We are entering into a new era, ladies and gentlemen. Well, “era” may not be the right word considering how quickly things change in these here mobile parts, but the fact remains the same: Quad-core mobile processors are here. And the ones that aren’t quite here yet are coming.
While many of our brilliantly geeky readers need no tutorial on the advantages of four processing cores, some of you may be thinking “Uh… OK, why do I care?” So I took it upon myself to place a few calls and get some of the big guns — Qualcomm, Nvidia, and TI — to explain why exactly you should care (or shouldn’t), and what kind of differences technology like this can make in the average user’s daily phone usage. → Read More
The battle between Texas Instruments and calculator hobbyists rages on, as TI seeks to keep its OS locked away from third-party developers. After the calculator hacking community discovered the independent tool Ndless (which allows for third-party development on TI’s platform), TI has spent the last year updating its OS to prevent downgrading to version 1.1, which is necessary to run Ndless. Version 2.1’s anti-downgrade protection was hacked last summer, and just a month ago, calculator hobbyists broke into OS 3.0.1. → Read More
Over at aBlogtoRead.com you can enter to win a Bathys Hawaii Benthic Ti watch. The diver style watch is a cool classic, with a retrograde day of the week indicator and big date. It has a Swiss movement and comes in a 48mm wide titanium case. There is no trick to entering and the giveaway runs until the end of the month. Click the “Read More” link to visit the entry page. → Read More
It wasn’t too long ago that hackers were successful loading custom firmware onto Texas Instruments calculators. This hasn’t been sitting well with TI, who have been sending legal threats to the plucky hackers. I’m not surprised, are you? → Read More
It’s been a very long time since I last used a Texas Instruments graphing calculator. I thought it was cool to write programs on the TI-80 I used in college. It seems that in the time since, things have gotten a little more complex: TI calculators now have cryptographically signed operating systems! Ostensibly this is to prevent clever hackers from loading their own operating systems onto the calculators (the horror!). Leave it to the hackers, though, to find a way to do what they want! → Read More
Wanna know something about laptops? No matter how small and portable you make ‘em, the AC adapter’s always going to be the size of a ham sandwich. Well that gravy train is about to crash into a brick wall of ingenuity thanks to Texas Instruments. The company has apparently developed a 90-watt AC adapter that measures 85x60x11 millimeters or, as the above photo shows, about the size of a wallet. → Read More
What’d I tell you last night? Didn’t I say TI’s DLP pico projectors would make a splash at CES this year? → Read More
SIM2 makes some mighty fine projectors and the only deterrent the Italian company may have from grabbing a huge market share is the price of said projectors. But today SIM2 announced the Domino D60 DLP front projection system that outputs 1080p video for $4,995. With a contrast ratio greater than 10,000:1, a plethora of inputs/outputs (dual HDMI, component, RGB-HD), as well as a powered vertical shift lens and 50-200-inch screen, you can’t really go wrong. I need to start saving my pennies. → Read More
Your next projector (or first projector?) may very well not have a lamp in it. Texas Instruments recently showed off some prototype devices using what it’s calling “PhlatLight” LED lighting. Cool, it’s like the “F” in FlatLight is actually “Ph” instead. That’s both radical and extreme at the same time. Anyhoo, TI claims that this new technology will eliminate the need to replace projector bulbs and filters, so that oughta save everyone a nice chunk o’ change. Units containing the new awesomely-named PhlatLight technology will be shipping “in late 2008,” according to the company. Texas Instruments also announced “the world’s first DLP 3-D front projector product,” which has a 120Hz refresh rate and 1,400 x 1,050 resolution. It’ll be used “for the demanding scientific visualisation, simulation and entertainment environments.” Finally, those Pico-Projectors we’ve all been waiting for will finally be made into actual products. They’ll start to show up in Europe and Asia later this year, with the rest of the world to get them early next year. → Read More
Here’s something that excites me greatly. It’s a prototype of a tiny projector that fits inside of a cell phone. Jim Hallas of Texas Instruments’ DLP group gave me a brief overview of the chipset and here’s some brief information along with my thoughts; The chipset is ready to go. It’s up to device manufacturers to integrate it into their products. I’d think that we’d see these things popping up pretty soon. The chipset is designed to be very low power but TI can’t comment on how much extra power you’d need because it’ll vary depending on which types of devices are used. In a well lit room, the projected images and videos can be blown up to about the size of an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. In a darkened room, it can do between 30 and 60 inches. The implications of this type of chipset extend far beyond cell phones. I lustfully imagine a “headless” laptop that projects the screen onto your wall. Very nice. → Read More
[photopress:ti_pico_dlp.jpg,full,center] Remember those microprojector chips TI was working on? The ones that could potentially implant tiny DLP picoprojectors into mobile phones? They’ve entered production and should “hit the street”, as we bloggers say, sometime in the middle of this year. That means they might — just might — make it into production models in time for the Xmas season. You know you want to project video from your iPhone. I know I do. Texas Instruments’ Pico chipsets go into production – projection coming to mobile phones in 2008? [Tech Digest] → Read More
[photopress:dlp_ti_mobile_projector_1.jpg,full,center] Texas Instruments is getting hardcore about supporting next-gen cellphone video, unveiling a duo of chips that could allow cellphones to record and project high-def content. Microprojecting is the next logical step for portable digital video. Sure, the Nokia 810s and iPod Touches of the world look great, but they’re personal players. Microprojecting would all a small group of people to watch simultaneously, and, in theory, it would make for smaller devices. TI’s second chip allows for HD recording from cellphone cameras. Typically, the best cellphone cams produce VGA or worse video. But with faster chips inside, users of the future will be able to capture and play back HD video on the go, making the “phone” part of a cellphone more and more irrelevant. TI unveils chips for cell projector, HD recording [Reuters] → Read More
I’m glad Nokia made the Vertu line. They deserve to have a little fun. But a $7,000 cellphone is just about the upper limit of what I can accept in the luxury market. Dear Oil-rich Sultans and Oligarchs: send me your old Nokia and I’ll dip it in golden paint and send it back to you for $3,500. You’ll get the same effect while spending half of what you’d normally spend on a similar Vertu and you’ll have some cash left over to rent midgets or whatever it is you people do with your wealth. It’s either that or we eat you, rich people, decide. Vertu Ascent Ti hitting stores next month [LuxuryLaunches] → Read More
I’ll admit, when I first saw the TI Navigator, I couldn’t help but think why someone would need wireless connectivity on a calculator. According to Texas Instruments, the TI Navigator is more of a device for the classroom than the individual student. It allows the teacher or professor to view the student’s calculator in real-time so they can see where people are getting stuck on math problems. Teachers can also use it to have students hand in problems and show their work via beaming it through their TI calculator. Just make sure you don’t start playing an insanely crude version of Super Mario Brothers with a TI Navigator hooked up, or your teacher is gonna see that you can’t make it past World 1-3. Better work on those hot TI-84+ skills. TI Navigator calculator is wireless [Ubergizmo] → Read More
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