Android News - Page 355 of 363 - CNX Software

April 25, 2011April 25, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ARM Based Android Set-Top Boxes at China Content Broadcasting Network Exhibition

The 19th China Content Broadcasting Network Exhibition (CCBN 2011) took place on March 23 – 25 2011 at the China International Exhibition Center in Beijing. During this event, numerous Android STB were showcased with processors from several vendors. Trident Microsystems PNX8400 Trident Microsystems demonstrated their Cortex-A9 Apollo/Shiner SoC family, the PNX8400, which included all the major building blocks needed to develop Next Generation Broadcasting (NGB) solutions. NGB is a government initiative for smart tv in China. On 24th of March 2011, Trident Microsystems also announced that its STB SOCs were selected for the first trial deployments of NGB in China. LG (LG Smart Box) and Cycle Century demonstrated their Android based cable STB using Trident Microsystems NXP8400. This stb supports DVB, Conditional Access, 1080p video streaming, a browser with an Apps store, 3D gaming and VoIP. To see more about Trident Microsystems Android STB have a look at the video […]

April 18, 2011April 18, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Rockchip RK2918 based Set-Top Box and Laptop

Rockchip RK2919 is apparently being implemented in many tablets such as Arnova 10, but they are also used in STB / media players and Laptops. Rockchip showcased their set-top box reference design at Hong Kong Electronics Fair 2010. Their board features 100MB Ethernet, one USB host port, one HDMI video output and one SD Card connector. The BOM cost is around 50 USD. The reference designs runs Android 2.3 (gingerbread). They also exhibited a laptop based on RK2918 supposedly manufactured by one of their customers running Android 2.3. There are no details specs nor price information available yet. But with an ARM Cortex A8 running at 1.2Ghz it should offer decent performance compared to existing ARM based laptops although I’d rather have Ubuntu preloaded (now optimized by Linaro) than Android on this kind of device. Here’s a video by Charbax (armdevices.net) of this laptop. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software […]

April 15, 2011August 7, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

MIPS Launches New Android and Linux Developer Community

MIPS Technologies announced the launch of its new Developer Community at developer.mips.com. The new site is specifically tailored to the needs of software developers working with the Android™ platform, Linux operating system and other applications for MIPS-Based™ hardware. All information and resources on the site are openly accessible. “This new community demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the vibrant open source effort around the MIPS cores and architecture, as well as around our customers’ and their customers’ hardware platforms,” said Art Swift, vice president of marketing and business development, MIPS Technologies. “As the MIPS architecture continues to expand into new high-volume markets such as mobile handsets and tablets, we see an increasing need for these resources among the growing MIPS developer community.” Software engineers can find development resources and tools on the site including: Android on MIPS source code, porting instructions, a native development kit (NDK) for Android applications development on […]

April 15, 2011April 15, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

RK2918 based Arnova 10 Tablet with Capacitive Touchscreen

Arnova, a subsidiary of Archos in Hong Kong, has already released the resistive touchscreen version of Arnova 10 based on Android 2.1 and powered by Rockchip RK2918 in March 2011. In May, they will start to sell the latest version of Arnova 10 with capacitive touchscreen and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). The price should only be slightly higher then the first Arnova 10 with a retail price of 229 USD / 229 Euro. This device is very similar to Archos 101 except it has a more powerful processor (Rockchip RK2918 vs. OMAP 3) but it does not have kickstand and surprisingly no HDMI output. Watch the hands-on video by Charbax below. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

April 14, 2011February 22, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Android 2.3.3 Firmware for HTC, Motorola, ZTE, Samsung smartphones

CyanogenMod is an aftermarket firmware for a number of cell phones and tablets based on the open-source Android operating system. It offers features not found in the official Android based firmwares of vendors of these cell phones. People often use it because the official firmware of their phone may not get an update or because they do not like the custom Android UI of the manufacturer. The latest version is CyanogenMod 7 (11th of April 2011) with the following: Android version: 2.3.3 Kernel 2.6.37.4 with CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler) Root access BusyBox tools Apps2SD Reboot menu – options to perform a reboot, reboot into recovery, or reboot into bootloader Input settings – Haptic feedback adjustments, trackball wake, menu unlock, music controls on lock screen Performance settings – surface dithering, JIT, VM heap size, and lock messaging in memory CyanogenMod 7 also offers user interface improvement, some pre-install apps, networking support (OpenVPN, tethering, etc..), audio […]

April 13, 2011February 22, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

HTC Sensation runs on Dual-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260

HTC has just announced its new smartphone – the HTC Sensation – powered by the latest Snapdragon Dual Core MSM8260 running @ 1.2 GHz with an 4.3″ Capacitive display featuring qHD (540×960) resolution Features and specifications of the HTC Sensation: CPU: Qualcomm MSM8260 1.2GHz, dual core OS: Android 2.3 with HTC Sense Storage: Internal phone storage: 1 GB RAM: 768 MB Expansion slot: microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible) Cameras: 8 megapixel color camera: Auto focus and dual LED flash Front camera: VGA fixed focus color camera HD video recording: 1080p HD video recording Internet: 3G, GPRS, EDGE and Wifi802.11 b/g/n Misc: Bluetooth 3.0, Internal GPS and USB and Wi-Fi® tethering Connectors: 3.5 mm stereo audio jack micro-USB 2.0 (5-pin) port with mobile high-definition video link (MHL) for USB or HDMI connection Sensors: Gyro sensor G-Sensor Digital compass Proximity sensor Ambient light sensor Multimedia: Gallery, Music, and FM Radio SRS […]

April 12, 2011April 12, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Mediatek based Low Cost Android Capacitive Smartphone

Here’s a video about an Android 2.2 Capacitive touchscreen phone based on Mediatek MTK6516 processor. By today’s standard, this processor is not very fast (460 MHz), but its price point allows for very low cost smartphones. The Chinese smartphone in the video below only costs 565 RMB (around 87 USD) retail and features a 3.5″ capacitive touchscreen, GPS and a back camera. It seems to work pretty smoothly.However, it does not support 3G, so you’d only be able to use GPRS for data connections. If you wait a little longer, several sub-100 USD smartphones should be available on the market later this year with performance similar to Google Nexus One with processors such as ST-Ericsson U6715. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. […]

April 11, 2011April 11, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Android to get 50% of smartphones market share by 2012

A Gartner’s study expects worldwide smartphone sales will reach 468 million units in 2011, a 57.7 percent increase from 2010. By the end of 2011, Android will move to become the most popular operating system (OS) worldwide and will build on its strength to account for 49 percent of the smartphone market by 2012 (Cf. Table 1). Sales of open OS (meaning with SDK, not necessarily open source) devices will account for 26 percent of all mobile handset device sales in 2011, and are expected to surpass the 1 billion mark by 2015, when they will account for 47 percent of the total mobile device market. Gartner also expects the price of Android to dramatically decrease by 2015 with 67 percent of all open OS devices with an average selling price of $300 or below. Here are the projection of smartphones sales by OS until 2015: OS 2010 2011 2012 […]