Posted on

Canonical Releases Ubuntu and Android Dual Boot Developer Preview

Canonical announced Ubuntu for Phones at the very beginning of the year, and the operating systems have been ported to several phones since then. The only problem is that if you just want to try it, you’d have to replace your Android installation. To work around this problem, Canonical just released Ubuntu and Android dual boot developer preview, that installs both OS on your smartphone, and one app in Ubuntu and Android, let you choose whether you want to boot Ubuntu or Android. The installation requires rewriting the Android recovery partition, and changes the partition layout, so Canonical only recommends Ubuntu Dual boot to developers, in case something goes wrong during installation. Having said that, the installation instructions do not seem particularly difficult to follow, as it’s just the case of running one script (dualboot.sh), after you’ve made sure your device is rooted, connected your phone to a Linux PC […]

Posted on

Practical Applications and Benchmarks of GPU Computing via RenderScript and OpenCL with ARM Mali-T6XX GPU

Since the announcement of ARM Mali-T604 in 2010, ARM has explained that GPGPU (General Purpose computing on GPU), aka GPU Compute, would be one of the key features of their new Mali graphics processor, and the company now expects GPGPU to become mainstream in embedded and mobile devices in 2014 and beyond. I’ve just come across a presentation by Roberto Mijat, technical marketing manager at ARM, entitled “Unleashing the benefits of GPU Computing with ARM Mali” which shows practical applications and use cases where the use of RenderScript, or OpenCL can make massive performance improvements, at much lower power consumption, over the same parallel tasks processed by the CPU only. Let’s have a look at some of the most interesting slides. GPU compute can be used for multiple applications in mobile, multimedia, and automotive sectors. GPU Compute for H.265 / HEVC HEVC aka H.265 is the next generation codec providing […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
Posted on

HiMedia Q5II Android STB Features HiSilicon Dual Core SoC, a 2.5″ SATA HDD Bay, and Supports XBMC Hardware Decode

Many Android set-top boxes are based on application processors mainly targetting tablets such as Rockchip RK3188, and media capabilities including video quality, and audio pass-through are not always optimal, or not working at all. On the contrary, HiMedia Q5II, an Android 4.2 media player, is powered by HiSilicon 3718 (or is it Hislicon 3716C V200?), a dual core Cortex A9 SoC designed specifically for media players. It also features an external SATA slot, HDMI and composite video output, optical and coaxial S/PDIF, and I’ve just found out the company worked on making video hardware decoding work with XBMC. HiMedia Q5II specifications: SoC – HiSilicon Hi3716C V200 dual core ARM Cortex A9 @ 1.6GHz + ARM Mali-400MP4 GPU. N.B.: HiMedia indicates the processor is Hi3718, but most resellers give specifications with a dual core processor called 3716C… Hi3718 is not listed at all in HiSilicon website, and Hi3716C is a single […]

Posted on

Improv Open Hardware Platform Features EOMA68-A20 CPU Card Powered by AllWinner A20 SoC

After seeing a countdown clock on makeplaylive.com a few days ago, I was expecting the Plasma Active, Linux based  Vivaldi Tablet to come up, but instead Improv, an open hardware platform, has just been launched. It features the long awaited EOMA68 CPU card with AllWinner A20 dual core ARM Cortex A7 processor, together with a “feature board”, and is now available for pre-order for $75, with shipping expecting in January. It’s only available in North America and Europe for now. Improv specifications: EOMA68-A20 CPU board: SoC – AllWinner A20 dual core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR2 Storage – 4GB NAND flash Video – micro HDMI (video + audio), RGB/TTL pins USB – Micro USB OTG + USB 2.0 host pins Networking – 10/100M Ethernet Other buses – I2C, 8 GPIO, UART0 Weight – Under 40 grams Feature board: Storage – 32K EEPROM, […]

Posted on

Samsung NX300M Camera Is the First Tizen Device

Announced in 2011, Tizen operating system aimed to be used in  smart TVs, tablets, smartphones,netbooks, and in-vehicle infotainment devices. After 2 years development, several products based on Tizen are now ready to be launched, but the very first one, Samsung NX300M does not fit in any of the aforementioned category as it is a camera, which have been sold last month in South Korea. Although Tizen 2.2.1 has just been released, the mirrorless camera runs Tizen 1.0 with the following key features: Sensor – 20.3 MP CMOS sensor Display – 3.3″ 768K Touch AMOLED LCD with WVGA (800 x 480) resolution ISO sensitivity – Auto, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800, 25600 (1 or 1/3EV step) * AUTO ISO upper level is selectable. (Up to ISO1600) Video Output – NTSC, PAL HDMI Connectivity – USB, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, GPS, and NFC Storage –  SD, SDHC, SDXC, UHS-1 Battery – […]

Posted on

NVIDIA Releases Source Code, Binaries, and Android Build Instructions for the SHIELD Gaming Console

This morning I’ve read bad news for the open source community. Jean-Baptiste Quéru, leader of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) has decided to quit the project because AOSP cannot run on the latest Nexus 7 as Qualcomm (lawyers) impeded the project, and Google is unable to released factory images or necessary binary drivers for the GPU. But there’s also good news, as Nvidia has just released source code and binaries to allow developers to fully build an Android image for its SHIELD gaming console. If you want to build an image for the latest image available, following the steps below. Get the code

Build the Android image (Provided you’ve already setup your Linux PC do build AOSP):

Done (mp dev took  about one hour for my machine). You should now have the required binary images in out/target/product/roth/ directory. Enter fastboot mode before flashing the binaries by one […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
Posted on

Texas Instruments Releases Android App for SensorTag and Publishes Bluetooth Low Energy Training Videos

Texas Instruments Sensortag is a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) development kit with 6 sensors (IR temperature, humidity, pressure, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer) mainly destined at mobile application, which I recently tried in Linux. Until now, only it was only officially supported in iOS and Windows, but a few days after the release of Android 4.3 which adds Bluetooth Low Energy support, Texas Instruments quickly worked to release an Android App for their BLE devkit. The annoying part is that the Android app is only available as a Windows executable (SensorTagAndroidApp-0_9_0-windows-installer_2.exe), so you’ll have not choice but to use Windows to uncompress the files. Yet the installation goes as follows: Copy the SensorTag.apk file (SensorTag_0_9_0.apk) to your Android 4.3 device Enable installation of apps from unknown sources (Settings -> Security -> Device Administration -> Unknown Sources) Open file manager and launch, locate the .apk file and install the app by clicking the […]

Posted on

Rockchip SoCs Comparison Table, RK32xx Quad Core Cortex A12 Coming Up in 2014

They guys at Linux Rockchip have setup a comparison table between Rockchip processors, but it’s not quite complete yet, and Rockchip noticed it, so they’ve just sent them the most recent Company Presentation that provides more details, including a roadmap. In this documentation, we can see the company targets different types of products with their SoCs: Android OTT dongle/box (aka mini PC, HDMI TV dongles…) – RK2928, RK3066, RK3068, and RK3188 Tablets – RK2926, RK2928, RK3028, RK3066, RK3168, and RK3188 EPD E-Book – RK2818, RK2906 and RK2918 MP3 player – RKnanoC On page 12 of the presentation, they have a convenient comparison table for the SoC used in mini PCs and Tablets. Series RK2926 /RK2928 RK3066 /RK3068 RK3168 RK3188 Process 55nm 40nm 28nm HKGM 28nm HKGM CPU Cortex A9 Dual Cortex A9 Dual Cortex A9 Quad Cortex A9 MAX CPU Frequency 1.0 GHz 1.6 GHz 1.2 GHz 1.6 GHz L1 […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC