Core

Rumor
July 27, 2011
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Mass production of Intel ultrabooks slated for September

By on July 27, 2011 at 3:00 AM.

Mass production of Intel ultrabooks slated for September

Acer, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo and HP will begin to mass produce Intel-powered ultrabooks in September, on schedule for a second-half launch, DigiTimes reported on Tuesday. ASUS’ UX21 ultrabook will be the first such device to market, despite reports to the contrary that HP would release its device before ASUS. Instead, HP’s ultrabook may not launch until the fourth quarter or early next year, a far cry from the original rumored August launch date. Models from Acer and Dell could be late to the market, too, due to slower than expected panel production. Intel introduced its ultrabook roadmap in May and hopes the devices, which will be powered by the company’s latest Core processors and 22nm Ivy Bridge processor, will dominate 40% of the consumer market by the end of 2012. More →

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Hardware
December 8, 2010
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Texas Instrument announces dual-core OMAP4440 processor; 1.5GHz, 1080p stereoscopic 3D

By on December 8, 2010 at 10:38 AM.

Texas Instrument announces dual-core OMAP4440 processor; 1.5GHz, 1080p stereoscopic 3D

Today, Texas Instrument announced a new, ARM-based, dual-core processor that has a lust-worthy specification sheet. The OMAP4440 processor, which is based on the Cortex-A9 MPCore, will have both cores clocked at 1.5GHz. The chip will provide a “1.25x increase in graphics performance, a 30 percent decrease in webpage load time, and a 2x increase in 1080p video playback performance.” The press release goes on to note that the new chip will support 1080p stereoscopic 3D, 1080p video conferencing, gesture recognition, two 12 megapixel cameras working in parallel, and a plethora of video codecs and formats.

The OMAP 4 platform is a highly-optimized system-on-chip (SOC) leveraging two ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore general-purpose processors, reaching speeds of 1.5 GHz per core, complemented by two ARM Cortex-M3 cores to power-efficiently offload time-critical and control tasks. High-performance multimedia capabilities are provided by programmable cores including a POWERVR™ 3D graphics engine, TI IVA 3 for high-definition/multi-standard video, TI image signal processor (ISP) for high-quality/high-megapixels imaging, TI low-power audio processor and TI digital signal processor (DSP) based on the TI C64x DSP for natural user interface and signal processing innovations optimized for mobile applications.

Texas Instrument says that the OMAP4440 will be shipped in sample quantities to manufacturers in the first half of 2011 with full production kicking off during the second half of the year. More →

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mobile
November 23, 2010
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Motorola’s first Tegra 2 handset photographed?

By on November 23, 2010 at 2:58 PM.

Motorola’s first Tegra 2 handset photographed?

The above photograph has been making its way around the technology blogosphere for the past several hours. What we are — allegedly — looking at is an image of Motorola’s first Tegra 2 handset, the Olympus. Purportedly, the device is a dual-core, Android set with a screen size of at least 4-inches; it is also rumored to find a home on either AT&T or Verizon Wireless. If you squint, it looks like the device pictured also contains a front facing camera, which we’re sure will become standard fare on all future high-end smartphones in 2011. There isn’t really much more to be deduced from the image and, unfortunately, the anonymous hand pictured was pretty stingy with specific details. Let us know what you think. More →

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General
September 7, 2010
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Samsung's Cortex A9 processor: 1 GHz, dual-core, 1080p capabilities

By on September 7, 2010 at 8:21 AM.

Samsung's Cortex A9 processor: 1 GHz, dual-core, 1080p capabilities

Samsung sure has been making a lot of mobile news lately. With their Galaxy Tab release, screen factory announcement, and various Galaxy S handset releases, Sammy is making their fair share of headlines. Today, Samsung announced that they are testing the Cortex A9 Orion processor for netbooks, tablets, and smartphones. The new processor is a 1 GHz, dual-core chip that supports 1080p video recording and playback at 30 frames per second. Samsung also boasts that the new silicon will have five times the graphics performance of the current A8 Hummingbird series of processors. The Orion will be available to “select customers” sometime in the fourth quarter of 2010 and will be put into mass production in the first half of 2011. Dual-core smartphones. Drool. More →

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General
August 4, 2010
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Rumor: T-Mobile's 'Project Emerald' is dual-core, Android powered, HTC Glacier

By on August 4, 2010 at 7:26 AM.

Rumor: T-Mobile's 'Project Emerald' is dual-core, Android powered, HTC Glacier

The folks over at alienbabeltech.com have been doing some serious sleuthing. While looking at the GLBenchmark 1.1 database, they discovered a phone with very impressive stats that until now was virtually unknown, the HTC Glacier. The phone’s benchmarks are quite impressive, nearly 3x faster than the 1 GHz EVO 4G in some instances, which leads the author to believe that this phone has been manufactured with some sort of dual-core processor (perhaps the Qualcomm chip that was announced back on June 1st). The blog assumes that the device will be carried by vendor T-Mobile as the device was tested by a person with the username “mbibik”; a user who has only tested T-Mobile devices in the past and who has a LinkedIn page that says he works for T-Mobile (he has since made his employment details private). Other things discovered in the documentation include: the device will run the Android OS, have OpenGL 1.1, and have a screen resolution of 800 x 480. After compiling all of this, the blog hypothesizes that the rumored “Project Emerald” from T-Mobile is actually the dual-core, Android powered, HTC Glacier. What do you think, believable? Hit up the read link for the full article. More →

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Exclusive
February 10, 2009
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Verizon revamping prepaid pricing beginning February 11

By on February 10, 2009 at 10:34 AM.

Verizon revamping prepaid pricing beginning February 11

Verizon Wireless customers who opt for prepaid service as opposed to standard postpaid plans are in for a surprise tomorrow — or at least they were. One of our trusty ninjas just came through with a slide deck detailing a revamped prepaid offering that will go into effect starting tomorrow, February 11. As with all change there’s good news and bad news, but certainly not all prepaid users will be impacted in a bad way. So let’s get to it… First and foremost, new plans and new pricing:

  • Prepaid Unlimited Talk (replaces Power): Access goes up $1 to $3.99 per day, unlimited peak / unlimited in-calling / unlimited night & weekend, SMS goes from 2¢ to 1¢ each
  • Prepaid Plus (same name): Access stays at $1.99 per day, 5¢ peak / unlimited in-calling / unlimited night & weekend, SMS stays at 5¢ each
  • Prepaid Core (same name): Access stays at $0.99 per day, 10¢ peak / unlimited in-calling / 10¢ night & weekend, SMS stays at 10¢ each
  • Prepaid Basic (new option): No access fee, all calls are 25¢ per minute, SMS are 20¢ each

Beyond the plans there are a whole bunch of other tweaks such as access to the newly-acquired Alltel coverage areas and new monthly messaging bundles – prepaid customers can now purchase unlimited mobile to mobile messages and 250 additional messages for $10 per month or straight up unlimited messaging for $20 per month. We could go on for a while, but why don’t you just hit the jump where we’ve dropped in all the important slides from the deck.

More →

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