Hasta La Gadget!

HP’s mobile computing unit appears to have decided that the term smartbook refers to putting a smartphone’s components inside a netbook’s body — which kind of makes sense — so they’ve built their Airlife 100 atop an Android OS platform, underpinned by a Snapdragon CPU (unconfirmed, but highly likely), a 16GB SSD, 3G and WiFi connectivity, and a 10.1-inch touchscreen display. We really can find no cause for complaint — in fact this is the most excitement a Compaq-branded product has caused us… ever. HP touts a rock solid 12-hour battery life for the Airlife, which stretches out to a mighty 10 days of standby, in case you’re one of those folks who hate to switch their electronics off. Announced in partnership with Telefonica, this smartbook will be offered as a subsidized part of mobile broadband service plans in Europe and Latin America. It may well find itself renamed under the HP Mini branding when it rolls around to the US, but for now head on over to Engadget Spanish for the full PR.

Compaq Airlife 100 puts Android OS, Snapdragon CPU, and an SSD behind 10.1-inch touchscreen originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DARPA job posting talks of developing an autonomous, grenade-wielding robot originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been a long, long while since we’ve seen any life from the OMAP4 labs at Texas Instruments, but with the sudden resurgence of the tablet, now seems just about right for the company to start showcasing the platform’s prowess once more. TI is expected to have a mind-bending showcase at Mobile World Congress later this month, but Slashgear was able to get a sneak peek at what’s to come at the outfit’s Dallas office. The device you’re peering at above definitely piqued our interest, as it’s some sort of twin-screened handheld that can actually support a third independent display courtesy of an integrated pico projector module. We’re told that OMAP4 will bring along dual 1GHz ARM A9 cores, patently ridiculous battery life figures (145 hours of MP3 playback with a 1,000mAh battery) and support for 1080p output via HDMI. Naturally, TI has no intention of ever bringing this piece of hardware to market, but it’d certainly love if some other firm stepped in and did so. Here’s hoping we’re overrun by potential suitors in Barcelona — given that the show kicks off on Valentine’s Day, we’d say the timing would be just about perfect.

TI’s OMAP4 prototype drives three independent displays without breaking a sweat originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For some of us, amid all the hubbub about revolutions and whatnot yesterday, the most significant announcement on hand was Apple’s supposedly custom A4 CPU. Alas, in the cold and brutal light of the morning after, we’re hearing that it is in fact a system-on-a-chip driven by a Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU “identical” to the one found inside NVIDIA’s Tegra 2, while besting the iPhone 3GS significantly with its 1GHz speed and multicore architecture. The A4 is composed of that Cortex barnburner, an integrated memory controller, and the Mali GPU, making it an all ARM affair — though we still don’t know how much Apple and PA Semi did in terms of arranging and integrating those components within the silicon. While still not 100 percent confirmed, it would seem there were no revolutions on the iPad’s processing front — just a rebranded bit of well engineered hardware.

Apple’s A4 chip is ARM Cortex A9 with an ARM Mali GPU? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We suppose industry analysts must be paid on account of just how grand their prognostications are. ABI Research know-it-alls have come out with their own spectacular claim today by asserting their expectation that x86 processors — still dominant the world over — will be swept aside in the rapidly developing “ultra-mobile device” space by the ascension of ARM-based processing architectures. That the Cortex CPUs have grown in popularity (and power) is undeniable, but who realistically expects Intel to sit back and watch all this happen? The x86 patriarch has even gone and created an Atom SDK, so we hardly expect the forecast table above to become reality. We’re just happy to see that ARM’s lower power profile is attracting investment — it’s always good to see a threat to Santa Clara’s chokehold on the CPU market, and AMD’s sleepwalking through the past few months hasn’t helped things. Now if only those Tegra 2 smartbooks were on retail shelves instead of inside prototype shells, we could get started on this supposed revolution.

ARM-based processors to overtake x86 competition in netbooks and MIDs by 2013? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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