smartphone News - Page 53 of 75 - CNX Software

July 18, 2014July 18, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

NEJE ZB01 Clone of Google Cardboard Virtual Reality Kit Sells for about $12

Can you remember Opendive, a low Cost DIY open source 3D virtual reality kit for smartphones? The kit can be built by anybody as long as you happen to own a 3D printer. But Google liked the concept, and at the latest Google I/O, the company designed the cardboard equivalent using the same lenses, and adding accessories namely a magnet, Velcro strips, and a rubber band to complete the kit. But some people saw a business opportunity here, and created NEJE ZB01, a nearly identical reproduction of the Google kit that can be bought for $12.66 on DealExtreme, instead of the $19.95 you’d have to pay for the original kit. The complete kit includes the cardboard, a rubber band, two magnets with 2cm diameter, two lenses with 2.3 cm diameter, and a pair of Velcro strips. It’s suppose to work with device using displays between 4″ and 7″ large. You’ll […]

July 11, 2014July 17, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Mediatek MT6795 Octa Core ARM Cortex A53 Processor to Launch in Q4 2014

Mediatek had already announced two 64-bit ARM SoCs with MT6732 and MT6752 boasting respectively four and eight Cortex A53 cores for mainstream and premium smartphones. There are now reports that the company will launch an eight core 64-bit LTE SoC with HMP architecture. Since HMP (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing) is only used for big.LITTLE processing, and Mediatek does not have an history of making their own custom ARM cores, we can safely assume the processor will feature four Cortex A53 little core, and four Cortex A57 big cores. [Update: finally it’s eight ARM Cortex A53 cores, no HMP here]. What we know about MT6795 so far: Processor – 64-bit Octa core ARM Cortex A53 cores @ 2.2 GHz GPU- Imagination Technology G6200 @ 700 MHz Memory I/F – 2x LPDDR3 @ 933 MHz (PoP) Camera I/F – 20MP@30fps using a dual ISP Display – Up to WQXGA (2560×1600) Video Decoding – 4K2K […]

July 3, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Peek into the Smart Home of the Future with ARM Seamless Computing IoT Demo

We’ve seen lots of home automation being launched on crowdfunding platforms in the last year or so, and companies like Samsung, Archos, Google and Apple have launched, announced, or bought smart hone solutions. Recently ARM has hosted a demo for the smart home based on Cortex-M MCU mbed development boards, a single board computer gateway, and sensinode connected home software framework. Although some parts of the demo are unlikely to really have uses, e.g. you can look at the window to check the weather, I found the demo to be very interesting, especially with regards to the central role of the smartphone, and computing convergence. The list of different demos that can be seen in the video below is as follows: As you walk close to the main door, the system checks the weather, and if it rains, blinks a LED and emits a sound close to your umbrella, and […]

July 2, 2014July 2, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

iNew V8 Smartphone Features Mediatek MT6591T Hexa Core Processor, and a Rotating Camera

In case you find four cores are not quite enough, but eight cores are just too many, Mediatek added MT6591 hexa core processor to its roadmap, and the first phones are starting to be up for pre-order. iNew V8 is an hexa core smartphone with a 5.5″ display, 1GB RAM, 16 GB flash, and an interesting camera that can rotate by up to 210 degrees, and can be used both as a rear and front facing camera. So no more low quality selfies at 2MP, and welcome to 13MP selfies with flash! 🙂 iNew V8 Specifications: SoC – Mediatek MT6591T hexa Cortex A7 processor @ 1.5GHz with Mali-450 MP GPU System Memory – 1GB RAM Storage – 16 GB flash + micro SD slot (up to 16? or 32GB) Display – 5.5″ IPS capacitive touchscreen (5 points) with 1280×720 resolution. Cellular Network – 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz; 3G: WCDMA 850/2100MHz. Dual […]

June 26, 2014June 26, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Google Releases Android L (Lollipop?) Developer Preview

Google I/O is taking place right now in San Francisco, and the company made several announcements. Although they have not announced the full codename of Android 5.0, referring to the next version as “Android L” (Lollipop would be nice though), but they’ve already documented the key changes made to Android L, and a developer preview will be released later today (26 June), together with binary images for Google Nexus 5 and Nexus 7. Beside the smartphone and tablet developer preview, there will be 3 other SDKs for Android L: Android Wear SDK – Android for wearables with sync notifications, wearable apps, data transfer APIs, and voice actions, e.g. “Ok Google, call mum”. Android TV Preview SDK – Android for TVs with pre-built fragments for browsing and interacting with media catalogs, in-app search, and recommendations. Android Auto SDK – Android for the car with apps featuring consistent user experience between vehicles, […]

June 22, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

NFC Tags Now Sell for Just 50 Cents

Your smartphone’s NFC capabilities don’t have to be used only for payment or marketing purposes, and NFC tags can allow to create some sort of real-life short cuts to do various things by simply tapping your phone on the tag including: Automatically enable and configure Wi-Fi. This can be convenient if you are friend coming to your home, and they can just tap on the tag to get Wi-Fi access without the need to know the password Home automation – You can control items in your home, i.e. turn on/off your computer, lights, doors, etc… with a tag. Virtual Business Card – You can store your contact details in a tag and share your data with others quickly and easily. More use cases can be found on “18 Creative & Useful Ways To Use NFC Tags With Your Smartphone” post on trendblog, and it can even be used as a […]

June 19, 2014June 19, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Development Board with Intel Technology Developed by Rockchip

Just a quick post to show an interesting, yet unavailable development board. A few weeks ago, Intel and Rockchip announced a collaboration to design Intel Atom Sofia x86 SoC for mobile devices. Apparently, they did not waste any time, and have already done some nice work together, as Chen Feng, VP at Rockchip, posted the picture of the development board on his weibo account with a short description that Google’s translate as: You can now showed up, Intel inside, the world’s most highly integrated 6321 smartphones and tablet communications solutions, dual-core WCDMA SOC, integrated WIFI BT GPS PMU, all two chips It’s not entirely clear if it’s directly related to the announced Intel Atom “Sofia” using 3G (WCDMA) however. The 6321 is a dual core processor, but Rockchip and Intel only announced working on quad core processors, so this may be a separate product for example an ARM SoC with […]

June 19, 2014June 19, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Amazon Fire Phone Features a Camera Array for Dynamic Perspectives, and Firefly Real-Life Object & Audio Recognition

Amazon first phone has been rumored for a few months, and yesterday Jeff Bezos finally unveiled the Fire Phone powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor @ 2.2 GHz, with 2 GB of RAM, a 4.7″ 720p display. It also supports 3G and LTE cellular connectivity, and beside a 13MP rear camera, and 2MP front camera, it also features a specialized camera array with four sensors to offer “Dynamic Perspective” and show different information depending on the position of the phone. Beside the hardware, the most notable feature is Firefly an augmented reality application that can recognize objects you may want to buy, and automatically link them to the Amazon store. Let’s go through the hardware specifications first: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad core CPU @ 2.2 GHz with Adreno 330 GPU System Memory – 2GB RAM Storage – 32 GB or 64 GB Display – 4.7″ HD LCD display, […]