Samsung Electronics will ship its first Android phone in the second quarter of of 2009, says a Korea IT News story. The phone will be released in North America by Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA, and Samsung's Android team reportedly now has 80 developers. (more…)

The market for MIDs, netbooks, and other devices that straddle the notebook and smartphone formats will turn into a battleground between X86 and ARM architectures, says ABI Research. (more…)

Neuros has announced its first “bounties” for developing Ubuntu-based Linux software on its Neuros LINK open-source set-top box (STB) (pictured). The cash bounties cover Netflix, Move Networks, and iTunes integration, as well as projects on networking, video resolution, error reporting, and GUI upgrades, says… (more…)

PDF software company Foxit is readying an electronic book reader that weighs 6.4 ounces, measures 0.4 inches thick, and runs Linux. The Foxit eSlick offers E Ink's low-power electronic-paper display, ships with an MP3 player, and sells for $100 less than an Amazon Kindle. (more…)

rPath announced that its rBuilder “build and release” customizaton and management system for ISVs (software vendors) building hardware appliances and/or virtual appliances is adding support for Ubuntu and CentOS Linux. rPath previously supported Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise, as well as its own rPath Linux “software appliance” distribution. (more…)

Smartphone shipments will rise 8.9 percent worldwide, and 3.1 percent in the U.S. next year, forecasts IDC. Meanwhile, “traditional” mobile phone sales are forecast to slump 3.5 percent globally and 11.5 percent Stateside, off-setting smartphone growth for an overall shipments drop of 1.9 percent, the industry's first decline since 2001. (more…)

Adlink announced a Linux-friendly ETX computer-on-module (COM) using Intel's Atom N270. Targeting “truly fanless or deeply embedded systems,” the “ETX-AT” offers up to 2GB of memory, 10/100 Ethernet, dual IDE/PATA channels, two SATA ports, four USB ports, plus serial, parallel, PS/2, and audio interfaces, says Adlink. (more…)

An open source project has released a new, more “hackable” Debian-based Linux distribution for the Openmoko NeoFreerunner phone. The Hackable:1 group hopes to build a well-maintained, developer-friendly codebase for use by VARs (value-added resellers) building products on top of Openmoko's open hardware… (more…)

This article describes an all-volunteer science project's use of a donated Linux camera for the Jaluro rover it hopes to field in Google's Lunar X PRIZE competition. It discusses several advantages that patent-free Open Source software like Linux and Theora offer for scientific research projects. (more…)

Vitesse Semiconductor announced a second generation of its ARM9-based “switch-on-a-chip” that runs the open source eCos RTOS (real-time operating system). The 24-port SparX-II-24 and 16-port SparX-II-16 target networking applications requiring “content-aware” security, failover protection, and quality-of-service (QoS) filtering, says the company. (more…)

Hiteg announced a Linux-ready, hardware/software development kit for Samsung's ARM9-based S3C2440 microprocessor. The 100mm-square Mini2440 board features the workhorse S3C2440 processor clocked to 533MHz, and targets embedded development training applications, industrial control equipment, and consumer… (more…)

Sun Microsystems is shipping an UltraSPARC T2 Reference Design Kit (RDK) for developing and testing embedded systems designs using the UltraSPARC T2 multicore processor. The RDK is available now for Solaris, with a Wind River Linux version due in early 2009, says Sun. (more…)

Foreword — This article describes an all-volunteer science project's use of a donated Linux camera for the Jaluro rover it hopes to field in Google's Lunar X PRIZE competition. It discusses several advantages that patent-free Open Source software like Linux and Theora offer for scientific research projects. (more…)

Movial has joined the Khronos Group, and released an interesting “media engine” under the LGPL. The “Movial Octopus Media Engine” targets Linux devices such as MIDs and netbooks equipped with players, voice/video call applications, and other media applications. (more…)

Tilera is shipping a 36-core version of its 64-core Tile64 SoC (system-on-chip). Aimed at graphics-intensive embedded applications and networking devices, the TilePro36 clocks from 600MHz to 900MHz, consumes 9-13 Watts (typical), and runs Linux on each, some, or all cores. (more…)