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Verizon Wireless and Samsung Mobile announced a new Galaxy S smartphone called the Samsung Continuum, offering Android 2.1 and a secondary 1.8-inch “Ticker Display” in addition to the main 3.4-inch screen. Verizon also started taking orders for the previously announced, business-focused Motorola Droid Pro.
Creative Technology announced 10-inch and seven-inch tablet computers along with a 3.2-inch portable media player (PMP) — all offering Android 2.1, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, and “Pure Wireless Entertainment” branding. The Creative Ziio 10″ and Ziio 7″ each offer Creative's 1GHz, Cortex-A8-based ZMS-08 processor, while the Zen Touch 2 Wireless Entertainment Device features a two-megapixel camera.
Marvell says it is now sampling a quad-core, ARM-based processor aimed at “enterprise class cloud computing.” The Armada XP runs at 1.6Hz, has a 2MB second-level cache, supports 64-bit DDR3 memory, includes four gigabit Ethernet ports and other interfaces, and uses fewer than ten Watts, according to the company.
Texas Instruments (TI) announced a “TMS320C66x” family of digital signal processors (DSPs), including the TMS320C6678, which, with eight 1.25GHz cores, is claimed to be the industry's fastest. The Linux-ready C66x DSPs also include a dual-core C6672, a quad-core C6674, and a quad-core C6670 communications SoC version with extra networking coprocessors.
Trinity Audio Group demonstrated a prototype of a tablet running a MeeGo-based version 5.0 of its Transmission audio platform for musicians. Now open for beta testing, the Indamixx 2 tablet runs on an Intel Atom processor with 2GB of RAM, and offers a multitouch display, 160GB of storage, and the Renoise tracking and sampling application.
Adafruit Industries, a company that sells DIY open source electronic kits and parts, announced a bounty for the first person to create open source drivers for the Microsoft Kinect 3D game controller add-on for the Xbox 360. After Microsoft publicly disapproved of Adafruit's “Open Kinect” project, the company boosted the bounty from $1,000 to $2,000.
Roku has begun licensing the hardware and software for its popular, Linux-based set-top boxes (STB), including the recently announced Roku HD ($60) along with the 1080p-enabled Roku XD ($80) and Roku XDS ($100). Netgear will be the first Roku licensee, and will soon offer a version of the Roku XD at Best Buy, Fry's, and Radio Shack stores, says Roku.
Toshiba announced a new line of SSDs (solid state drives) it claims are the industry's thinnest. The Blade X-gale devices are available in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities, according to the company.
Portwell announced an industrial ATX motherboard that supports Intel Core i3/i5/i7 or Celeron P4500 processors. The Ruby-M710VG2AR offers up to 8GB DDR3 SDRAM, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, six SATA 300 ports, HDMI, DVI, and VGA video outputs, and six powered serial ports, says the company.
Phoronix has published the results of benchmarks performed on 26 Linux kernels dating back five years, from Linux 2.6.12 to a pre-release version of the upcoming Linux 2.6.37. Despite the addition of numerous features over the years, the results show remarkable consistency.
Some 81.1 million smartphones shipped worldwide in the third quarter, up 89.5 percent from 3Q 2009, says IDC. Nokia, Apple, and RIM took the top three spots in vendor share, but fourth and fifth place Samsung and HTC showed the fastest growth, based largely on their Android phones.
Intel's Light Peak optical connectivity technology could begin appearing in products in early 2011, according to reports. The technology could offer bidirectional data transfers at twice the speed of USB 3.0.
Lanner announced a 1U serial communications platform designed for SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition), especially in environments prone to electrical surges. The LEC-3100 includes Intel's Atom N270 processor, 10 isolated serial ports, five gigabit Ethernet ports, eight digital I/Os, four USB 2.0 ports, a PCI-104 expansion slot, and a DVI-D video output, according to the company.
The Google Instant predictive search technology has launched in an Android version. In other Android app news, Twitter and Facebook have each released updated apps, Verizon is prepping its V Cast Android Store for the Droid Incredible next week, and the U.S. Defense Department unveiled a T2 Mood Tracker app allowing veterans to monitor their emotional health, says eWEEK
Coverity found 88 “high-risk” defects in Android 2.2's kernel, but noted that Android's defect density is lower than the industry average for mobile OSes. Meanwhile, Lookout Mobile Security announced Lookout Premium for Android, featuring advanced security and privacy features, says eWEEK.