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iPhone SE Goes With Qualcomm Inside
April 8, 2016 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Contrary to our previous reports we got a tip that iPhone SE will continue using Qualcomm modems and not change to Intel.
The tear downs will start happening soon but our sources very close to the matter said with high certainly that all iPhone SE come with an updated Qualcomm modem.
Intel is still in the run but apparently Apple still felt confident to continue using Qualcomm even for this generation of the phone. A few analysts did suggested that iPhone 7 and beyond might get Intel LTE hardware, but not with iPhone SE.
Back in December, when we originally wrote that Intel got the iPhone SE deal, our sources did suggest that Apple can still change its mind if it doesn’t feel that Intel modem is ready. This might be the case, but in the future, we are quite confident that Apple will get a second LTE supplier at some point, just as it did with different manufacturing fabs.
Having two suppliers will drive the cost down, and for Apple every dollar or cent they save of components means millions more in its pocket. Apple claims “LTE up to 50 percent faster than iPhone 5s,” but it doesn’t give a real number. The iPhone 5S uses MDM9615 that was first introduced in 2011. This modem is at the technology range of Cat 4, X5 modem that Qualcomm ships in its entry level SoCs or as an external component.
We will have to wait for the first teardowns to appear as it is not easy to get to “ LTE up to 50 percent faster than iPhone 5s.” You would need a modem that is capable of 225 Mbps and the next of potential candidates for the iPhone SE is the MDM 20nm 9×35. Qualcomm calls this modem X7 these days, it use to call it Gobi back in late 2014 and this is a Cat 6, 300 Mbit per second download and 50 Mbit per second upload capable chip.
The fact that Apple continues the exclusive deal with Qualcomm is bad news for Intel, but we are sure that the team blue will keep working on getting inside of iPhone.
Courtesy-Fud
ARM Goes 4K With Mali
ARM has announced a new mobile graphics chip, the Mali-DP650 which it said was designed to handle 4K content a device’s screen and on an external display.
The new Mali GPU can push enough pixels on the local display it is more likely that it is interested in using the technology for streaming.
Many smartphones can record 4K video and this means that smartphones could be a home to high resolution content which can be streamed to a large, high resolution screen.
It looks like Mali DP650can juggle the device’s native resolution and the external display’s own resolution and the variable refresh rates. At least that is what ARM says it can do.
The GPU is naturally able to handle different resolutions but it is optimized for a “2.5K”, which means WQXGA (2560×1600) on tablets and WQHD (2560×1440) on smartphones, but also Full HD (1920×1080) for slightly lower end devices.
Mark Dickinson, general manager, media processing group, ARM said: “The Mali-DP650 display processor will enable mobile screens with multiple composition layers, for graphics and video, at Full HD (1920×1080 pixels) resolutions and beyond while maintaining excellent picture quality and extending battery life,”
“Smartphones and tablets are increasingly becoming content passports, allowing people to securely download content once and carry it to view on whichever screen is most suitable. The ability to stream the best quality content from a mobile device to any screen is an important capability ARM Mali display technology delivers.”
ARM did not say when the Mali-DP650 will be in the shops or which chips will be the first to incorporate its split-display mode feature.
Courtesy-Fud
Intel Selling 3D Smartphone
January 18, 2016 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Intel has created a new smartphone with a 3D RealSense camera that can recognize objects and detect motion and gestures, much like a Kinect camera.
The smartphone is being made available as a reference device for anyone interested in discovering new uses for 3D cameras in handsets. The 3D camera is a smaller and more advanced version of the RealSense cameras in PCs and tablets.
For $399, users will get an Android smartphone with a 6-inch screen that can display images at a 2560 x 1440-pixel resolution. The RealSense ZR300 depth camera, which is placed at the edge of the phone, can capture 10 million points per second. The phone also has a 2-megapixel front camera and 8-megapixel rear camera.
The phone isn’t for daily use, but more for capturing 3D images, taking cool selfies and experimenting with the RealSense camera. It has only 3G connectivity, so aside from the camera features it isn’t very useful beyond making basic phone calls. It has an Intel Atom x7-Z8700 processor, which is in Microsoft’s Surface 3, so don’t expect long battery life. It has 64GB of storage, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and an HDMI port.
Users can reserve the smartphone; Intel did not provide a shipping date. It will only ship to U.S. customers.
Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/mobile-category/intels-3d-smartphone-to-go-on-sale-for-399.html
ARM’s Mali GPU Going To Wearables
ARM has announced the Mali-470 GPU targeted at Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable devices.
The new Mali-470 GPU has half the power consumption and two times the energy efficiency of the Mali-400, and is designed for next-generation wearables and IoT devices such as industrial control panels and healthcare monitors that rely on low-cost and low-power chips.
The Mali-470 supports OpenGL ES 2.0, used by Android and Android Wear, hinting that the GPU could also find its way into low-cost smartphones. If not, ARM promises that the chip will bring smartphone-quality visuals to wearable and IoT devices, supporting screen resolutions of up to 640×640 on single-core devices, and higher resolutions for multi-core configurations.
ARM envisions the new GPU paired with its efficient Cortex-A7 or A53 CPU designs for a low-power SoC.
“ARM scrutinises every milliwatt across the entire SoC to enable OEMs to optimize energy efficiency and open up new opportunities,” said Mark Dickinson, vice president and general manager of ARM’s multimedia processing group.
“Tuning efficiency is particularly relevant for devices requiring sophisticated graphics on a low power budget such as wearables, entry-level smartphones and IoT devices. The Mali-470 has been designed to meet this demand by enabling a highly capable user interface while being extremely energy efficient.”
ARM expects the first SoCs using the GPU be ready by the end of 2016, meaning that the chip will start showing up in devices the following year.
The launch of the Mali-470 GPU comes just hours after ARM announced plans to pick up the product portfolio and other business assets of Carbon Design Systems, a supplier of cycle-accurate virtual prototyping solutions.
The deal will see Carbon’s staff transfer to ARM, where the chip firm will make use of the Massachusetts-based outfit’s expertise in virtual prototypes. This will enable ARM to iron out any bugs and make improvements to chips before they move to foundries for production.
ARM also said that Carbon will help the firm enhance its capability in SoC architectural exploration, system analysis and software bring-up.
Courtesy-TheInq
ARM Sets New mBed Standard
ARM has bought in a new assurance standard to work with embedded devices.
The ARM mbed Enabled program aims to increase the deployment rate of Internet of Things (IoT) products and supporting technologies by giving partners the ability to label them as interoperable mbed-based devices.
Arm said that the accreditation program will cover solutions entering a broad range of developer markets; from silicon and modules to OEM products and innovative cloud services. Accreditation will be free of charge.
ARM Zach Shelby, vice president of IoT business marketing, said that ARM mbed Enabled accreditation will assure the diverse IoT ecosystem that they are using technologies backed up by an expert community of innovators,.
“This will also instill confidence in end markets where interoperability, trust and security standardisation is required to unlock commercial potential.”
Since the ARM mbed IoT Device Platform was announced in October 2014, the mbed Partner ecosystem has continued to grow from the initial 24 launch partners. Today, 8 new partners are being announced including Advantech, Athos, Captiva, Espotel, Maxim Integrated, MegaChips, SmeshLink, and Tieto.
Bluetooth 4.1 Goes IPV6
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has announced Bluetooth 4.1, the first version of Bluetooth to lay the foundations for IPV6 capability.
The first hints of what the Bluetooth SIG had planned for this new version were revealed to The INQUIRER in October during our exclusive interview with Steve Hegenderfer at Appsworld. There, he revealed his aspirations for the Bluetooth protocol to become integral to the Internet of Things.
At the front end of Bluetooth 4.1, the biggest change for users is that the retry duration for lost devices has been increased to a full three minutes, so if you wander off with your wireless headphones still on, there’s more of a chance of being able to seamlessly carry on listening upon your return.
Behind the scenes, devices fitted with Bluetooth 4.1 will be able to act as both hub and end point. The advantage of this is that multiple devices can share information between them without going via the host device, so your smartwatch can talk to your heart monitor and send the combined data in a single transmission to your smartphone.
This sort of “pooling” of devices represents an “extranet of things”, and the technology can therefore be applied to a wider area in forming the “Internet of Things” too.
The other major additions are better isolation techniques to ensure that Bluetooth, which broadcasts on an unregulated band, doesn’t interfere either with itself or with signals from other protocols broadcasting at similar frequencies, including WiFi.
The Bluetooth protocol has retained complete backwards compatibility, so a new Bluetooth 4.1 enabled device will work seamlessly with a Bluetooth 1.0 dongle bought in a pound shop.
In addition, Bluetooth 4.0 devices can be Bluetooth 4.1 enabled through patches, so we should see some Bluetooth 4.1 enabled hardware arrive early in 2014.
Samsung’s Eight-core Chip Goes Hacking
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A Samsung eight-core chip used in some Galaxy S4 mobile devices is now available for hackers to play with on a developer board from South Korea-based Hardkernel.
Hardkernel’s Odroid XU board has incorporated Samsung’s eight-core Exynos 5 Octa 5410 chip, which is based on ARM’s latest processor designs. Samsung recently announced a new eight-core chip, the Exynos 5 Octa 5420, which packs faster graphics and application processing than the 5410. The 5420 has not yet been shipped yet, however.
The Odroid board is priced at $149 through Aug. 31, after which it will be offered for $169. Samsung for many months has said that a board with an eight-core chip would be released, and has shown prototype developer boards at conferences.
Odroid-XU will provide developers an opportunity to write programs tuned for Samsung’s octa-core chip, which has been a source of controversy. Analysts have said the eight-core design is overkill for small devices like smartphones and tablets, which need long battery life.
The eight-core chip design also takes up a lot of space, which prevented Samsung from putting LTE radios inside some Galaxy S4 models. Qualcomm, which hesitantly moved from the dual core to the quad-core design on its Snapdragon chips, on Friday criticized eight-core chips, calling the idea “dumb.”
Despite the criticism, the board will give developers a first true glimpse of, and an opportunity to write and test applications for, ARM’s Big.Little design. The design combines high-power cores for demanding applications with low-power cores for mundane tasks like texting and calling.
Samsung’s iteration of Big.Little in the Exynos 5 Octa 5410 chip combines four processors based on ARM’s latest Cortex-A15 processor design, which incorporates four low-power Cortex-A7 CPUs. The Cortex-A15 is ARM’s latest processor design and succeeds the previous Cortex-A9 core, which was used in popular smartphones like Apple’s iPhone and the Galaxy S3. Samsung said the eight-core chip provides a balance of power and performance, with the high-power cores kicking in only when necessary.
The board has an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX544MP3 graphics processor, 2GB of low-power DDR3 DRAM, two USB 3.0 ports and four USB 2.0 ports. Other features include Wi-Fi, Ethernet and optional Bluetooth. Google’s Android 4.2 operating system is preloaded, and support for other Linux distributions like Ubuntu is expected soon. The board has already been benchmarked on Ubuntu 13.04.
3G And 4G Modems Pose Security Threats
Researchers Nikita Tarakanov and Oleg Kupreev analyzed the security of 3G/4G USB modems obtained from Russian operators for the past several months. Their findings were presented Thursday at the Black Hat Europe 2013 security conference in Amsterdam.
Most 3G/4G modems used in Russia, Europe, and probably elsewhere in the world, are made by Chinese hardware manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, and are branded with the mobile operators’ logos and trademarks, Tarakanov said. Because of this, even if the research was done primarily on Huawei modems from Russian operators, the results should be relevant in other parts of the world as well, he said.
Tarakanov said that they weren’t able to test baseband attacks against the Qualcomm chips found inside the modems because it’s illegal in Russia to operate your own GSM base station if you’re not an intelligence agency or a telecom operator. “We’ll probably have to move to another country for a few months to do it,” he said.
There’s still a lot to investigate in terms of the hardware’s security. For example, the SoC (system on a chip) used in many modems has Bluetooth capability that is disabled from the firmware, but it might be possible to enable it, the researcher said.
For now, the researchers tested the software preloaded on the modems and found multiple ways to attack it or to use it in attacks.
For one, it’s easy to make an image of the USB modem’s file system, modify it and write it on the modem again. There’s a tool available from Huawei to do modem backup and restore, but there are also free tools that support modems from other manufacturers, Tarakanov said.
Malware running on the computer could detect the model and version of the active 3G modem and could write an image with malicious customizations to it using such tools. That modem would then compromise any computer it’s used on.
The researchers also found a possible mass attack vector. Once installed on a computer, the modem application — at least the one from Huawei — checks periodically for updates from a single server, Tarakanov said. Software branded for a specific operator searchers for updates in a server directory specific to that operator.
An attacker who manages to compromise this update server, can launch mass attacks against users from many operators, Tarakanov said. Huawei 3G modems from several different Russian operators used the same server, but there might be other update servers for other countries, he said.
Research in this area is just at the beginning and there’s more to investigate, Tarakanov said. Someone has to do it because many new laptops come with 3G/4G modems directly built in and people should know if they’re a security threat.
10-Inch Tablets For $299?
June 5, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Taiwan’s Micro-Star International unveiled two new Android-based tablets at Computex this week that appear much sleeker than the WindPad tablets it has manufactured in the past.
The WindPad Enjoy 10 and Enjoy 7, which are being shown in a location further away from the show floor, will start shipping to retailers at the end of July, priced at $299 for the 10-inch version and $199 for the 7-inch version, said MSI product manager Rory Chen.
The tablets on show here were running the 2.3 Gingerbread version of Android. MSI hopes to start using the 3.0 Honeycomb Android OS on the tablets later this year, but it’s unlikely to be available with the first devices that go on sale.
The Enjoy 10 isn’t as thin and light as the iPad 2, and a spec sheet shows the new tablets have no 3G option — only Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It’s also behind the iPad in other areas such as memory and storage. But the Enjoy 10′s $299 price tag makes it considerably cheaper than Apple’s tablet, which starts at $499 for the Wi-Fi-only model.
Playbook To Focus On Corporate Space
March 18, 2011 by admin
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With the Playbook supposedly launching in April, it is expected that RIM will a lot of their marketing budget on the corporate space. This is the best strategy for RIM since the company already has a strong presence in the enterprise space with companies that already use Blackberry services as part of their electronic communication infrastructure.
RIM is expected to leverage is clients existing investment in BES Blackberry Enterprise Server). RIM’s strategy gives Playbook a small advantage; since BES customers will be able to utilize functions like provisioning, configuring, applying corporate policies, application deployment/management and auditing PlayBook devices using the BES infrastructure that they already have in place. Read More….