the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) with graphs showing CPU usage and when Cortex A7 / A15 is running. At the beginning Cortex A7 handles the background tasks, and when they start the Android Browser, Cortex A15 is used instead to render the page and once this is done, the system switches back to Cortex A7. Scrolling the webpage will increase CPU usage, but this will still be handled by Cortex A7. They did not have to do any modifications to Android, but they just added a big.LITTLE aware Power Management Driver which will be open sourced and integrated in future version of the linaro kernel. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later […]

October 20, 2011October 20, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Android 4.0 Source Code To Be Released When Galaxy Nexus Ships

Google never opened Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) source code. It was probably because this OS was only meant to be used with tablets and they feared people would try to use it on smartphone. The good news is that Android 4.0 (ICS) source code will be made available once the Galaxy Nexus ships. Although I’m not sure what license will be used with Android 4.0, that follows exactly the GPL license requirements since you don’t need to release the source code if you don’t provide the binaries. See Jean-Baptiste Queru (Android Open Source Project ) announcement at https://plus.google.com/112218872649456413744/posts/HB5qQHeNKBQ. In the meantime, the GPL source files that match the Android 4.0 / r14 SDK have been made available: Kernel: https://dl.google.com/dl/android/gpl/android-gpl-kernel-sdk-4.0.1_r1.tgz Platform: https://dl.google.com/dl/android/gpl/android-gpl-platform-sdk-arm-4.0.1_r1.tgz Dev Tools: https://dl.google.com/dl/android/gpl/android-gpl-tools_r14.tgz Extra: https://dl.google.com/dl/android/gpl/android-extra-4.0.1-r14.tgz Like the Android did for all Honeycomb release, this is NOT the full source tree for Android 4.0 (ICS), these are only the GPL parts […]

October 20, 2011October 20, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Leveraging Android’s Linux Heritage at Android Open 2011

The first Android Open Conference took place about 10 days ago. Karim Yaghmour of OperSys published the presentation slides he used during his Android presentations. See Leveraging Android’s Linux Heritage presentation slides below which explain how to use existing Linux application in Android. Those 15 slides cover the following: Goal Rationale Stack Comparison Roadblocks Where do I start? Coexistence Approaches Unresolved / Uncharted Demo You can also check out the Embedded Android Workshop presentation. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com