It’s time to look at another Android tablet here on SlashGear, this one coming correct with the first dual-core processor to exist on an Android tablet that’s not a Tegra 2. This is the ARCHOS 80 G9 tablet, one of two, the larger being the 101, both of them holding basically the same set of specs inside. Will the kickstand on this lovely little mid-sized tablet make it stand up against the competition, or will it down in a sea of tablet-like devices? We shall see!
Each time Google creates a new version of Android, they work with a manufacturer of smartphones or tablets as well as a processor manufacturer to create a hero device to host a completely vanilla (otherwise known as totally nude, clean) version of their software. The most recent examples of this come in the Nexus S, out for sale now on three carriers across the USA working with Google’s latest smartphone OS, Android 2.3 Gingerbread. For tablets, there’s the Motorola XOOM, available as both a Wi-fi only device and a Verizon-carried device featuring Google’s latest tablet-based mobile OS, Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Though the XOOM isn’t technically following the naming scheme, each Google Android hero phone is part of the “Nexus” line, the next of these set to feature the Android system to tie handsets and tablets together in one: Ice Cream Sandwich. While we still do not know the Android number (2.4 or 4.0), we have a collection of details on this device that’s sure to get you salivating.
It appears that the people behind the long-silent Notion Ink group have come back from the dead to note that they’d not only be adding Ice Cream Sandwich to their Android tablet “Adam”, they’d be doing so in November, right after the launch date of the platform which is, they say, late October. Now it’s not too much of a stretch to think that the author of this news release, Rohan Shravan, has just been reading Android blogs for the past few weeks and is just guessing that the rumors are true, but there is a point to consider: he’s been right before. On the other hand, he’s been terribly unreliable before as well.
Archos is known for offering affordable alternatives, but today they've really outdone themselves and most of the competition. They've just unveiled two new Android 3.1 Honeycomb tablets---the Archos 80 G9 and the Archos 101 G9---that rock some pretty nice specs and possibly the largest on board storage, but slot in at the sub-$350 price range.
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Texas Instruments has outed its latest OMAP4 platform processor, the OMAP4470, at Computex this week, a dual-core ARM A9 1.8GHz chip intended for smartphones, tablets and ultra-thin notebooks. Designed not only with Android and other Linux OS in mind, but with Windows on ARM – one of the incoming Windows 8 builds – the OMAP4470 takes on not only traditional TI rivals like NVIDIA’s Tegra and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, but Intel’s latest Atom and Sandy/Ivy Bridge chips too. SlashGear caught up with Mark Granger, OMAP platform marketing head, to find out how TI has delivered an 80-percent boost in browsing performance and 2.5x the graphics potency.
When it comes to the Android Honeycomb world the chip that is in many of the tablets running the OS is the NVIDIA Tegra 2. NVIDIA has been showing off its next generation processor for tablets and more at Computex called Kal-El. The processor is a quad core and has major gaming capabilities that will appeal to tablet buyers. Despite the new quad core offering, a rumor has surfaced that TI may be the chip builder that Google builds Android Ice Cream Sandwich around.
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Texas Instruments told us they were more interested in showing what their OMAP processors could do than telling us, and the TI booth at MWC 2011 was bristling with vendors showing what they'd coaxed out of OMAP4 chipsets. Video conferencing companies Pathpartner and Ittiam shared a stand with their offerings, the former pushing 720p HD Skype calls, the latter four-way video calls in which only a single participant need have an OMAP4-based device.
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When we caught up with LG earlier today, to check out the freshly announced Optimus 3D and Optimus Tab, we couldn't help but wonder about the discrepancy between the smartphone's 1080p Full HD 3D recording capabilities and the tablet's 720p HD 3D recording. Turns out, there's more to a 1GHz, dual-core chipset than just its ARM cores: the Optimus 3D's Texas Instruments OMAP4430 has native support for Full HD recording in 3D, while the NVIDIA Tegra 2 in the Tab doesn't.
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Texas Instrument's OMAP4 platform, star of MWC 2010, is now filtering out onto the market in devices like the LG Optimus 3D and BlackBerry PlayBook, but we're yet to see anything quite make the most of its hardware abilities. We caught up with EPOS, who have used the OMAP4's triple microphone array to develop an ultrasonic pen system that can track handwriting in the space a foot around a device.
Video demo after the cut
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Texas Instruments was showing gesture recognition back at MWC 2010, but with OMAP4 the system has really come of age. The chipset - to be found at the heart of the LG Optimus 3D and the BlackBerry PlayBook - uses the camera support to track hand and arm movements; TI showed a demo where a Blaze developer unit could respond to waves to navigate through a photo gallery.
Video demo after the cut
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The PandaBoard Cortex-A9 OMAP4 developer board we mentioned at the start of the month has gone on sale, priced at a reasonable $174. Based around a dual-core 1GHz chip with 1GB of RAM, WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1, the PandaBoard supports 1080p 30fps output via HDMI and is intended to allow developers to whip up OMAP4-compatible apps in Android, Angstrom, Chrome, MeeGo and Ubuntu.
Video demo after the cut
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Few will argue that gesture controls on touchscreen devices is a bad thing. The only real downside to being able to swipe your finger across the screen of your MP3 player or your computer is that you end up with fingerprints and smears all over the screen. A company called Extreme Reality (XTR) has teamed up with Texas instruments to develop a next generation gesture control technology that is optimized for OMAP that doesn’t require the user to actually touch the screen.
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