$87 NEO NS Goddess Dual Core Android Smartphone Powered by Qualcomm MSM8225

If you’re following the Chinese low cost smartphone space, you may only think about phones based on Mediatek or possibly Spreadtrum SoCs, but Qualcomm is now entering the arena with its dual core Cortex A5 MSM8225 SoC, and Android smartphones based on the platform such as NEO NS Goddess are available for less than $100, and in this case just $87. NEO NS Goddess specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Dual Core MSM8225 @ 1GHz with Andreno 203 GPU System Memory – 512MB RAM Storage – 512MB ROM + micro SD card slot (TBC) Display – 4.0″ 5-point capacitive touchscreen (800×480) Camera – 0.3MP front camera, 5.0MP back camera Connectivity – Wifi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth, GPS Network –  2G GSM 900/1800, 3G WCDMA 2100MHz (Dual SIM card) USB – 1x micro USB Audio – 1x earphone jack Sensor – G-sensor Support Battery – 1500mAh rechargeable Li-ion battery (up to 3 days) Dimensions – 124x64x11.6 […]

$130 Giada Q11 Android PC Features an LVDS Port, a mini PCIe slot, a Battery and 2.5″ HDD Support

Giada Q11 is an Android media player powered by AllWinner A10 with 1GB RAM and 8GB flash, which are pretty low specifications by today’s standard, so I would probably not recommend using at home. However, it comes with some pretty rare ports and features: an LVDS port, a mini PCIe slot (for 3G module only), a COM port, and a 2200 mAh battery capable of driving displays. Those extra features could make it a pretty good solution for specific applications such as high definition digital signage players. If your setup does not support networking, and you need to store media files in the device, a 2.5″ for SATA hard drive is also available. Giada Q11 Specifications: SoC – Allwinner A10 Cortex A8 processor @ 1GHz + ARM Mali-400 GPU System memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB NAND flash, micro SD card slot (up to 32GB), and SATA II (2.5″ […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

Alpha Data ADM-XRC-7Z1 XMC Mezzanine Card Powered by Xilinx Zynq SoC

Alpha Data, a company providing solutions for compute intensive applications, has announced the ADM-XRC-7Z1, an XMC board powered by Xilinx Zynq-7045 or Zynq-7100 Cortex A9 + FPGA SoC targeting application such as software-defined radio, radar and sonar processing, image processing and machine vision. If you are like me, and have never heard about XMC mezzanine cards before, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it: XMC, or Switched Mezzanine Card, is a PCI Mezzazine Card (PMC) with high-speed serial fabric interconnect defined by the VITA 42 standard. XMC specifies a 5th connector (“P15”) that supports PCI Express (VITA 42.3) or other high speed serial formats such as Serial RapidIO (VITA 42.2) and Parallel RapidIO (VITA 42.1). VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association) is an organization developing and promoting open technology standards that you can download for a fee. Here are the specifications of the board: SoC – Xilinx Zynq-7045 or Zynq-7100 dual […]

Media Magic i5 is a 5″ Android Game Console Powered by Mediatek MT6589

Mediakek MT6589 processors are omni-present in the latest Chinese smartphones, and we can see new models based on the platform pop-up every week. But Mediatek SoC are almost exclusively used in smartphones and tablets, so MUCH Media Magic i5 Android Game Console proves it can also be used in other applications too, although one might argue a portable game console is just a tablet, or in this case a phablet, with some extra buttons… Magic Media i5 Specifications: SoC – Mediatek MT6589 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2GHz + PowerVR SGX544MP  GPU System Memory – 1GB LPDDR2 RAM Storage – 4GB of storage memory Display – 5 “IPS display with 1280×720 resolution Battery – 3550 mAh Network – 3G-WCDMA module with dual sim Camera – Rear and front cameras USB – 2x microUSB ports Controls- Physical keys with shortcuts … The device runs Android 4.2 and is said to come […]

DIY Modular Stripboard / Perfboard Casing for Raspberry Pi (Part 1)

I plan to play around with Bluetooth 4.0 LE in Linux using the Raspberry Pi as an hardware platform together with a small LCD display and possibly a relay board. Instead of having boards spread around, I thought it might be a good idea if I could design a case for my setup. I wanted to be able to connect small external boards and things like LEDs, it had to be easily assembled and disassembled, modular so that I could add or remove circuits easily, and about as cheap as existing “dumb” cases. So I though why not use stripboards (perfboards) for that? I searched the web to find out if other people had the same idea, and could only find one other person, but he does not appear to have completed assembly, nor actually used the stripboards to add hardware features. I decided to give it a try anyway, […]

This Low End Android Tablet Comes with a (Non-Removable) Stand with Speaker

The tablet shown below has pretty low specifications with an AllWinner A13 SoC, 512 MB RAM, 4GB, a 7″ 800×480 display, and a not so attractive price. However its stand makes it somewhat unique, and this tablet may be practical as a media frame, kitchen tablet, or possibly as an input console for some external device. Here are the specifications of the device: SoC – Allwinner A13 ARM Cortex-A8 Processor @ 1GHz with Mali-400 GPU System Memory – 512 MB Storage – 4GB NAND Flash + (full size) SD card slot Display – 7″ capacitive touchscreen TFT display with 800×480 resolution Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n Sensor – Gravity USB – mini USB port Battery – Unknown Audio – Built-in speaker This Android 4.0 tablet comes with a power adapter, an OTG cable, and a user’s manual. You can purchase it for $83.59 on TinyDeal, but if you really need […]

UP 7000 SBC

Intrinsyc Announces DragonBoard 8074 Devkit Based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 APQ8074 Processor

Intrinsyc Software has announced the availability of a new DragonBoard Development Kit composed of a Qseven Open-Q 8074 SoM powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 APQ8074 processor for Android and embedded Linux development, and a mini-ITX carrier board. The kit is designed to help with developing applications such as ruggedized tablets, digital signage, applications for government/public safety, health care, robotics, wearable displays and video streaming/conferencing. Specifications of DragonBoard 8074 Kit: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 (APQ8074) quad core Krait 400 CPU @ 2.3 GHz with Adreno 330 GPU and Hexagon v5 QDSP6 @ 600MHz System Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 RAM Storage – 16GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot + 2x SATA Display – qHD LCD capacitive touchscreen Connectivity: Gigabit Ethernet Wi-Fi 802.11n/ac Bluetooth 4.0 GNSS (GPS and GLONASS) Other I/O: USB – 2x USB 3.0 + 2x USB 2.0 +  micro-AB USB OTG Video Output – HDMI Audio – 5.1 […]

Linux Kernel 3.10 Released

Linus Torvalds has announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.10: So I delayed this by a day, considering whether to do another -rc, but decided that there wasn’t enough upside. Sure, it hasn’t been as quiet as I’d like, and we had this long discussion about an inode list locking scalability issue over the last week or two, but in the end that issue turned out to not be new, and while we may end up back-porting the eventual resolution to 3.10, it wasn’t a reason to delay the release. Similarly, while I might wish for fewer pull requests during the late rc’s (and particularly the ones that came in Friday evening -inconvenient for a weekend release), at some point delaying things doesn’t really help things, and just makes the pent up demand for the next merge window worse. In other words, I could really have gone either way, but […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC