Xiaomi Introduces Surge S1 ARM SoC, Xiaomi Mi 5c Smartphone

Xiaomi may be skipping Mobile World Congress 2017, but they’ve still announced their first in-house Surge S1 octa-core SoC, and Xiaomi Mi 5c powered by the processor right at the same time as the even takes place. Surge S1 processor specifications: CPU – Octa-core 64-bit chipset with 4x Cortex A53 cores @ up to 2.2GHz, 4x Cortex A53 cores @ up to 1.4GHz GPU – ARM Mali-T860 quad-core GPU with AFBC + ASTC image compression technology 32-bit high performance DSP for voice processing 14-bit dual ISP; enhanced image processing capabilities with Surge ISP algorithm improving camera light sensitivity by 150%, and dual noise reduction algorithm reducing noise and preserving image detail in low light Upgradable baseband; programmable modem, OTA upgradable VoLTE high quality call and video support Security – Chip-level security; TEE architecture, strict compliance with safety regulations 28nm High Performance Computing (HPC) process The specifications and Antutu score (64,817) […]

Oppo’s Ultra-Thin Smartphone Dual Camera Comes with a 3x Optical Zoom, Supports 5x “Lossless” Zoom

Smartphones allow you to zoom in when taking a picture, but most of the time it’s achieved using a software based digital zoom, and quality suffers greatly as a results. Oppo has however designed a new smartphone camera module with a 3x optical zoom, and “image fusion” technology to bring the level of “lossless” zoom to 5 times. Some phones such as Asus Zenfone Zoom come with a 3x optical zoom, and you can purchase detachable zoom for your smartphone, but none of those are as quite as compact as Oppo solution, which from the outside looks like a standard dual camera since it’s so thin (5.7 mm). They’ve managed to keep the module compact by designing a periscope-style structure that divert light through a prism and into a telephoto lens nested inside the smartphone, set at a 90° angle to a rear-facing wide-angle lens. The camera also comes with […]

Spreadtrum SC9861G-IA is an Octa-core Intel Airmont LTE SoC for Smartphones

Do you member Rockchip & Intel partnership about “SoFia” SoC for smartphones? It did not pan out so well, and but Intel has apparently not given up on the idea of partnering with Chinese companies to design and launch Intel based smartphone application processors, as Speadtrum has just announced SC9861G-IA octa-core Intel Airmont processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with an LTE Cat. 7  modem, and manufactured using Intel’s 14nm process technology. The Airmont architecture is also found in Intel’s own Cherry Trail and Braswell SoCs designed for respectively tablets and mini PCs, so they must have found some further power efficiencies in order to use it in a smartphone, and used some of technology developed for Intel canceled projects. SC9861G-IA withh support 5-mode full-band LTE (TDD-LTE / FDD-LTE / TD-SCDMA / WCDMA / EGG) Cat 7. as well as Carrier Aggregation and TDD/FDD hybrid networking, allowing for peak data […]

Samsung Launches Exynos 9 Series 8895 SoC with Custom ARMv8 Cores, Mali-G71 GPU, Gigabit LTE Modem, 10nm FinFET Process

Samsung Electronics has just announced the launch of its latest Exynos application processor (AP), with Exynos 9 Series 8895 octa-core processor with four second generation custom designed ARMv8  CPU cores, and four Cortex A53 cores, as well as a Mali-G71 3D GPU, and a Gigabit LTE modem. The LTE modem delivers data throughput at up to 1Gbps (Cat.16) downlink with 5CA (five carrier aggregation), and 150Mbps (Cat.13) uplink with 2CA. The SoC also embeds an “advanced MFC” (multi-format codec) for recording and playback at up to 4K UHD at 120 fps, a Vision Processing Unit for video tracking, image process, and machine vision technology, and another processing unit allows for mobile payments using iris or fingerprint recognition. Exynos 8895 is also the first application processor manufactured with 10-nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology and improved 3D transistor structure, which according to Samsung, allows for up to 27% higher performance, while consuming […]

Remix Singularity to Bring Remix OS Desktop Optimized Operating System to Android Smartphones

Android is great to consume content, but is a real pain to create content, as operation like copy/paste and multi-tasking you take for granted in desktop OS like Ubuntu or Windows are not well supported in Android. But Jide Technology saw an opportunity and many users are familiar with Android on their phones and tablets, and some on Android TV boxes, so they created Remix OS, based on Android, but with desktop optimization such as better multi-tasking, multi-window support, improved mouse and keyboard integration and so on. They started with a tablet, and then also worked on ARM based Android TV boxes and laptops, as well as support for x86 computers. The company has now unveiled Remix Singularity which aims to bring Remix OS to smartphones in a similar manner to Windows Continuum or Ubuntu Convergence. But beside just mobile and desktop (PC) modes, Remix Singularity will also allow to […]

Linux 4.10 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.10: So there it is, the final 4.10 release. It’s been quiet since rc8, but we did end up fixing several small issues, so the extra week was all good. On the whole, 4.10 didn’t end up as small as it initially looked. After the huge release that was 4.9, I expected things to be pretty quiet, but it ended up very much a fairly average release by modern kernel standards. So we have about 13,000 commits (not counting merges – that would be another 1200+ commits if you count those). The work is all over, obviously – the shortlog below is just the changes in the last week, since rc8. Go out and verify that it’s all good, and I’ll obviously start pulling stuff for 4.11 on Monday. Linus Linux 4.9 added Greybus staging support, improved security thanks to virtually mapped kernel stacks, […]

Fairphone 2 “Ethical” Smartphone Gets a Ubuntu Port

Fairphone aims to “create positive social and environmental impact from the beginning to the end of a phone’s life cycle”by designing easy to repair and long lasting phones that can be recycled and reused, and manufactured in good working conditions using conflicts-free materials. Their latest model is the Fairphone 2  5” Android 5.1 smartphone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, but you can now install Ubuntu on the device as UBports Ubuntu community has released a port for the phone. Let’s go through Fairphone 2 hardware specifications first: SoC- Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 (MSM8974AB) quad core Krait 400 processor @ up to 2.26 GHz with Adreno 330 GPU System Memory – 2 GB LPDDR3 Storage – 32GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot with support for SDHC, SDXC, UHS cards Display – 5″ Full HD (1920 x 1080) LCD TFT IPS touchscreen display with Gorilla Glass 3 Cellular Connectivity 2x micro […]

Sony Has Developed a Smartphone Camera Sensor Capable of Recording 1080p 1000 fps Slow Motion Videos

Sony has announced what it claims to be the first 3-layer stacked CMOS image sensor with DRAM for smartphones, which allows for fast data readout speeds making possible still images capture of fast moving objects with minimal focal plane distortion, and recording of Full HD (1920×1080) slow motion movies at 1000 fps, which compares to current solutions capable of only 720p @ 240 fps such as Google Pixel phones. Sony CMOS camera key specifications as listed in the press release: Effective pixel count – 5520 (H) x 3840 (V) 21.2 megapixels Image size Diagonal – 7.73mm (Type 1/2.3) Unit cell size – 1.22μm (H) x 1.22μm (V) Frame rate Still images – 30fps; 4:3 19.3 megapixels / 16:9 17.1 megapixels Movies – 60fps @ 4K (3840 x 2160); 240fps @ Full HD / 720p Image format – Bayer RAW Reading speed – 8.478 ms (4:3 19.3 megapixels) / 6.962 ms (16:9 […]

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