Most of you are aware of Google’s Android-based Nexus S smart phone. With sleek looks and feature-packed to the core, it is arguably, the best and one of the most expensive smart phones in the market.
However, having said that, it is really appreciable that it can still be hacked to run other Operating Systems.
Meego, is a Linux based framework for mobile handsets and internet tablets, headed by Intel and Nokia. It is currently still in the development phase, but you can be sure that there will be a lot of devices running Meego in the coming years.
Meego is one of the OSes ported on the Nexus S. This is a huge step for Meego developers as it gives them a validation of their framework on a mainstream device like the Nexus S. The image shown below shows a raw, un-formatted version of Meego dumped on the Nexus S.
Ubuntu , is arguably, the most popular Linux distribution today. Ubuntu’s decision of embracing Unity, a desktop environment designed with a view of running it on Internet tablet devices, certainly seems to have paid off. What you are seeing in the image below is a Nexus S running Ubuntu’s Unity desktop.
One thing to remember is that these “ports” or hacks are still very developmental in nature. Hope this encourages the developers to port these other open source frameworks on other Android devices as well.
CES 2011 is long over and it was raining Tablets this year.
However, there were a couple of tablets which stood out from the rest (that is not to say that the others weren’t good enough).
One of them and by far the most popular amongst all the Tablet demos was Motorola’s Xoom Tablet with. The Motorola Xoom was crowned the best tablet at CES 2011.
Some of the awesome hardware specs of the Xoom are :
10 inch LCD touch screen with 1280×800 resolution
Nvidia Tegra 2, 1GHZ dual-core processor : This is a first in tablet history
Support for 3G, LTE and 802.11n Wifi
720p capture and 1080p playback
5 MP rear-facing and 2 MP front-facing camera
To complement this, it will host the Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS which is specifically designed for tablets with features like :
Google Maps 5.0 with 3D view
Flash 10.1
New browser with tabbed-browsing
New look and feel for applications like YouTube
Scrollable Widgets on the home screens
So without further ado, here’s the video of the Motorola Xoom with the Android 3.0 ( Honeycomb ) OS :
There were a lot of cool, crazy, futuristic gadgets at CED 2011 this year. You decide which category this one belongs to.
BodyMedia, a company in the Health sector focusing on Body mentoring and health solutions, introduced it’s latest high-tech gadget : The BodyMedia FIT Armband BW.
The BodyMedia FIT Armband BW is a body monitor device that you need to strap-on on your upper arm. It is specifically designed to be worn perpetually, be it working out, going to work or even while sleeping. It monitors and measures your bodies activity levels, skin temperatures , conductivity and other health-related measures.
The beauty of this product is that it connects with an iPhone or Android application viz Bluetooth t help you keep track of all these measurements. The application , Activity Manager, displays your activities throughout the day and with inputs like your calorie intakes and sleep activities it helps you realize your fitness goals.
The device with a built in 3-axis accelerometer, is prices between $229 to $249 , which might be a little steep depending upon … how high your fitness goal and body fat is.
However, the fact that the device is already in back-ordered state (sold-out ?) makes one think of not only the number of desperate, unfit people out there but also the credibility of this device’s usage.
If you are a fitness freak and had $250 to blow, would you invest in BodyMedia’s FIT Armband BW ?
As of this writing there are 5 internet tablets from the ArchOS stable , running Android.
The internet tablets named ArchOS28 , ArchOS32, ArchOS 43, ArchOS 70 and the ArchOS101 are named after the size of their screens.
So ArchOS28 is a device with a 2.8 inch screen and the ArchOS32 has a 3.2 inch screen. As such, these are more of media players running Android, than “tablets”. However, the ArchOS70 with it’s 7 inch screen and the venerable ArchOS 101 with 10.1 inch screen are full-fledged tablets with webcams, HDMI output, 1080p full-HD output et al. And in between these two form factors is the ArchOS43 with a screen size of 4.3 inches (that’s slightly larger than an iPhone).
The devices support 3D graphics acceleration, high resolution video and Wifi connectivity.
The ArchOS70 even has a 250GB disk space, OpenGL support and Flash 10 support.
And not to be left behind, the ArchOS101, over and above all the features of the smaller tablets, supports Wifi 802.11n (a much faster Wifi mode), has an accelerometer and for the geeks, even switch over to OpenEmbedded’s Angstrom Distribution.
With a comparatively cheap price point , (the entire range lies from less than 100 Euros for the ArchOS28 to less than 300 Euros for the ArchOS101)
For those of you who are quite unable to make your mind on which Smartphone to go for, here’s a detailed chart listing the features and cost for the top Smartphones currently in the market.
It is interesting to see that three out of these four smartphones are based on Open Source technologies.
However, the iPhone has about 100K, that’s right… a Hundred thousand applications (on last count) available for download at the app store. This phenomenon is again a testimony to the superlative marketing skills by Apple. Although the number of developers for the iPhone must surely be far less compared to all the open source developers out there, the Applications for the iPhone beat those for the open source Android platform in an almost 10:1 ratio.
What I would like to see is, with Giants like Google and Nokia backing open source mobile platforms like Android and Maemo respectively, will the iPhone be able to sustain it’s top spot in the Smartphone market ?
