In this review, we looked at two types of business-class tablets, traditional tablets used by the sales force or other front-office workers, and ruggedized devices that can be used on the factory floor or other back-office environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Intel’s Cherry Trail Atom chips are almost here, and if you’re in the market for an Intel-based tablet the future looks bright.We briefly got our hands on what could be the first Cherry Trail tablet shown publicly—an 8-inch prototype from Intel running Android with a variety of apps and games installed. The graphics in particular stood out.The game “Real Racing 3” took some time to load, but when it started the display kept pace easily with the fast-moving visuals. A previous Bay Trail chip in an Asus Transformer Book T100 struggled with demanding games, showing how far the Atom X5 and X7 chips, as they’re known, have come.The tablet wasn’t connected to the Internet, so we didn’t get a taste of the Wi-Fi speed or how fast cloud applications will load. But other local apps fired up quickly. The tablet had USB 3.0 and HDMI ports and a audio jack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
VMware has jumped into the hot NFV market with a platform that lets service providers run their network functions as virtualized applications from different vendors.
The company launched VMware vCloud for NFV on Monday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where telecommunications and IT vendors and their carrier customers are all promoting NFV (network functions virtualization) as the future of mobile networks.
NFV takes back-end functions involved in managing services and subscribers out of dedicated appliances and turns them into virtualized applications that can run on generic hardware. This makes carriers faster and leaner, allowing them to roll out new services more quickly and be more flexible in how they run their networks. It’s also designed to help support the new demands that come with the Internet of Things.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Brocade has announced plans to acquire Connectem, a privately-held company whose virtualization software maps mobile workloads to clouds.Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD:Why SDN All-Stars are heading to Brocade+Connectem’s LTE virtual evolved packet core (vEPC) software for x86 servers is intended to eliminate the constraints of physical equipment while working with traditional node-based EPC architectures, Brocade says.Combined with Brocade’s other software-defined networking (SDN) and virtualized network functions (NFV) offerings – many from the acquisitions of Vyatta, Vistapointe, and the SteelApp virtual ADC product line from Riverbed -- Connectem’s software enables service providers and enterprises to connect mobile and IoT devices, data centers, and public and private clouds, Brocade says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Finnish company Jolla seems to be making good progress on its first tablet, which runs an improved version of its Sailfish operating system.Since its inception in 2011, Jolla has bet on the Sailfish OS to differentiate itself from the competition on smartphones and now tablets. Android and iOS may dominate the tablet market, but Jolla’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign has showed there is an appetite, albeit not very big, for products running other OSes. The company has so far sold about 10,000 tablets after two rounds on Indiegogo, the second of which is still running.Development on the tablet has come a long way since the product was first announced back in November. Back then it wasn’t much more than a mock-up, but at an event on Monday the company showed the tablet running an upgraded version of Sailfish without many glitches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Finnish company Jolla seems to be making good progress on its first tablet, which runs an improved version of its Sailfish operating system.
Since its inception in 2011, Jolla has bet on the Sailfish OS to differentiate itself from the competition on smartphones and now tablets. Android and iOS may dominate the tablet market, but Jolla’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign has showed there is an appetite, albeit not very big, for products running other OSes. The company has so far sold about 10,000 tablets after two rounds on Indiegogo, the second of which is still running.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Right now you can't buy Windows-based handsets that run on Intel chips, but that will change later this year with the mobile version of Windows 10.
Microsoft's recent Windows Phone OSes worked only with ARM-based processors from Qualcomm. Though Windows 10 will also work on ARM systems, compatibility with Intel x86 chips breaks that exclusivity.
The Windows 10 mobile OS will run on handsets and so-called phablets powered by Intel's upcoming Atom X3 chips, code-named Sofia, announced by the chip maker at the Mobile World Congress trade show.
Devices with the X3 chips will be priced from under US$75 to $249. The X3 chips will also be offered in Android handsets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel hopes to reignite excitement in tablets with its new Atom chips code-named Cherry Trail, which will be in devices in a few months.
The chipmaker wants to eliminate tablet usage hassles like fumbling for wires and typing in passwords with its new Atom X5 and X7 chips, which are being announced at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.
Tablets with Cherry Trail will be priced from US$119 to $499, and have screen sizes from 7 to 10.1 inches. Asus, Lenovo, Acer, Dell, Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard will ship devices with Atom X5 or X7 chips in the first half this year.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Finnish companies Jolla and SSH Communications Security are counting on their European origins to help sell a secure mobile operating system they are co-developing.
The need for more secure mobile communications has been apparent ever since former U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden made his revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) snooping.
SSH is best known for the Secure Shell encrypted communications protocol invented by the company’s founder Tatu Ylönen. Jolla, founded in 2011 by a group of former Nokia employees, sells a smartphone running its open Sailfish OS, and will start shipping its first tablet running the OS next quarter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chip makers NXP Semiconductors Freescale Semiconductor are to merge, creating a US$40 billion company that, they say, leads the market in automotive chips and general-purpose microcontrollers.The combined entity will have revenue of over $10 billion, much of it from microcontrollers and chips for cars, the companies said. As mobile phone and automobile manufacturers join forces to bring more intelligence to vehicles, and as the market for wearables and other small connected devices takes off, these markets are likely to see strong growth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Qualcomm wants to help future mobile devices learn about their users, by putting cognitive computing capabilities into its next mobile microprocessor, the Snapdragon 820.
The chip will provide mobile devices with some brain-like learning capabilities by incorporating features from Qualcomm’s Zeroth platform. Mobile devices built with the Snapdragon 820 will be able to learn about users over time, picking up human activity patterns and anticipating actions.
Putting the machine learning features on the chip, rather than in the cloud, will make mobile devices more personal and more useful than they are today, said Derek Aberle, president of Qualcomm, in a news conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Disaggregation seems to be all the rage in networking these days.HP is the latest to decouple merchant silicon-based hardware from operating system software, following Dell and Juniper. The strategy is to attract web-scale companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon who need the flexibility, choice, rapid deployment/decommissioning and cost efficiency of commodity “white box” switches capable of running a variety of software packages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SanDisk has managed to cram 200GB of memory into a MicroSD card.The new card is a 56 percent jump on the current highest capacity MicroSD, a 128GB card.SanDisk said it managed the higher capacity by using a proprietary design and production process that allows for more bits of memory per chip.It didn’t disclose details of the process, but the capacity of the card gives a clue as to how close it has come to the current limits of manufacturing technology.Memory chips are typically sized in powers of 2, with steps such as 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB. Keeping that patten would result in a 256GB chip, but it appears SanDisk wasn’t able to do that. Instead, it settled for 200MB.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Most Chromebooks today are running Intel processors, but chipmaker Mediatek wants to change that as it sees an opportunity to expand its market beyond Android tablets and smartphones.MediaTek’s new high-performance mobile chip, the Helio X10, already supports Chrome OS, said Kevin Jou, vice president and chief technology officer at MediaTek, in an interview on Sunday ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Besides powering Chromebooks, the chip is also a fit for other thin-and-light laptops and hybrid laptop-tablets, he said.Chromebooks are growing in popularity as a low-cost alternative to Windows PCs for users who do most of their computing while online. Most Chromebook applications require Internet connectivity, though more applications are moving to offline functionality as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Single Board Computers are all the rage these days and for a good reason: The supporting technologies have become so sophisticated and powerful and the prices so low that off-the-shelf SBCs are great for everything from embedded systems in commercial products through supporting hobby projects to being educational tools.
Perhaps the most famous of SBC is the Raspberry PI (I covered the latest version of this board, the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, in a recent article) but that’s not the only contender in the SBC market as new ones are appearing all the time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Mobile World Congress is not the best place to launch a new messaging app: With thousands of tech-savvy visitors in Barcelona, many of them toting multiple connected devices, public wireless and Wi-Fi networks quickly become so saturated that it’s difficult to send a message via Internet, even a brief “Yo,” to a nearby colleague.But that Yo is so last year. The app that could only send one word still sent every message to a central server before bouncing it over to its destination.This year showgoers will be able to try out a new Android app, called YO!, that can send text messages, photos and videos over Wi-Fi to other users nearby without any Internet connection whatsoever, making it a true peer-to-peer messaging app. And as long as they’re prepared to disable certain security settings on their phone, they won’t even need to log on to the Play store to get it: Anyone with YO! installed on their phone can share it with other would-be users over Bluetooth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Mobile World Congress is not the best place to launch a new messaging app: With thousands of tech-savvy visitors in Barcelona, many of them toting multiple connected devices, public wireless and Wi-Fi networks quickly become so saturated that it’s difficult to send a message via Internet, even a brief “Yo,” to a nearby colleague.
But that Yo is so last year. The app that could only send one word still sent every message to a central server before bouncing it over to its destination.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 +
This year showgoers will be able to try out a new Android app, called YO!, that can send text messages, photos and videos over Wi-Fi to other users nearby without any Internet connection whatsoever, making it a true peer-to-peer messaging app. And as long as they’re prepared to disable certain security settings on their phone, they won’t even need to log on to the Play store to get it: Anyone with YO! installed on their phone can share it with other would-be users over Bluetooth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tablets running 64-bit Android haven’t been out for long but prices are already set to fall fast.Lenovo’s 8-inch Tab 2 A8 will ship in June starting at $129, with a 64-bit version of Android 5.0 and a 64-bit quad-core processor from MediaTek. It was one of three tablets Lenovo announced ahead of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.Sixty-four-bit tablets have a few advantages. They can support more memory and therefore make light work of multimedia-intensive apps such as games, as well as apps that use encryption for security. More 64-bit Android apps are in development, so a 64-bit tablet also provides some future-proofing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tablets running 64-bit Android haven’t been out for long but prices are already set to fall fast.
Lenovo’s 8-inch Tab 2 A8 will ship in June starting at $129, with a 64-bit version of Android 5.0 and a 64-bit quad-core processor from MediaTek. It was one of three tablets Lenovo announced ahead of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.
Sixty-four-bit tablets have a few advantages. They can support more memory and therefore make light work of multimedia-intensive apps such as games, as well as apps that use encryption for security. More 64-bit Android apps are in development, so a 64-bit tablet also provides some future-proofing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
MediaTek, the Taiwanese chip maker that has helped create the market for low cost smartphones and tablets, is setting up a $300 million venture fund to expand in new areas.MediaTek Ventures will invest in startups in Asia, North America and Europe, with a focus on areas like the Internet of Things, Internet infrastructure and online services, the company announced Monday.Along with China’s Rockchip, MediaTek produces a lot of the processors that go into the cheap smartphones and tablets that are being adopted quickly in developing markets like India and China. By investing in startups, it hopes to expand more quickly in emerging areas like wearables.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here