smartphone

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on Jolla Unveils Sailfish OS based on Meego and Sailfish SDK

Jolla Unveils Sailfish OS based on Meego and Sailfish SDK

Last July, a company called Jolly announced it would design, develop and sell smartphones based on the Meego operating system. This is now closer to reality as a demo has been showcased running on Nokia N950, except the operating system is now called Sailfish OS. Internally, Sailfish OS is built on top of the Mer project and Qt. The UI is built with QML and QtQuick and the standard QtMobility APIs are supported. For software development, you’ll need to use a special version of QtCreator. The development flow  looks very similar to what you would do to develop applications for Symbian or Harmattan phones. More precisely, the Sailfish SDK consists of QtCreator, a virtualised Mer Platform SDK and Sailfish components. Code is developed in Qt-Creator on the host device, then the code is passed to the virtualised Mer SDK where it compiles inside the Virtual Machine. If you want to […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Android Jelly Bean 4.2 SDK, Source Code and Binary Images Are Now Available

Android Jelly Bean 4.2 SDK, Source Code and Binary Images Are Now Available

As the Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet became available for purchase yesterday, Google released Android 4.2 SDK for developers and pushed Android 4.2 to AOSP. The Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) SDK platform (API level 17) brings the following key improvements: Performance – Renderscript computation can be run directly in the GPU on the Nexus 10. This is a first since Exynos 5250 is the first ARM processor capable of supporting GPGPU (via Mali-T604 GPU). See the chart of the right showing results between CPU and CPU+GPU computation of some multimedia benchmarks. Lock screen widgets – Users can now place interactive lock screen widgets directly on their device lock screens. This only requires a small update to adapt existing widgets to run on the lock screen.  Daydream – An interactive screensaver mode that can be used when the device is charging or docked to a desk dock. Better external […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on Motorola Announces ATRIX HD Smartphone Developer Edition

Motorola Announces ATRIX HD Smartphone Developer Edition

After 5 months after Motorola ATRIX HD hit the market, Motorola announced it would make a developer edition of the core Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon based smartphone that comes with unlockable bootloader so that developers can play around and install their own firmware. Apparently the ability to unlock the bootloader is the only extra “feature” you get with this phone. You’ll then need to use a tool to unlock the device, lose your warranty, and start creating and flashing custom ROM to your phone. There is no plan to allow this on the “standard” edition of the phone  however, and efforts by the XDA developer community to unlock the bootloader do not appear to have been successful to date, except for some some Atrix HD bought from Ebay which already came unlocked.  Motorola ATRIX HD developer edition will be available soon for an undisclosed price, and only in the US. If […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 34 Comments on Rockchip RK3066/RK30xx Processors Documentation, Source Code and Tools

Rockchip RK3066/RK30xx Processors Documentation, Source Code and Tools

Rockchip RK3066 (part of RK30xx family) is a Chinese dual ARM Cortex A9 SoC targeting multimedia products such as tablets (e.g. Cube U30GT), mini PC (e.g UG802, MK808) and in theory set-top boxes, but I can’t find any products based on this Rockchip processor. It seems mini PCs/ HDMI TV sticks have taken over this market. RK3066 Processor The processor features two ARM Cortex A9 clocked at up to 1.6 Ghz with a quad core Mali-400MP GPU. It can support 1080p (3D) encoding/decoding, provides HDMI 1.4a, VGA, composite, component and LVDS video outputs (Dual display support),  USB 2.0 Host and OTG ports, a MAC interface (Ethernet), and much more… Here are the key features of Rockchip RK3066 processor: Dual Core A9 + Quad Core Mali-400MP GPU 2 banks, 8/16 bit Nor flash / SRAM interface 8 banks, 8/16 bit async NAND flash, LBA NAND flash and 8-bit sync ONFI NAND […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on Google Unveils LG Nexus 4 Smartphone and Samsung Nexus 10 Tablet Running Android 4.2

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, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on ARM Announces 3 New Midgard GPUs – Mali-T624, Mali-T628 and Mali-T678

ARM Announces 3 New Midgard GPUs – Mali-T624, Mali-T628 and Mali-T678

ARM announced the second generation of the Mali-T600 Series GPUs targeting tablets, smartphones and smart TVs. Those new GPUs provide up to 50% performance increase over the first generation Midgard GPUs (T-604 & T-658) and include  support for Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC), a texture compression technique. The company explains that ASTC significantly optimizes GPU performance and increases battery life in devices. Those 3 new GPUs based on Mali Midgard architecture are named as follows: Mali-T624 – 1 to 4 cores – Market: Smartphones and smart-Tvs Mali-T628 – 5 to 8 cores – Market: Smartphones and smart-Tvs Mali-T678 – Up to 8 cores, 4x the GPU compute performance of Mali-T628 – Market: Tablets As with previous Midgard GPUs, the new GPUs support GPU compute with improves performance and energy-efficiency for math intensive activities, such as: Computational photography – computational methods of enhancing or extending digital photography Multi perspective views – […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on ST-Ericsson To Launch 2.3 GHz NovaThor L8580 Dual Core Cortex A9 Processor

ST-Ericsson To Launch 2.3 GHz NovaThor L8580 Dual Core Cortex A9 Processor

ST Ericsson is working on a new application processor manufactured with 28 nm FD-SOI technology by ST Microelectronics. The new processor NovaThor L8580 features 2 Cortex A9 core that can be clocked at 2.3 GHz and is aimed at smartphones and tablets. The company also improved power efficiency, as L8580 consumes 35% less energy than L8540 (28 nm) when clocked at 1.85 GHz (maximum frequency for L8540). If you need even lower power consumption, L8580 can be clocked at 1.0 GHz with an input voltage of 0.6 V, whereas current competitors’ processors require at least 0.9V to operate at 1GHz. ST-Ericsson estimates that Novathor L8580 will be able to offer an extra day battery life compared to L8540 on a typical smartphone, which correspond to about 4h and 2h30 extra for web browsing and HD video playback respectively. NovaThor L8580 SoC will embed a PowerVR SGX544 GPU clocked at 600 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Experienced Qt4 Mobile Developer? Get A Free Nokia N9 / N950 Smartphone

Experienced Qt4 Mobile Developer? Get A Free Nokia N9 / N950 Smartphone

Quim Gil, in charge of developers relation at Nokia, announced on Maemo.org, that Nokia is currently looking for experienced Qt developers willing to port or develop apps running on top of Qt 5 before its finally release in August/September 2012 and will provide a Nokia N9 or N950 smartphones (running Meego) to selected developers. The goals of this device program are as follows: Testing Qt 5 itself and providing feedback while it’s alpha/beta. Testing the Qt 5 libraries for the Nokia N9. Developers feedback for port from Qt 4 to Qt 5, whether is was easy, a nightmare… and comments on difficulties experienced, Qt Creator and the documentation. Testing new Qt 5 features such as Qt Quick 2, textures, transitions, graphics / video effects, raw OpenGL ES stuff, post-Mobility APIs, the new Qt WebKit, JSON DB, ongoing R&D on PhoneGap own JQuery based experiments, etc… This new device program has […]