We were only talking earlier on today about Pegatron’s Smartbook plans, and then along comes Shanzai with a quick hands-on report with one of the company’s first models. There’s no telling whether this is merely a prototype or something we’ll see in Q1 2010 with a brand-name plastered across it, but we do know it was featured at ARM’s “Technical Symposium 2009″ in Taipei this week.
Sony Ericsson’s as-yet unannounced Kurara touchscreen smartphone has stayed still for long enough to get a non-blurry photo, and as you might have guessed it’s mobile-review’s Eldar Murtazin responsible for the shot. The Kurara was originally described as a more entry-level version of the Sony Ericsson Satio, but according to Mutazin there’s actually a whole lot more to it than that: squeezed inside is an ARM Cortex A8 CPU complete with PowerVR GPU.
Radio-controlled cars might not seem the most obvious place to mount a server, but JokerWorks disagree: the company has unveiled what they’re calling the world’s first Linux server for R/C cars, the Joker Racer R/C Server, easily allowing for remote internet-linked control. To keep things simple, the Joker Racer unit hooks up to the standard servo cables already in the R/C car, together with an off-the-shelf webcam.
Video demo after the cut
What does $80 buy you these days? If Menq have their way, and sort out their supply chain, it could get you an Android based netbook; the company’s EasyPC E790 has a 7-inch 800 x 480 display and a Samsung ARM926EJ-S3C2450 processor, and while right now it runs Windows CE, Menq will be pushing out an Android firmware update within a month. That’s good news for techvideoblog’s Charbax, as he’s been playing with a review unit.
Video demo after the cut
Whether or not Barnes and Noble liked it enough to copy it, Spring Design’s Alex prototype dual-display ebook reader is certainly nifty enough to capture our interest. MaximumPC had a chance to go hands-on with the Alex, which has a 6-inch e-ink screen up top and a 3.5-inch color capacitive touchscreen underneath for control and navigation, as part of a Marvell demonstration for the company’s new ARMADA 166E SoC.
OLPC chairman Nicholas Negroponte has revealed that the twin-display OLPC XO-2 2.0 project has been scrapped, in favor of an updated – but cosmetically identical – revamp of the existing 1.0 XO-1 model and a new, model 3.0 that has “totally different industrial design, more like a sheet of paper”. Speaking to Xconomy, the outspoken exec also sought to redefine the initial, well-publicized aim of “the $100 laptop” in terms of total cost of ownership: $1 per child per week to buy, maintain and connect the machine.
More OLPC model 3.0 details after the cut
The ST-Ericsson partnership between STMicroelectronics and Ericsson may only be young – the two firms founded the wireless semiconductor development project in February 2009 – but they’re already showing off some interesting wares. The ST-Ericsson U8500 uses an ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore SMP dual-core processor paired with the ARM Mali-400 OpenGL ES2.0 and OpenVG1.1 GPU; together, they’re capable of outputting 1080p HD video in a smartphone form-factor.
Video demo after the cut
ARM makes processors that are found and a wide range of the gadgets and consumer electronics devices that we use. Today ARM has announced the official launch of its Cortex-A5 MPCore processor. ARM claims that the new processor is the smallest and lowest power ARM multicore processor that can deliver the Internet to a range of devices.
The Nokia N900 was the stand-out device from Nokia World back in September, and we’ve been tracking the Maemo 5 smartphone ever since. Imagine our surprise, then, when a pre-release N900 dropped onto the SlashGear test bench today; the hardware is final, so the 5-megapixel autofocus Carl Zeiss camera is onboard, together with HSPA, WiFi b/g, a 3.5-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and you can check out our video unboxing and gallery after the cut.
Sharp’s NetWalker PC-Z1 may not be the device for everyone – after all, a 5-inch touchscreen clamshell MID with a tiny QWERTY keyboard and 800MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor makes it a pretty niche handheld – but most people can appreciate a mini-laptop so we’re pleased to see the first unboxing over at Pocketables. Jenn of course is no stranger to MIDs, in fact she has a UMID mbook M1 on hand to compare the PC-Z1 with.
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SlashGear Japan
