Broadcom Introduces Three 802.11ax “Max WiFi” Chips: BCM43684, BCM43694 & BCM4375

We’ve already written about the new 802.11ax WiFi standard that promises up to 10 Gbps data rates, support for 2.4 & 5 GHz bands, up to 4x longer range, and better handling of high density scenarios. It appears 802.11ax we’ll be known as Max WiFi to the masses, and Broadcom has unveiled Max WiFi solutions for home and enterprise routers, as well as a smartphones. There are currently three Max WiFi solutions from Broadcom: BCM43684 & BCM43694 4×4 802.11ax chips, respectively optimized for residential and enterprise access points, share the same key features: Support for four streams of 802.11ax 4.8 Gbps PHY rate 160 MHz channel bandwidth 1024 QAM modulation Uplink & downlink OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) MU-MIMO ZeroWait DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection) AirIQ interference identification Full compliance to IEEE and WFA 802.11ax specifications BCM4375 smartphone combo chip: Support for 2-streams of 802.11ax Bluetooth 5 including Low-Energy Long […]

Beelink AP34 Ultimate Fanless mini PC Review with Windows 10 and Ubuntu

The AP34 Ultimate combines the passive cooling of an Apollo Lake N3450 SoC with 8GB of RAM and 64GB of storage in a small box form-factor mini PC. Together with the device comes a pair of HDMI cables, a power adapter, VESA mount with screws, and a couple of leaflets covering basic information. Not only does this device have three USB 3.0 ports, full size SD card, Gigabit Ethernet, headphone jack and HDMI port, it also has a (vacant) M.2 slot allowing additional storage with the full specification being: although there was no included remote control. The device comes pre-loaded with activated Windows 10 Home 64-bit and plenty of available free space at (initially before updates) just over 43GB. The Windows performance is unremarkable and the reason for this is obvious looking at the basic benchmarks. The reason being that the eMMC is slow which is disappointing for an ‘ultimate’ […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

Purism Librem 5 Open Source Linux Smartphone Focuses on Privacy (Crowdfunding)

Purism is computer manufacturer founded in 2014 whose mission is to “provide the highest quality hardware available, ensuring the rights of security, privacy, and freedom for all users”, and so far, they’ve delivered several Intel Core i5/i7 laptops running their PureOS Linux distribution based on Debian with an emphasis on privacy protection. The company has now launched a crowdfunding campaign on their own website to develop and manufacture Librem 5 Linux smartphone with the same philosophy. The phone will use open source software even for the GPU, so the company currently selected i.MX6 for the project since they can use etnaviv open source driver for the Vivante GPU, but they hope to switch to the more powerful i.MX8 processor for the final design, which explains why the hardware specifications are not set in stones yet: SoC- NXP i.MX6/i.MX8 CPU with Vivante GPU System Memory – 3GB LPDDR3 Storage – 32GB […]

X96 Mini Amlogic S905W Android TV Box Sells for $25 and Up

Last week, we discovered Amlogic S905W processor through Tanix TX3 Mini TV box, with the processor maxing out at 4K @ 30 Hz in order to provide cost-competitive solutions, for example against Rockchip RK3229 TV boxes. However, at the time, the price was not that attractive. Prices have come down quickly, as Tanix TX3 Mini can be purchased for about $29 with 1GB RAM /16GB flash, and $32 with 2GB RAM/ 16 GB flash using coupon PYNNHDAH. X96 Mini is an even cheaper option as the Amlogic S905W is sold for as low as $24.99 shipped on Banggood. X96 mini TV box specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905W quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5 GHz with penta-core Mali-450MP GPU @ 750 MHz System Memory – 1 or 2GB DDR3 Storage – 8 or 16GB eMMC flash + micro SD card slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.0a output with HDR, […]

ComfilePi Industrial Touch Panel PCs are Based on Raspberry Pi CM3 Module

ComfilePi CPi-A070WR & CPi-A102WR are industrial IP65 panel PCs powered by Raspberry Pi CM3 compute module, with respectively 7″ and 10.2″ resistive touchscreen displays, and that run modified version of Raspbian OS. ComfilePi CPi touch panel computers specifications: SoC – Broadcom BMC2837 quad core Cortex A53 processor @ up to 1.2GHz with Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU System Memory – 1 GB Storage – 1x micro SD Slot Display 7“ 800×480 Touchscreen Pressure-sensitive (Resistive Film Type) LCD display OR 10.2” 800×480 Touchscreen Pressure-sensitive (Resistive Film Type) LCD display Audio – 3.5mm audio out port I/Os 40-pin header socket based on Raspberry Pi 40-pin header pinout with 22x GPIO with ESD protection circuit 2x RS-232 terminal blocks 1x I2C terminal block USB – 3x USB 2.0 ports Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, optional WiFi via USB dongle Misc – 1x Piezzo buzzer Power Supply – 12~24V DC via 3-pin terminal block Dimensions (housing […]

YotaPhone 3 Dual Screen Smartphone to Launch for $360 and Up (in China)

Russia based Yota makes some unusual phones with dual display with a standard color front display, and an e-paper rear display that allows you to check the time without pressing a button, keeping displaying important information even when your battery is completely discharged, and more. The first Yotaphone was launched in December 2012, followed by a prettier and more powerful Yotaphone 2 in December 2014, but we’ve had to wait nearly three years for the company – with some fresh money and technical involvements from Chinese partners – to introduce YotaPhone 3 at the Russian Embassy in Beijing. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, and features a 5.5″ super AMOLED display on the front, and a 5.2″ E-Ink display on the back. Yotaphone 3 preliminary  (& partial) specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 octa-core Cortex A53 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Adreno 506 GPU System […]

UP 7000 SBC

Kingston Adds 4 GB & 8 GB Capacities to DataTraveler 2000 Encrypted USB Flash Drives with Keypad

Kingston DataTraveler 2000 is a USB 3.0 flash drive that stores files with hardware based AES-256 encryption, and to make sure nobody can access those, it’s also protected with a pin code thanks to a keypad on the flash drive itself. That’s news to me, but the devices have been selling since early 2016 with 16 to 64GB capacities, and you’ll find them on Amazon for $127 and up. However, since such high security USB flash drives are mostly used for confidential information by enterprises and governments (it’s FIPS-197 compliant), some company’s customers may have complained that 16 to 64GB storage is a bit too much for confidential data, with recent top secret documents leaks or IP thefts, so Kingston has just announced smaller 4GB and 8GB versions of the drives. Those drives are OS agnostic with encryption occurring inside the drive, and seen buy your computer or other hardware […]

NVIDIA Jetson TX1 Developer Kit SE Offered for $199 (Promo)

Launched in 2015, NVIDIA Jetson TX1 developer kit integrates some serious processing power with a Jetson TX1 module with a 256-core Maxwell GPU, four Cortex A57 cores, 4GB RAM, 16GB eMMC, and plenty of ports and I/Os via a mini-ITX carrier board. The only problem is that it’s quite expensive, as it was launched with an official $599 price tag, and it’s still $579 on Amazon US. The good news is that NVIDIA decided to launch a promotion for Jetson TX1 Developer Kit SE, based on the same $500+ development kit minus USB cable and camera module, and offered for just $199. Let’s refresh our memory with the board’s specifications: Jeston TX1 module NVIDIA Maxwell GPU with 256 NVIDIA CUDA Cores Quad-core ARM Cortex-A57 MPCore Processor 4 GB LPDDR4 Memory 16 GB eMMC 5.1 Flash Storage Connects to 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled devices 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet NVIDIA Jetson TX1 Carrier […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC