Pebble: Bluetooth Watch for Your iPhone or Android Smartphone

Pebble, an E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android smartphones, is a new project on KickStarter with over 11,000 backers and over 1.5 millions US dollars raised for production. The Pebble Watch connects to iPhone and Android smartphones using Bluetooth, and can alert you with a silent vibration to incoming calls, emails and messages. The Pebble watch has the following specifications: ARM Cortex-M3 MCU 144 x 168 pixel display black and white e-paper Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR 4 buttons Vibrating motor 3 axis accelerometer with gesture detection The developers also claim a 7-day use on a single battery charge. Pebble can be customized with Apps with will take advantage of the BT connection with smartphones and allow pretty nice applications such as: Bike Computer – Cyclists to use Pebble to display speed, distance and pace data by accessing the smartphone’s GPS . Running Watch – Joggers and runners can also use the […]

ADLINK Technology SP-860 Smart Panel Computer Powered By TI Sitara AM3517

ADLINK Technology has recently unveiled the SP-860 Smart Panel, a panel computer combining an 8″ LCD and a TI Cortex A8 Sitara AM3517 processor with 256 MB RAM, 2GB flash, 2 Ethernet ports and WiFi/BT connectivity, targeted at industrial applications such as Point-of-Sales (POS), stationary displays, and outdoor/ruggedized operations. Here are ADLINK SP-860 Specifications:  CPU – TI Sitara AM3517 Cortex-A8 processor @ 600 MHz with Power-VR SGX 3D graphics accelerator Main Memory- 256 MB DDR2 DRAM Storage – 2 GB NAND Flash (4GB Optional) + SD Card slot LCD – 8″ 4:3 panel, resolution: 800 x 3 (RGB) x 600 with LED backlight and an optional 4-wire resistive touch sensor. Ethernet – 1 internal LAN Port 10/100 Mbps MAC+PHY and 1 external 10/100 Mbps controller Wireless –  Wi-Fi / Bluetooth IEEE 802.11b/g/n & BT 2.1 + EDR CAN BUS – Internal High-End CAN 2.0b Controller USB  – 4x USB 2.0 […]

Shenzhen Tena Electronic Wi-Fi Display Mirroring Smart Box

Shenzhen Tena Electronics showcased an interesting “Smart Box” that can mirror a device display (smartphone, tablet, laptop..) on a TV via Wi-Fi at the Shenzhen Electronic Fair, on 10-11 April, 2012. In the video below shot by Charbax, an HTC smartphone, running a specific Android application (apparently not available on Google Play), plays back a 720p movie which is displayed on a television via sztena’s Smart Box. It’s rather choppy, but there may be quite a lot of noise with all the WiFi signals at the exhibition. I very much like this concept, but the current retail price (999 RMB – about 160 USD) makes it unattractive to me for tasks such as video playback or checking email. However, provided it’s smooth enough, games using accelerometer and gyrometer might be fun to play. Imagine a car racing game, where your mobile phone or tablet is your steering wheel and gear […]

AMLogic Announces AML8726-MX Dual Core Cortex A9 Processor

Amlogic announced the availability of the AML8726-MX, a SoC based on a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor clocked at 1.5 GHz with a Mali-400 MP GPU. It is the successor of the similarly named AML8726-M with a single core Cortex A9 @ 1 GHz. The company explains this SoC is particularly suitable for Over The Top (OTT) delivery, 3D Gaming and other Internet applications and targets the tablet, set-top-box and smart-TV markets. AMLogic AML8726-MX include 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 2x USB interfaces, 3-in-1 Card Reader support, Analog and digital video outputs, LVDS and T-CON (Timing Controller) with backlight control, digital video and camera interfaces. Wi-Fi is supported via external chipsets. Here are the highlights of the AML8726-MX family provided by AMLogic: A dual-core Cortex-A9 processor achieving over 7500 DMIPS of performance Direct to panel connection with advanced scaling, de-interlacing and picture quality enhancement Industry leading power management technology to extend battery life […]

55 USD 7″ Capacitive Touch Screen Android 4.0 Tablet Based on Allwinner A13

YOOE, a Chinese manufacturer, has designed a new Android 4.0 (ICS) tablet with a 7″ 5-point capacitive touch screen (1024×600) for about 55 USD (Factory price MOQ: 1000). This tablet is powered by AllWinner A13 (Cortex A8) processor, a cut down version of the AllWinner A10 without HDMI output nor SATA. This white brand tablet also features a 2,600 mAh battery which should last over 4 hours in typical usage and a front camera. The full specifications do not appear to be available right now. You can watch the video below to have a look at the device whose performance seems acceptable. Charbax also said the company expects the price to drop further to around 300 CNY (47 USD) by June 2012. If you are an individual interested to buy this tablet close to factory price (excluding shipping), charbax organizes group buying on his blog, just leave a comment over there […]

Mele A1000 Android 2.3 STB Unboxing and Review

I’ve finally received the Mele A1000 media player I ordered 3 weeks ago. I mainly plan to use it as a Linux development platform for Allwinner A10 processor, but today I’ll just post some unboxing pictures and provide some feedback about the Android software running on the box. I received the device in the box below. (Sorry about the picture quality, I took pictures with my smartphone). Once you open the box, you’ll get see the set-top box, related accessories, a (not so useful) user guide in English and Chinese and what looks like a warranty card. Once you unpack everything you get the set-top box, 2.5″ hard drive case, composite cable, remote control (infrared) and 5V power supply. You’ll noticed some buttons on the remote control have markings in Chinese, this is where the user manual can be useful. You may already have seen the box itself (with clearer […]

Mele A2000 Android 2.3 Media Player Powered by AllWinner A10

Last month, I ordered a Mele A1000 in order to hack it to run Linux as it uses the same processor – the Cortex A8/Mali-400MP based AllWinner A10 – as the one planned for the low cost Rhombus Tech board. I have yet to receive the device, but Mele (迈乐) has already released  the Mele A2000, an Android 2.3 set-box box also powered by AllWinner A10. Here are Mele A2000 specifications: CPU: ARM Cortex A8 AllWinner A10 @ 1 GHz (It can be apparently be overclocked up to @ 1.5GHz) GPU: Mali 4000 Memory: DDR3 512MB RAM / 4GB Nand Flash OS System: Android 2.3.4 (Upgradable to Android 4.0) External Storage: Supports SD card up to 32GB, supports 2.5″ SATA HDD up to 1TB, Supports max 16GB USB flash disk Video codecs: HD MPEG-1/2/4. H.264. HD AVC/VC-1, RM/RMVB, Xvid/DviX 4/5/6, RealVideo 8/9/10, VP6 Video Formats: ts, m2ts, tp, trp, mkv, mp4, […]

Vim Touch: Vim Editor for Android

Many Linux developers or admins use vi or vim in Linux to edit source or/and configuration files and some may want to use it in the go in their smartphone or tablets. Some hacks are available to install vim on Android via ADB on a rooted device, but now, it has all become nice and easy, as a touch enabled version of vim called VimTouch is also available on Android. VimTouch supports full vim syntax and finger touch gestures to help VIM much more usable on touch screens. This vim editor for Android includes the following features: Touch to scroll Fling to scroll Long press to zoom-in Two-fingers to delete lines (“dd”) or new lines (“p”) Single tap to send “ESC” Read email attachments Single instance to open files in vim window Real VIM runtime You would think it is rather cumbersome to use vi/vim on a mobile device, but reviews […]