Yesterday was a big day for Google with several important announcements, including the Chromecast HDMI TV dongle, an updated version of Nexus 7 tablet, and the release of Android 4.3, still codenamed Jelly Bean. In this post, I’ll start with the hardware, and move to explain what’s new with Android 4.3, and where you can download source and images for your device. New Nexus 7 The new Nexus 7 tablet will run Android 4.3 on the following hardware: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 quad-core processor @ 1.5GHz with Adreno 320 GPU @ 400MHz System Memory – 2GB RAM Storage – 16GB to 32GB of storage Display – 7″ IPS display (1920 x 1200) Connectivity – Dual band 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi (2.4G/5G), Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC Camera – 5MP rear camera and 1.2MP front camera Video Output – HDMI output (via SlimPort) Audio – Stereo speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack, microphone USB – […]
Google Unveils $35 Chromecast HDMI TV Stick
For over a year now, we’ve seen many Android HDMI TV Sticks (which I often call mini PCs), a few Linux ones, but Google has just announced its own stick based on a strip down version of Chrome OS. It’s not as versatile as others as it only streams video and music, but it make sharing media easy, and is controlled via your Android or iOS mobile device, or your Windows PC or Mac via Chrome web browser. The connection is just the same as other HDMI dongles. Connect it to the HDMI port of your TV, power it via USB, and setup Wi-Fi. When I first saw the demonstration, I was disappointed as it just seemed like you could do the same thing with a DLNA dongle, but it’s actually quite different. First, Chromekey only works with online services such as YouTube, Netflix, Google Play Movie & TV and […]
$359 Red Pitaya Board Combines an Oscilloscope, a Spectrum Analyser, a Waveform Generator and More
If you need to setup an electronics lab, the cost of equipment such as an oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, can quickly add up and become expensive. There are already some attempts at low cost measurement devices such as the $35 ExpEyes Junior or pocket size digital storage oscilloscopes (~$200), but those are far from the performance achieved with regular measurement devices. Red Pitaya measurement board brings the performance level and flexibility a bit higher, and stays relatively low cost at $359, with a Linux-based solution based on Xilinx Zynq dual Cortex A9 + FPGA SoC. Hardware Specifications: SoC – Xilinx Zynq Z7010 dual core Cortex A9 CPU + FPGA System Memory – 1GB DDR2 RAM Storage – microSD card slot (For system and FPGA images, and data) Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet USB – 2x micro USB ports (1 for power, 1 for console), and 1x USB 2.0 Host port Signals: 2x […]
Samsung Unveils a New Exynos 5 Octa (5420) With Greater CPU and GPU Processing Power
Samsung announced the first Octo-core ARM processor, and the first using big.LITTLE technolocy at CES 2013 in January, and today the company has announced a new Exynos 5 Octa (Exynos 5420) with a six-core ARM Mali-T628 MP6 GPU (interestingly ditching PowerVR SGX544MP3 in the process), as well as 4 ARM Cortex-A15 cores at 1.8GHz, and 4 Cortex-A7 cores at 1.3GHz. Samsung claims Mali-T628 MP6 boosts 3D graphic processing capabilities by over two times compared to the PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU used in Exynos 5410. The ARM GPU also supports General-Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) to accelerate complex and computationally intensive algorithms or operations, with API such as OpenCL 1.1. This product also supports OpenGL ES 3.0 to enable the processing powered requires by high-end, complex games. Even it’s still using 4x Cortex-A15, 4x Cortex-A7 big.LITTLE processing configuration, the company claims CPU processing capability has been improved by about 20 percent […]
Ubuntu Edge Smartphone PC Hits Indiegogo
Canonical has announced Ubuntu for Phones and Ubuntu for Tablets at the beginning of the year, with the goal of bringing Ubuntu operating system to mobile devices, and transform high-end devices into the new PC when they are connected to an HDMI display. It turns out mobile phone manufacturers may not be ready to take the risk launching a completely new high-end platform to the market, so Canonical decided to leverage the power of crowdfunding but launching an Indiegogo campaign for Ubuntu Edge, a smartphone with hardware specs like no others, capable of running both Android and Ubuntu, and fully replacing your PC when docked. Ubuntu Edge Preliminary/Targeted Specifications: SoC – “Fastest Multicore Processor Available” System Memory – At least 4 GB RAM Storage – 128 GB flash Display – 4.5″ display with the best balance of resolution (720p), dynamic range and color accuracy, covered with sapphire crystal glass (Unscratchable, […]
Mediatek Smartphone and Tablet SoC Product Line (Mess) Explained
This week-end, I have been tipped about a $91 Mediatek MT8317 based 7″ Phablet, but I really did not know what to think about it as Mediatek seems to have so many SoCs, and really felt lazy trying to dig information about this. Yet, in the back of my head, I had decided to eventually make a post trying to clarifying Mediatek SoCs. This morning, I felt relieved not to have to spend hours investigating, as AndroidPC.es found an analyst paper doing just that, at least for recent and upcoming Mediatek processors. Mediatek Smartphone SoCs Roadmap MT6589 is certainly the most common SoC for cheap quad core smartphones, and starting this month, it will be available in MT6589M and MT6589T versions, the former with a weak video processing unit (VPU) and ISP, and GPU frequency, and the latter with higher GPU and CPU frequencies. Contrary to the table below, MT6589 […]
Fedora 19 ARM Remix R1 Release With Support for AllWinner A10, A10s, A13 and A20 SoCs
After releasing a stable version of Fedora 18 for AllWinner A10 and A13 in February, Hans de Goede, working at Red Hat and a Fedora contributor, has recently announced “Fedora 19 ARM remix for Allwinner SOCs” on linux-sunxi community mailing list. This released based on Fedora 19 for ARM together with linux-sunxi kernel and u-boot, adds support for A10s and A20 based devices, and 38 boards and devices are now supported. To give it a try, download the 665MB image:
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wget http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/contrib-images/hansg/Fedora-19-a10-armhfp-r1.img.xz |
then write it to an SD card (8GB or greater):
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xzcat Fedora-19-a10-armhfp-r1.img.xz > /dev/[device] sync |
Where you have to replace [device] with your actual SD card device, e.g. sdc.Since u-boot is board/product specific, you’ll also have to update u-boot for your hardware. Remove the SD card, re-insert it, and run:<
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sh <uboot-part-mount>/select-board.sh |
to display a graphical menu (if dialog is installed on your Linux PC), or a list supported boards and products:
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Available boards: a10_mid_1gb A10 tablet sold under various names (whitelabel) a13_mid A13 tablet sold under various names (whitelabel) a10s-olinuxino-m A10s-OLinuXino-MICRO (Olimex) a13-olinuxino A13-OLinuXino (Olimex) a13-olinuxinom A13-OLinuXino-MICRO (Olimex) a20-olinuxino_micro A20-OLinuXino-MICRO (Olimex) auxtek-t003 Auxtek T003 hdmi tv stick auxtek-t004 Auxtek T004 hdmi tv stick ba10_tv_box BA10 TV Box coby_mid7042 Coby MID7042 tablet coby_mid8042 Coby MID8042 tablet coby_mid9742 Coby MID9742 tablet cubieboard_512 Cubieboard development board 512 MB RAM cubieboard Cubieboard development board 1024 MB RAM cubieboard2 Cubieboard 2 (A20) development board dns_m82 DNS AirTab M82 tablet EOMA68-A10 EOMA68 A10 CPU card gooseberry_a721 Gooseberry development board h6 H6 netbook hackberry Hackberry development board hyundai_a7hd Hyundai a7hd tablet inet97f-ii iNet-97F Rev.2 (and clones) tablet mele_a1000 Mele a1000/a2000 512 MB RAM mele_a1000g Mele a1000g/a2000g 1024 MB RAM mele_a3700 Mele a3700 (a1000g without sata) mini-x Mini-X 512 MB RAM mini-x-1gb Mini-X 1024 MB RAM mk802 mk802 (with female mini hdmi) 512 MB RAM mk802-1gb mk802 (with female mini hdmi) 1024 MB RAM mk802_a10s mk802 with A10s (s with a circle around it on the barcode label mk802ii mk802ii (with male normal hdmi) 1024 MB RAM pcduino pcDuino development board pov_protab2_ips9 Point of View ProTab 2 IPS 9" tablet pov_protab2_ips_3g Point of View ProTab 2 IPS tablet with 3g r7-tv-dongle r7 hdmi tv stick uhost_u1a UHost U1A hdmi tv stick wobo-i5 Wobo i5 TV Box xzpad700 XZPAD700 7" tablet |
Select […]
The Little Black Box XBMC STB Gets Users’ Feedback, Becomes Available on Amazon
The Little Black Black Box (TLBB) is an set-top box running XBMC powered by AMLogic AML8726-M3 with 1GB RAM, 4GB Flash that comes with a dual sided RF remote control. The device became available for pre-order in April, and the first customers have started to receive the media player, one of them (flipfoelyfe) has uploaded a video, and posted some pictures. After initial issues setting up Wi-Fi (A bug seems to prevent the use of long passwords), his tweets about the device are rather positive, and he uploaded a short video demo showing Sports-a-Holic plugin playing a live NBA match, and a ESPN Boxing program. Whereas you had to pre-order and be patient for the first batch, LTBB is now available on Amazon for $129.99. Considering it also includes a dual sided RF remote control with a QWERTY keyboard, this single core set-top box is about the same price, or […]