Google Launches TI OMAP4460 Powered Nexus Q Media Player

Beside their first tablet and Android 4.1, Google also announced Google Nexus Q media player running Android 4.0 (ICS), and powered by Texas Instruments OMAP4460 processing with 1 GB RAM and 16 GB Flash. Here are the specifications of the device: CPU – Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 dual core Cortex A9 @ GHz + PowerVR SGX540 GPU System Memory – 1GB LPDDR RAM Storage – 16GB NAND flash memory Micro HDMI (Type D) TOSLink Optical audio (S/PDIF) 10/100BASE-T Ethernet (RJ45) Wireless Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n Bluetooth NFC Micro AB USB (for service and support) Banana jack speaker outputs Amplifier – 25W class D (12.5 watt per channel) Power Supply – Integrated 35W switching power supply Dimension – 116mm (diameter) Weight – 923 grams The device also features a rotating top dome volume control, a capacitive touch sensor for mute, 32 RGB perimeter LEDs and 1 RGB LED for mute indicator, and […]

Google Nexus 7 Android 4.1 Tablet Features Nvidia Tegra 3 Processor

Google announced their very first tablet at Google I/O called Google Nexus 7 (but manufactured by Asus). The device runs the latest Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) OS, is powered by Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core Cortex A9 processor and comes with 1 GB RAM, and 8 to 16 GB NAND flash depending on the model. Here are the specifications of the Google Nexus 7: CPU – Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad core Cortex A9 @ 1.2 GHz Memory – 1GB RAM Storage – 8 or 16 GB Flash Display – 7” 1280×800 HD IPS display (216 ppi) Connectivity WiFi 802.11 b/g/n Bluetooth Camera – 1.2MP front-facing camera Sensors – Accelerometer, Magnetometer and Gyroscope Misc – Microphone, speaker, NFC and GPS Battery – 4325 mAh (Up to 8 hours of active use) Weight – 340 grams Size – 198.5 x 120 x 10.45mm The device only has a power, vol-/+ buttons, an headphone […]

Google Announces Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and Releases SDK

Google I/O has begun, and several major announcements have been made including the release of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), Google Nexus 7 tablet featuring an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor and running Android 4.1, and the Google Nexus Q media player based on TI OMAP4460 processing and running Android 4.0 ICS. I’ll write about all those announcements today in three different posts. Let’s start with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The new version of Google’s mobile operating system includes a smoother and more responsive UI, a home screen that automatically adapts to fit your content, a better predictive keyboard, more interactive notifications, improved Android Beam (NFC) sharing, improved voice dictation (now works offline) and more. Here’s a summary of the key technical changes to Android 4.1: Faster, smoother and more responsive Vsync timing will be used for all drawing and animations to ensure a constant framerate (~62.5 fps). Triple buffering is used […]

Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon SDK 1.0 for Android

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon SDK for Android at the Uplinq 2012 developers conference, and a preview release of the SDK is now available on Qualcomm’s developer site. The full SDK will be available to device manufacturers and developers in the coming months. The Snapdragon SDK for Android enables developers to features of Snapdragon processors via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) not otherwise available in the stock Android SDK including: Snapdragon Audio SDK (new) Snapdragon Camera SDK (new) Snapdragon Sensors SDK (new) Adreno GPU sample code for OpenGL ES FastCV SDK – Mobile-optimized Computer Vision  (CV) library Supposedly, there is also IZat Location SDK, but it did not show up in the list when I tried it. At first, the SDK will only support devices build around Snapdragon S4 8960 processor, but the company expects to support future Snapdragon processors over time. The Snapdragon SDK for Android allows developers to take […]

Mozilla Releases Firefox for Android 14.0 with Improved UI and Performance

Mozilla announced Firefox for Android 14.0 on their blog yesterday. They stressed 3 key improvements: Much better performance The foundation claims they improved Firefox for Android performance in several areas, and users should notice significant  performance improvements such as faster startups,  smaller page load times, smoother panning & zooming and better overall Web app performance. Sunspider benchmark results are said to shows that Firefox for Android is much faster than the stock browser, but they did not provide numbers or comparison with other browsers. Instead, they developed Eideticker, a new benchmark, measuring Web experience, and they optimized Firefox for Android to it. And “Oh Surprise!”, they beat all other major Android browsers (Chrome, Opera and Dolphin) in their own benchmark. This benchmark shows that Firefox is over three times as fast as the stock browser, and nearly twice as fast as Chrome for Android on a Galaxy Nexus phone running […]

List of 39 Low Cost Linux Friendly Boards and Products

Dmitry (omgfire), one of my awesome readers, compiled a great tabular list of Linux friendly boards and products that sells for less than $300 US (usually less than $200). This list includes technical details such as the processor, GPU, memory, NAND flash, connectivity, ports, supported Linux distributions… as well as availability and pricing information. There are currently 39 Linux devices in total. The vast majority are ARM based boards, but he also included 2 x86 products by VIA, but those are relatively pricey ($265 and up). Here’s a summary list with SoCs used, links to blog posts and product pages (if available), as well as price information. Raspberry Pi Model B – Broadcom BCM2835 (ARM11) – Blog post (That’s my first post about the R-Pi last year, and the board is much different now) –  Product page – Price: $35 + shipping Rikomagic MK802 – Allwiner A10 (Cortex A8) –  […]

Sony NSZ-GS7, The 1st Google TV 2.0 Device is Now Available in the US and UK

Google announced that the 1st Google TV 2.0 device is now available for pre-order in the US and in UK for $199.99. Sony NSZ-GS7 is a set-top box based on Marvell GTV reference design, which comes with a dual-sided “magic” Bluetooth remote (NSG-MR5U). The device was first seen at CES 2012. Here are the key specifications of this media player: SoC – Marvell Armada 1500 dual core ARM processor @ 1.2 GHz with Vivante GC1000 GPU Storage – 8GB Nand Flash Connectivity: Built-in Wifi 802.11 b/g/n 100Mbit Ethernet Built-in Bluetooth Video Output – HDMI Audio Output – Optical out. HDMI supports Dolby and LPCM audio output Video codecs – H264-AVC, MPEG4-SP/-AAC/-HE, MPEG-1/2, MPEG4, H.263, WMV, Vorbis, Xvid… Video containers – 3gp/3g2/3gp9, AVI, FLV, MKV, MOV, MPEG TS/PS, mp4/m4a, MVC, ogg, wmv/asf… Picture formats –  bmp,  gif, jpeg, mpo and png Audio formats –  AAC,  AC3, LPCM/WAV, MDI, MP3 and WMA […]

Oval Elephant Android / Linaro mini PC HDMI Stick

Since Rikomagic MK802 and Zero Device Z802 mini PCs have gone viral and started the Android mini PC craze, this type of device has been popping a bit everywhere… The latest interesting device I found is Oval Elephant Mini PC based on AllWinner A10 processor with 1 GB RAM and selling for 71.49 USD. They have appears to have a whooping 11 in stocks now to be shipped on the 3rd of July, but they are also taking pre-orders and if there is enough demand (over 1,000 pieces), the price would go down to 68 USD. The device pictured above is just a prototype, and they have decided to replace the HDMI mini male output by a proper HDMI output (probably male). As I said before I prefer this form factor, especially since you can just connect mini BlueTooth dongles (no sure that one works with Android / Linux though) to […]