Thursday, June 6, 2013

AMD aiming to produce chips for Android and Chrome tablets

AMD aiming to produce chips for Android and Chrome tabletsAdvanced Micro Devices (AMD) seems to have opened its eyes to the wide range of possibilities offered by operating systems other than Windows 8 as it announced that it will be designing chips based on the x86 and ARM architecture to support Android and Chrome on tablets. As per last year AMD had said that it would only be focusing on developing tablet chips that would support Windows 8.
Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of global business units at AMD said at the Computex trade show that though the company was very committed to Windows 8 with it being a great OS but the market of Android and Chrome based tablets was also quite lucrative.
Windows 8 has not been that much successful in its tablets operations as of yet and a few Windows based tablet using AMD chips Z-10 and Z-60 did not sale very well.
With Intel also eying the tablets market with its Silvermont based Bay Trail SoC chips, AMD has done well to make its mark in the market.
AMD will be featuring its “Temash” chips A4 and A6 in the latest Windows based tablets in second half of this year. Temash chips consume only 3.9 watts, offer a battery time of up to 8 hours and are expected to rival Intel’s Bay Trail tablet chips.

Samsung Unveils Galaxy S4 Active; Water Proof S4 Variant

clip image001 thumb Samsung Unveils Galaxy S4 Active; Water Proof S4 Variant
Putting weight to all rounds of rumors, Samsung has now announced Galaxy S4 Active that is almost identical to Galaxy S4, but with added attribute of being a water proof device.
This time, following the footsteps of Sony XPERIA, Samsung made this device IP67 certified (dust- and water-proof), enabling users to submerge it for up to 30 minutes at a depth of one meter.
Measuring in at 9.1mm thick and 151g in weight, Galaxy S4 active features 5-inch full HD (1920×1080 pixels resolution) TFT LCD screen that has a pixel density of 443 PPI 1080p display.
Running on Android 4.2.2, the latest iteration of the operating system, Samsung embedded this device with 1.9GHz quad-core processor with 16GB internal storage that is expandable by another 64GB via microSD card slot inside a fully waterproof case.
On camera front, it sports an 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a 2-megapixel front facing camera. However, the volume key located on the side of the phone can be used as a camera key, enabling users to simply and swiftly open the camera application to capture photo and video right away. Moreover, the camera alters into a powerful LED flash light to support dim-light and night-time activities with a long press of the volume key.
Another good aspect for camera lovers is that it also embraced with Aqua Mode feature for taking snaps underwater. With a water-resistant earphone jack, one can use headphones even throughout wet conditions.
Connectivity options include, Wi-Fi direct, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and LTE as well as it also sports an Infrared blaster along with battery capacity of 2600mAh. This device has an accelerometer, proximity sensor, a gyro sensor, digital compass, barometer, gesture sensor, finger hovering sensor and a light sensor.
Other software tweaks include Group Play to share music, photos, documents and games together along with Trip Advisor-powered S Travel, S Translator etc.
However, this device will be fully showcased at Samsung’s Premiere event in London on June 20. Coming to its availability, it has been predicting that the GALAXY S4 Active will start selling sometime this summer initially in U.S. and Sweden and then will move to other regions.
This device will be presented in three different color options, including Urban Grey, Dive Blue and Orange Flare. However, price tag has been keeping wrapped.
Here are the key specs for Galaxy S4 Active:
  • 5-inch full HD (1920×1080 pixels resolution) TFT LCD screen
  • 1.9GHz quad-core processor
  • 2GB RAM
  • 16GB internal storage expandable up to 64GB via microSD card
  • 8-megapixel rear camera
  • 2-megapixel front facing camera
  • Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
  • 2600mAh battery