Qualcomm Announces SnapDragon S4 MSM8226 & MSM8626 Quad Core Cortex A7 Processors

After news of an AllWinner A31 Tablet earlier today, here’s an other quad core Cortex A7 processor announcement, as Qualcomm has recently added of 2 new chipsets to its Snapdragon S4 family of mobile processors: the MSM8226 and MSM8626 featuring 4 ARM Cortex A7 core and Adreno 305 GPU. The processors support 1080p video playback and up to 13MP cameras. Both processors are built using 28nm technology node, and will be ready for customer sampling by Q2 2013 for UMTS, CDMA and TD-SCDMA. These 2 chipsets will incorporate WTR2605, a new multi-mode radio transceiver, specifically designed and optimized to address China requirements such as support for TD-SCDMA, CDMA 1xAdv and HSPA+. The WTR2605 transceiver comes with an integrated, high-performance GPS core with GLONASS and Beidou support, and is said to offer 40 percent power savings and 60 percent smaller footprint compared to previous generations. The company will also provide Qualcomm […]

International Black Friday Deals for Development Boards and Chinese Gadgets

Black Friday is the day following Thanks giving in the USA, and is considered the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Although Black Friday is very much US centric, online shopping may also to access those deals anywhere in the world. 20% discount will be available on ISEE IGEPv2 NO WIFI board, as well as IGEP COMs & EXPANSIONS boards. This is the only development board I’ve found to have a deal for black Friday. Focalprice has a page dedicated to Black Friday with discounts between 11 to 21% for smartphones, tablets, and all sorts of accessories, including the AMPE 10 tablet that will sell for $180.90. There’s also a 6% discount coupon (12TKS6OFF) valid between the 22nd and 25th. Pandawill has sales with up 10% discount between the 22nd and 25th of November. Dealextreme does not have deals, but instead a Black Friday lottery. If you order for over […]

Ziilabs Unveils HanZpad Android 4.0 Tablet Reference Design

ZiiLABS, a subsidiary of Creative Technology,  has announced the HanZpad platform, a tablet reference design based on ZiiLABS ZMS-40 StemCell Media Processor (4 ARM Cortex A9 cores and 96  GPU cores) optimized for Android 4.x (ICS) and a Chinese operating system. The HanZpad platform is built around Ziilabs ZMS-40 processors with four 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs and 96-core for the GPU. The ZMS-40 SoC supports H.264 HP decoding of up to 3840×1080 for true 1080p 3D stereo, and 2560×1600 (WQXGA) display resolution support.  The firmware can also be upgraded to support for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) aka H.265 which can increase data compression ratio by up to 2 times compared to H.264. Beyond the ZMS-40 processor, the key features of the tablet are as follows: 10.1-inch, 1,280 x 800-pixels IPS panel 1GB memory micro SDHC slot (up to 64GB) Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity 22-hour battery life (~1W power consumption) […]

Digital Signage Players in Hong Kong and China

I’ll show a few digital signage applications based on Sigma Designs EM8620 and SMP8630 series that are currently used in Hong Kong and China. Bus Digital Signage SinoCDN is a Hong Kong company providing broadband media delivery solutions. SinoCDN  currently provides a digital signage solution for Hong Kong – China cross boarder buses called IPAD. Their solution is based on EM8623L Sigma Designs and allows content update thru Wifi at the border between China / Hong Kong. If you’ve ever been at the Hong Kong / China border (Lok Ma Chau) and seen some Wifi access points whose names starts with sinocdn, they are used for this purpose. Digital Signage & POS (Point-of-Sale) Heng Yu Technologies is another Hong Kong company specialized in the manufacturing of “customized input and display technology for the industrial markets” They provide point of sales and advertizing platform based on several Sigma Designs platforms, including […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC