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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.
The Linux-based MeeGo operating system gained traction at Computex, with prototype tablets shown by Wistron, Compal, Quanta, CZC, and others, and Acer announcing it will offer MeeGo on both netbooks and tablets. Meanwhile, Phoronix benchmarked MeeGo for Netbooks and found it to be faster than Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Fedora, and Moblin.
STMicroelectronics announced a new line of SoCs (system on chips) that will employ dual ARM Cortex-A9 processors. The SPEAr1300 product line will support fully symmetrical operation at up to 600MHz/core, include a DDR3 memory interface, and be manufactured using 55nm HCMOS (high speed CMOS) technology, the company says.
Texas Instruments is prepping a version of its DM6467 DaVinci video processor optimized for videoconferencing. The single-chip VCE6467 Video Communications Engine integrates pre-installed software from RadVision on the ARM9-based, DSP-enabled DM6467 SoC, enabling two-way H.264 video at 720p quality running at 30 frames per second (fps), says the company.
Asus announced a tablet combining a monochrome e-reader with Wacom stylus input and notepad support. The Eee Tablet offers input sensitivity of 2400 dots per inch (dpi), as well as a back-facing two-megapixel camera and 0.1-second text file page turns, says the company.
Intel announced yet another “next-generation” Atom platform, this time aimed at tablets and “sleeker” netbooks. Code-named “Oak Trail” and set for 2011 release, it will be joined in the near term by new, DDR3-supporting Atoms, the single-core N455 and D425, and dual-core N475 and D525, the chipmaker says.
Qualcomm announced it is sampling dual-core versions of its Snapdragon chipset, targeting high-end smartphones. The Mobile Station Modem (MSM) chipsets each integrate dual 1.2GHz Snapdragon cores and offer 1080p video encode/decode plus Open GL ES 2.0, with the MSM8260 targeting HSPA+ networks and the MSM8660 supporting HSPA+/CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev. B, says the company.
Yukyung Technologies showed off a Viliv-branded, Android-based tablet at Computex equipped with a 10-inch, 1366 x 768 touchscreen. The Viliv X10 Tablet with Android offers an SD card reader, USB port, HDMI, webcam, and WiFi, and “could be an incredible iPad alternative,” according to a hands-on Laptop story.
[Updated: June 1] — Freescale announced an heir to its i.MX51 family of ARM Cortex-A8 SoCs that boosts video decode performance to 1080p HD. The i.MX535 processor offers 720p video encode, up to 2GB of external memory, and improved peripheral support including new DDR3, SATA, and LVDS, and is compatible with Android, Linux, Windows Embedded CE, and Chromium.
CSR says it's now shipping a Linux-compatible SoC (system on chip) incorporating an ARM11-based application processor and a 64-channel GPS engine. The SiRFatlasV offers 500 or 664MHz clock speeds, supports VGA-resolution video, supports DDR2-400 RAM, and includes an on-chip audio DAC and power management unit (PMU), the company says.
Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) announced a military-focused 3U OpenVPX-compliant VPX-REDI SBC equipped with Freescale's PowerPC-based, eight-core 1.5GHz QorIQ P4080 system-on-chip. The XPedite5470 offers PCI Express or Serial RapidIO expansion, SERDES or standard gigabit Ethernet ports, plus MIL-STD 810F Level 1-5 ruggedization and temperature resistance, says the company.
Next week at Computex, Via Technologies' WonderMedia Technologies subsidiary will demonstrate low-cost Android-based tablets based on the ARM9-based, 600MHz WonderMedia Prizm processor and related “SmartTouch” reference designs. The tablets will be manufactured by a variety of Chinese manufacturers, and sold for as low as $100 in the U.S. later this year, says Bloomberg.
Intel says it will launch dedicated silicon for tablet PCs at next week's Computex show in Taiwan. The Atom-based chipset — likely bearing the “Moorestown-W” moniker — will run a tablet-specific version of Windows 7 that supports power-saving “SmartIdle” technology, according to various reports.
BeagleBoard.org has tipped a new version of its open-platform development board for hobbyists, sporting a faster 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 SoC and twice the memory. The BeagleBoard-xM runs an upcoming Texas Instruments “DM3730” processor with 512MB of low-power DDR RAM, and a new on-board, four-port USB hub with 10/100 Ethernet, all in a 3.25 × 3.25-inch footprint.
Acer announced an Android 2.1 smartphone called the Stream, offering a 1GHz Snapdragon, a 3.7-inch AMOLED WVGA display, and a five-megapixel camera. At the device's Chinese launch, the company also showed off a LumiRead e-reader with a 6-inch grayscale display, WiFi, 3G, and an ISBN scanner, and provided a brief glimpse of a seven-inch Android tablet.