Idolian IdolPad Android 2.3 Tablet Sells for 99 USD

Idolian has just announced the IdolPad Tablet, an Android 2.3 (gingerbread) Tablet featuring a 7″ multitouch resistive touchscreen and powered by an unnamed ARM cortex A9 processor @ 1Ghz (I guess this is the AmLogic 8726) with 512 MB RAM and 4 GB Flash. Here are the specs of the device: Operating System: Android 2.3 OS (Gingerbread) Processor: 1 GHZ Cortex A9 (AmLogic 8726?) RAM: 512 MB DDR3 Screen: 7″ Multi-Touch Resistive Touch Screen, 800×480 Resolution Flash: 4 GB External Flash: Supports up to 32GB micro SD WiFi: 802.11 b/g Micro USB: 2.0 HDMI output tp to 1080p 1.3 MP front camera Multi-Touch & G-Sensor Technology: 3D Accelerometer Battery: 3500mAh (4-6 hours) Dimensions: 197  mm x 124 mm x 14.29 mm Weight: 362 grams. The Idolian IdoPad does not support GPS nor Bluetooth. You can watch the Tablet in action in the video below (Warning: Potentially annoying background music…) The […]

HTC and Via Mobile Smartphones Powered by ST Ericsson Nova U8500

ST Ericsson is showcasing HTC and Via Mobile Android smartphones based on ST Ericsson Nova U8500 dual-core Cortex A9 processor at CES 2012. The two phones are the HTC Sensation (Z710t) and Via Mobile Smartphone (I could not  find any names) targeted at the Chinese market, although they plan to sell them in Europe and US later. The Via Mobile phone features a 4.3″ capacitive touchscreen, HSPA+ (14.4Mbps) and a 5MP rear camera. The smartphones were apparently running gingerbread, but they will also release an Android ICS version soon, as the latest Android release is already running on their hardware reference platform. Performance wise, I’ve seen an Antutu Benchmark that gives HTC Sensation Z710t a score of 4729 that’s roughtly equivalent to LG Optimus 2X (Score: 4729) based on Nvidia Tegra 2. The price of the phones were not disclosed, but the ST Ericsson HTC Sensation is already sold in […]

Archos Unveils Arnova 9 G2 Android Tablet

Archos has announced another low cost Arnova Android tablet, the Arnova 9 G2, featuring a 1GHz single core ARM Cortex A8 (most probably Rockchip RK2918)  and a 9.7 inch capacitive touchscreen IPS display with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels (4:3 Aspect Ratio) that supports 5-point multi-touch. The display characteristics are almost exactly the same as the IPAD 2, luckily Apple has not filled a patent for screen size and resolution yet… 🙂 The device also features 8GB flash and a microSD card slot which can take up to 32GB cards. There is no mention of the RAM capacity of this tablet. Arnova 9 G2 includes a front facing camera for video chat, a pair of stereo speakers, a stereo audio jack, a microphone, a standard USB 2.0 port as well as a micro USB port and it comes with 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and is 3G ready thanks to […]

ARM big.LITTLE Processing Demo

ARM uploaded a big.LITTLE demonstration by Nandan Nayampally, Director, Product Marketing. The demo runs the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) with graphs showing CPU usage and when Cortex A7 / A15 is running. At the beginning Cortex A7 handles the background tasks, and when they start the Android Browser, Cortex A15 is used instead to render the page and once this is done, the system switches back to Cortex A7. Scrolling the webpage will increase CPU usage, but this will still be handled by Cortex A7. They did not have to do any modifications to Android, but they just added a big.LITTLE aware Power Management Driver which will be open sourced and integrated in future version of the linaro kernel. 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 […]

CyanogenMod 7.1 Android Released

CyanogenMod Team has just released CyanogenMod 7.1 based on Android 2.3.7. The previous version (7.0.3) was released on the 6th of May 2011. CyanogenMod 7.1 Changelog Common: Android 2.3.7 (Google) Common: Bluetooth mouse support – Scott Brady Common: Improve notification swipe-to-clear – Evan Charlton Common: Improve album-artist support in media scanner – Paul Crovella Common: Profile improvements and bugfixes – Martin Long, Danny Baumann, Robert Burns Common: RTL text improvements – Eyad Aboulouz, Eran Mizrahi Common: Wake on volume key option – Sven Dawitz Common: Support for revoking application permissions – Plamen K. Kosseff Common: Latest Superuser app – ChainsDD Common: Control brightness by sliding on statusbar – Danesh M Common: Add “copy all” to context menu – Danesh M Common: Lockscreen haptic and statusbar indicators toggle – Danesh M Common: Nicer timepicker/datepicker – Jiri Tyr Common: Configuration 0/90/180/270 rotation – Jonas Larsson, Scott Brady Common: DSP Manager bugfixes and […]

Arnova 7 G2 and 10 G2 Tablets Are Now Available

This week Amazon announced the Kindle Fire and got a lot of press coverage for its 199 USD Android Tablet. But the Kindle Fire was not the only low cost Tablets made available this week as Arnova G2 Tablet are also available in the US. Archos Arnova 7 G2 and 10 G2, respectively with a 7″ and 10″ capacitive display, are powered by  a Rockchip RK2918 Cortex A8 processor clocked a 1Ghz, 512 MB SDRAM, 4 to 8 GB flash memory, a microSD slot and run Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system. Arnova 10 G2 also have a 0.3MP front facing camera for video conference. Arnova 7 G2 can be pre-ordered on Amazon for 199.99 USD. Anrvoa 10 G2 can be purchased on Tigerdirect Ebay store for 199.99 USD.  Last week, you could also get it for 99 USD with a newspaper subscription. Like the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Arnova G2 […]

Android 2.3 Coming to Sony Ericsson Xperia Devices

CyanogenMod has announced that they would work with FreeXperia and support the following devices in the next release of CyanogenMod: Xperia Arc Xperia Neo Xperia Mini Xperia Mini Pro Xperia Play Xperia Ray Xperia X10 Xperia X8 Xperia X10 Mini Xperia X10 Mini Pro Cyanogen (Steve Kondik) also mentionned that FreeXperia is now part of CyanogenMod development team. Back in January, I’d already posted that it was possible to install a hacked version of Android 2.2 on Xperia X10. You can follow Xperia X10 Development on CM7.1 on XDA form and obtain the source code on github. ROMs based on CyanogenMod 7 for Xperia X8 and Xperia X10 Mini are available at http://code.google.com/p/minicm/ 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

Qualcomm APQ8060 Android Development Board BSQUARE DragonBoard

BSQUARE announced the DragonBoard a development board built around Qualcomm APQ8060 mainly targeted at Android 2.3 development. Here’s an excerpt of the press release: BSQUARE Corporation, a leading enabler of smart, connected devices, today announced general availability of DragonBoard™, an Android™ development platform based on Qualcomm Incorporated’s Snapdragon™ APQ8060 processor. DragonBoard provides device makers, application developers and other hardware and software ecosystem suppliers with early access to the APQ8060 processor in a flexible development environment. DragonBoard is a powerful, feature-rich development board that offers exposed connectors, adapters and expansion headers including JTAG, Ethernet and mini USB. These features provide deep levels of development, testing and expansion that allow OEMs to do early prototyping of APQ8060 based systems, component suppliers to integrate devices with the APQ8060 processor and Android application developers to create innovative applications for the growing open source development community. When combined with BSQUARE products and services, DragonBoard enables […]

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