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At Computex last week, Logitech demonstrated its Android Harmony Link app for remote control of Google TV, says Phandroid. Meanwhile, Chinese consumer electronics giant TCL demonstrated an Android-powered alternative to Google TV, and Expert Reviews offers its praise for People of Lava's Android-powered Scandinavia TV.
[Updated: June 10] — A Taiwanese startup called Bonux is readying an ARM11-based Android Internet radio with a 4.3-inch touchscreen called the Bonux iMusic Player. Meanwhile, the company is also prepping an AndroidTV Player set-top box based on a similar processor that offers a quick switch between TV and Android sessions.
Motorola announced a Europe-destined version of its Motoroi phone called the Milestone XT720, offering Android 2.1, 720p video capture, HDMI, and an eight-megapixel camera with xenon flash. Meanwhile, Motorola is also prepping a somewhat similar “Droid Xtreme” successor to its original Droid for Verizon in the U.S., reports claim.
Texas Instruments announced two new 45nm-fabricated processors including 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 cores and performance of up to 2000 Dhrystone MIPS. The AM3703 and Open GL graphics-accelerated AM3715 are descendants of TI's OMAP35x line, while an enhanced version of the AM3715 will be part of the BeagleBoard-xM development board that was also announced today.
Linux's share of the desktop market grew to 1.13 percent, says Net Applications, making Linux the only OS to improve its position in May. Meanwhile, Linux server share dropped to 20.8 percent, but revenue share grew to 16.8 percent, says IDC, and UC Berkeley's Top500 survey shows Linux running on 91 percent of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers.
Commell announced a pico-ITX SBC (single board computer) featuring Intel's “Pineview” Atom processors. The LP-170 offers N450, D410, or D510 CPUs clocked at 1.66GHz, a SATA port and CompactFlash slot, gigabit Ethernet, two serial ports, and a PCI Express Mini Card slot, the company says.
Linux-based mobile operating systems, led by Android, will own 33 percent of the global smartphone market by 2015, growing faster than the smartphone market at large, says ABI Research. In addition to examining Android's fast rise, the report looks at WebOS, MeeGo, Bada, LiMo, and ALP versions of mobile Linux.
Advantech announced a box computer intended for installation in trucks, buses, and taxis. The Trek-550 includes a 1.1GHz or 1.3GHz Atom CPU, a GPS receiver with dead reckoning option, a cellular modem, a CAN port and multiple serial ports, plus support for two displays with independent audio, the company says.
At Computex, Shenzhen-based Joyplus announced four tablets that run Android, only two of which use the same CPU. The five-inch Joyplus M508 and seven-inch 5701 both tap the 624MHz Marvell PXA303, while the seven-inch M702 runs on a 600MHz WonderMedia Prizm MW8505, and the seven-inch M703 uses a 600MHz ARM926 CPU paired with a 600MHz DSP, says Joyplus.
Acrosser announced two compact network appliances, each with six gigabit Ethernet ports and Mini PCI expansion slots. The fan-cooled AR-N5205A offers 1.0GHz or 1.5GHz Celeron M processors, whereas the fanless AR-N5205FL adds a low-end 600MHz version and a high-end 1.8GHz Pentium M, the company says.
ARM Holdings and five semiconductor manufacturers have formed a not-for-profit engineering firm to develop standardized, open source Linux tools, kernel, and middleware software for consumer electronics. “Linaro” is jointly owned by ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments, and will initially support ARM Cortex-A tools on distros including Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu, and WebOS.
Lanner released a fanless, Linux-ready network appliance powered by the dual-core Intel Atom D510 or single-core D410 processor. The FW-7535 is equipped with six gigabit Ethernet ports, dual USB 2.0 ports, a 2.5-inch hard disk drive bay, and Mini-PCIe expansion, says the company.
The MeeGo Linux operating system for mobile devices gained additional software support at the Computex show this week in Taiwan. Novell and Linpus both announced MeeGo-based netbook distributions, Movial announced a “MeeGo Services” offering, and Telefonica weighed in with support for the open source platform.
Finnish mobile firm Aava Mobile has announced what appears to be the first Android development platform for the Intel Atom Z6xx (“Moorestown”) system-on-chip. Virta Android is billed as a hardware-enhanced software developer kit (h-SDK) for developing Android applications for Z6xx -based smartphones and tablets.
Motorola announced a square-shaped, low-end Android phone, featuring a pivot design that exposes a hidden, five-row QWERTY keypad. The “Flipout” is equipped with a 2.8-inch, 320 x 240 touchscreen, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a three-megapixel camera, and runs Android 2.1 with a new version of Motorola's MotoBlur UI layer.