openSUSE 12.2 for ARM is Now Available for Beagleboard, Pandaboard, Efixa MX and More

The first stable release of openSUSE for ARM has just been announced. openSUSE 12.2 for ARM is officially available for the Beagleboard, Beagleboard xM, Pandaboard, Pandaboard ES, Versatile Express (QEMU) and the rootfs can be mounted with chroot, but “best effort’ ports have been made for Calxeda Highbank server, i.MX53 Loco development board, CuBox computer, Origen Board and Efika MX smart top. Work is also apparently being done on a Raspberry Pi port which should be available for the next release. openSUSE developers explains that almost all of openSUSE builds runs on these platforms (about 5000 packages). Visit “OpenSUSE on your ARM board” for download links and instructions for a specific ARM board. More details are available on the wiki page. openSUSE has limited resources for ARM development, so If you’d like to help with development (e.g. fixing builds), visit ARM distribution howto page to find out how to get […]

$149 Hardkernel ODroid-X2 Development Board with Exynos 4412 @ 1.7 GHz and 2 GB RAM

You’ve probably heard about the ODROID-X development board announced in July by Hardkernel. They now have an updated version called ODroid-X2 with Samsung Exynos 4412 clocked at 1.7 GHz (vs 1.4 GHz) and 2 GB RAM (vs 1 GB RAM for the first version). They also boosted the Mali 400 clock speed from 400 MHz to 533 MHz. Apart from being a good mobile development platform, the 2 GB RAM could make the board a pretty good native ARM build machine under Ubuntu, as I’ve read 1 GB RAM is not always enough at link stage (e.g. for Debian packages, sorry I can’t find the link), unless you use swap which tremendously slows things down. The rest of the board seems identical and it just looks the same as the first version. Charbax shot a video of Hardkernel ODroid-X2 development board at ARM Techcon 2012: ODroid-X2 will cost $149 (ODroid-X […]

Google Unveils LG Nexus 4 Smartphone and Samsung Nexus 10 Tablet Running Android 4.2

Event though it had to cancel the media event due to bad weather, Google made several important announcements yesterday with the LG Nexus 4 Smartphone based on Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 and Samsung Nexus 10 tablet powered by the latest ARM Cortex A15 Exynos 5250 processor. The company also announced Android 4.2 (still called Jelly Bean) which will run on both devices. I’ll provide more details on the new features of the latest version of Android in a separate post. Let’s see what kind of hardware the Nexus 4 has to offer: CPU – Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro @ 1.5 GHz (Quad Core) System Memory  – 2 GB RAM Storage – 8 or 16 GB internal storage Display – 4.7″ IPS display (1280×768) Camera – 8MP rear and 1.3 MP front cameras. Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, NFC (Android Beam) and Bluetooth Mobile Network – Unlocked GSM/UMTS/HSPA+, GSM/EDGE/GPRS (850, 900, 1800, […]

$249 Samsung Exynos 5 (Cortex A15) Arndale Development Board

Samsung has announced the first Cortex A15 development board available for purchase.  Like the Origen board, Arndale development board has been designed by InSignal and features a dual core Exynos 5 (5250) cortex A15 processor @ 1.7 GHz, 2 GB RAM, internal storage via eMMC and plenty of ports. The development kit is composed of a CPU module (Exynos 5 , RAM and PMC) and a baseboard. Here are Arndale development board specifications: CPU Board Exynos 5 [email protected] GHz dual core 2GB 32-bit 800 MHz LPDDR3/LPDDR2 Base Board Sensors Accelerator : Invensence MPU-6050 Gyro : Invensence MPU-6050 e-Compass : AKM -AK8963C Camera Interfaces: ITU 601, MIPI CSI Video Ouput: HDMI 1.4 interface (micro HDMI) 1 channel eDP output Single WQXGA MIPI DSI interface USB: 1x USB3.0 Host 2x USB2.0 Host 1x USB 2.0 OTG SATA 1.0/2.0/3.0 interface 1 channel eMMC 4.5 1 channel SDIO 3.0 2 channel SD 2.0 (microSD slot) 4 channel […]

Google Unveils $249 Samsung Exynos 5 (Cortex A15) Chromebook

Back in April, we already knew Google was working on a Chromebook codenamed ‘Daisy’ based on the latest Samsung Exynos 5 Dual Cortex A15 processor, and finally, Google officially announced their first ARM based Chromebook yesterday. The specifications of the new Chromebook are as follows: SoC – Samsung Exynos 5 Dual Core Cortex A15 Processor @ 1.7 GHz with Mali T-604 GPU System Memory – 2 GB DDR3L SDRAM Storage: 16 GB SSD SD Card slot 100 GB Google Drive Cloud Storage (Free for 2 years) Display – 11.6″ LED panel (1366×768) Video Out – HDMI Connectivity Dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n Bluetooth 3.0 compatible (But Bluetooth does not seem to be present in the device) USB – 1x USB 3.0 and 1x USB 2.0 host ports Camera – Front VGA camera Battery – 6.5 hours typical use (No capacity info) Weight – 1.1 kg There’s no Ethernet contrary to […]

Linaro 12.09 Release with Kernel 3.6 and Android 4.1.1

Linaro release 12.09 has just been announced, and includes Linux Kernel 3.6-rc6 and Android Jelly Bean. This release provides further improvement to Android Jelly Bean, Android benchmark characterization,  an ARMv8 OpenEmbedded image, UEFI bootloader support for Vexpress, origen and pandabords, and some improvement to big.LITTLE and power management. Here are the highlights of the release: Android All Linaro patches are now available on Jelly Bean. Accelerated graphics is now available on Snowball Jelly Bean build. AndEBench, AndEBench Java, Linpack, CaffeineMark, Antutu 2D and 3D, NBench, Quadrant, I/O Benchmark, Vellamo benchmark hotspot characterization available. An Origen tracking build is available and will be released this cycle as a Linaro Evaluation Build (LEB). Audio works on Origen running Jelly Bean (WAV file only). A Monkeyrunner script to run Streamline has been completed. First rev of the NI PXIe-4154 based power measurement system is created. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bKyuxLl4iw&feature=plcp In-tree AOSP tests have been automated. […]

Linaro 12.08 Release with Kernel 3.6 and Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean

Linaro release 12.08 includes Linux Kernel 3.6-rc2 and is the very first release with Android Jelly Bean (4.1.1-R4). The Android platform team has managed to port Android Jelly Bean to all their main development platforms: Versatile Express, Versatile Express RTSM, Samsung Origen, TI PandaBoard, ST Ericsson Snowball, as well as Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone. They’ve also added TINY_ANDROID, a minimal Android build that can be used for kernel development, toolchain work and other development where users only need a console. It’s possible to get the source code, build it and access the shell within 10 minutes. U-boot-Linaro has been updated and is now based on the latest upstream release v2012.07. Next month, we might be able to see a preliminary port of Android on 64-bit platform (ARMv8). Here are the highlights of the release: Android Automated Methanol (http://gitorious.org/methanol) browser benchmarking in Linaro Android. Automated over 100 Jelly Bean AOSP tests. […]

Samsung Unveils EK-GC100 Galaxy Camera Running Android 4.1

Following Nikon steps with its Coolpix S800c, Samsung announced their own Android camera. Samsung EK-GC100 camera features an Exynos 4412 quad core Cortex A9 processor, a 4.8″ touchscreen display (1280×720), Wi-Fi and 3G or 4G connectivity (depending on model), a 16MP camera with a 21X optical zoom, and runs Android Jelly Bean. Samsung Galaxy Camera specifications: OS – Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) Processor –  1.4GHz Quad-Core processor Memory – 8GB + memory slot : micro SDSC, micro SDHC, micro SDXC Display – 121.2 mm (4.8″), 308 ppi, HD Super Clear Touch Display Image Sensor – 16.3 effective megapixel 1/2.3″ BSI CMOS Lens –  F2.8, 23 mm, 21x super long zoom IS –  OIS (cnxsoft: what is that?) (Optical Image Stabilization) – See Ganesh comment below for details explanation, in case you don’t know this. ISO – Auto, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200 Network – 4G, 3G (HSPA+ 21Mbps): 850 […]