Inside and outside of the DIT cell phone (via high-low tech)
Every so often MIT opens its doors to the general public and holds a sort of ‘open house,’ where people can view the latest works and lectures (312+ of them in 5 hours!) from every department. One of the more notable works of technology from the prestigious school centered around a do-it-yourself cellphone from the "high-low tech" group at the MIT Media Lab.
Designed by PhD student David Mellis, the DIY prototype phone features a custom circuit-board with 1.8 inch (160 X 128) TFT color display from Adafruit Industries. For cellular connectivity, the phone uses a SM5100B GSM module made by Sparkfun and can accept any SIM card from any GSM provider. The components are housed inside a laser-cut plywood and veneer case with flexors that enable the buttons to be pressed. Another notable feature on the phone is the giant coaxial antenna that’s needed to make and receive calls. This reminds me of the old box-like cell phones from the 80’s. For power, the phone relies on an every-day 9 volt battery over rechargeable lithium-ion batteries found in current smartphones. Sure the phone doesn’t have the app-packed super-powers of those found in current cellphones it’s still appealing for those who love DIY projects and costs around $150 US for the parts to build one.
The National Security Agency (NSA) is currently carrying out a project called “Fishbowl” that is intended to encrypt telephone communications with high levels of security within networks using commercially available cell phones, cell phone components and the open source Android software. They are working with the Department of Defense, and other national agencies, to coordinate this security effort. They are also encouraging private companies to follow suit with their own encrypted Android-based networks by making some specifications of this type of network available to the public.
On February 1st 2012, the NSA released a document called the Draft of Mobility Capability Package that summarizes the 5 major components of the this secure “Fishbowl” network: Mobile Enterprise Infrastructure, Interoperability, Secure Voice, OS/Apps and Mobile Device and Mobile Transport (Carrier).
The NSA created 100 phones from commercially available parts that are compatible with the network and capable of highly secure communication. All of the sensitive telephone conversations are handled by the NSA’s own VoIP server which runs them through an IPsec VPN with real-time transport protocol for encrypting the voices involved in every phone call. If a private company whishes to create their own secure network, they will be required to obtain they own server.
A priority of the NSA is to obtain complete interoperability so that their Information Assurance Directorate is not compromised and available across all government networks.
Taking decent indoor pictures with a smartphone is almost impossible in low light conditions. Think about it; most of the time you have to take the same picture at least twice. The first one was blurry, and the second pic turns out dark because the flash on your phone (if it even has one) isn’t bright enough in low-light conditions. However, there is hope on the horizon with the help of STMicroelectronics new chip dubbed ‘STCF04’. The chip is actually a combination camera flash with a torch controller that raises the LED/flash module up to an astounding 40 watts of illumination ( 320mA current). This is in comparison to today’s standard of just 4 watts that ST states, “produces the same amount of light as a security flood lamp”.
The STCF04 uses a high-current MOSFET switch over a lower rated switch (currently housed in today’s generation of smartphones) along with a supercapacitor and high-power white LED’s that ST says can also be used as emergency flash lighting. With the help of the torch controller, users will be able to select 12 levels of brightness along with 8 levels for the flash controller to fine tune the users lighting needs. The chip is already being sampled by companies such as Murata which produce high-quality supercapacitors and OSRAM, makers of LED’s and solid-state lighting. Full production of the SCT04 will begin this quarter of 2012 and will sell for $2.00(US) for companies that buy a 1000 or more. With the STCF04 in the TFBGA package ( 3 x 3 mm) means that we can expect to see the STC04 in the next generation of smartphones. We will no longer have to explain the darkness of our pictures as ‘mood lighting.'
Pico Projectors are a useful feature to add to a cell-phone. Take any random bus stop work wide. You will see a large percentage of people straining their necks. The bent posture follows even in the elevator, living room, or one's desk at work. The Pico projector based smart phones have a dual purpose; by helping straighten up your posture while allowing you to view the phone beyond the small restricted screen. But that is the end of its capabilities.
A team of researchers has taken the projector concept to the next level, interactive virtual projection (VP). Dominikus Baur, Sebastian Boring, and Steve Feiner (University of Munich, Calgary, and U of Columbia New York, respectively) set out to make content manipulation more useful. Their system used a centralized server that handle all data from the "projecting" cell phone and a monitor acting as a "projection screen." While projecting an image, the phone's camera takes screen shots while the server compares them to the monitor's images in real time. The screen synchronizing even works with video. This creates a virtual 1 to 1 movement between devices. The server can also handle multiple phones on the same monitor. Orientation of the phone, tilt back and forth, which causes distortion on regular projectors, is ignored for VP. (The system used unmodified iPhones and a Windows i7 based server.)
Concepture drawing (via Dominikus Baur)
Connectivity between the VP and applications, such as navigation, is the near-future goal of the technology. Grab a section of a map on the phone allow for quick portability of the navigation information. As the team said, " Give it a few more years (and a friendly industry consortium and this could become reality."
Before many of us experienced augmented reality (AR) on our phone, manufacturers are poised to release the next-gen. Chip designer ARM is the main driving force behind the latest in AR. Their goal is to use all the available processing power our devices can muster. The new augmented reality can scan 3D environments using a phone's camera. In real-time, it can produce an image that is animated or even descriptive.
For instance, you are looking for a new office for your business. Walking around outside using this feature you may be able to see possible buildings that have offices available for rent or possibly get a preview of what the architectural office layout looks like. This would all be made possible by the camera on your phone scanning the environment and producing a desired picture of the environment with descriptive information. Additionally, it may be used for recreational purposes, such as augmented reality games or educational purposes such as providing historic feedback on relevant locations.
However, this technology is still in its infancy as developers are still testing and designing the applications. Furthermore, the battery is drained rather quickly using all the processing power to scan the 3D environment. The latest mobile gadget, theSony's PS Vita, has a feature similar to the proposed AR, However, it only projects a sprite or animated picture onto the environment, where as this feature would use the environment and display a new augmented reality picture of your surroundings. AR is in need of an improvement, and ARM is setting the groundwork.
(Left) ARM AR goals (Right) Value Chain, how content is produced (via ARM)
ABI Research claims that the AR market size of 2010 was near $21 million USD, and will be at $3 billion by 2016. With that in mind, ARM releases the Mali GPU series. The latest being the Mali-T658. Aside from handling the every growing video and gaming demands of users, the Mali series attempts to handle battery consumption on a next-gen level as well. Placing AR elements in a spacial sense for real time video can be a serious burden on the system. The GPU will take the burden off of the main CPU, accomplish the tasks better, at the same time saving power. ARM's CPU and Mali ecosystem has the ability to handle what is to come, and they hope developers will hop on board.
ARM partner Metaio claims that the next-gen AR will be in every Smartphone by 2014, as well as grow to be a $715 million USD industry. Of course, Metaio is trying to push their AR developing environment "junai Creator" along with the statement. Metaio released the following video explaining the new type of AR they are pushing at the insideAR conference.
Metaio provides the middleware and presentation of content, now they need developers. See more about ARM in the element14 ARM Developers Group.
A new attachment to enhance your smart phone gaming is on the way from the company MetalCompass. The Xappr is a gun shaped attachment that communicates with your phone. It works by placing your smart phone in flexible clamps. Xappr interacts with your phone to give users an enhanced game experience. If the user pivots, the game screen tilts along with them, creating a more realistic feeling.
This expands gaming capabilities for smart phones and improves on the much lacking shooter games currently available. Augmented reality games can be created using the camera on your phone and create fully interactive environments. One such possibility would be a fully functional laser tag game with friends. The Xapper is due out around June and will cost a paltry $30 USD.
There will be two options when released in spring 2012, the Xappr and Micro-Xappr. Both will be compatible with iOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices. Their flagship release title will be an augmented reality deathmatch game called "ATK."
When the Xappr is released, the first use it will have for me will be in a tear down and analysis. What is under the hood is still wrapped in secrecy.
Katrin Wolf, lead designer behind Pinch-pad (via Technical University of Berlin)
The sales of smart phones and tablet computers have been growing exponentially in the past couple years, maximizing our transfer of information from one to another. For many users, the touch screen on these devices gives them a very natural feel to skimming through the internet or traversing their music library. Very soon these smart phones and tablets may be taking advantage of a skill many of us never even knew we had.
Proprioception is a human’s ability to sense where our body parts are located even when we cannot see them. Using this natural skill and a couple of iPads back to back researchers at Germany's Technical University of Berlin, led by Katrin Wolf, have created what they named the pinch-pad. This device reads our fingers and thumbs movements while the device is held and can be used for additional controls. For example, a circular motion with our thumb above our index finger can be used to control display size or perhaps volume. A sweeping gesture towards our pinky finger may be used for action controls in a game. How the new innovative idea may be used is not yet known, however, more natural controls and quicker accessibility are on their way.
The technology will be presented at a TEI conference in Canada in about a month. Although, there have been a few ideas similar to this, mainly the PS Vita with a rear-facing touchpad on the backside of the device, due in late February, none have taken advantage of the idea of proprioception. The natural movements and easier accessibility will soon add to the speed of our information transfer and data processing.
Imagination dazels people when it is applied to technology (this is why there is a CES). A company of the same name, Imagination, has amazed many with their new PoweVR line of GPU’s. Currently, mobile devices' raw graphics power being dominated by giants such as AMD, Intel and NVIDIA. However, they may have to shave of a percent or two of dominance with Imagination’s G6200 and G6400 GPU IP cores. The company says that these cores are scalable for both the mobile market as well as high-end gaming machines. What sets these GPU’s apart from the others is use of what’s called ‘Compute Clusters’.
These are a cluster of programmable arrays that spread the ‘work load’ giving them efficiency in both power and bandwidth. Think of it like a LAN party on a chip, or like Stanford University’s Folding At Home project, where a ton of computers work on one project without any one PC handling the entire load. Imagination’s G6200 is equipped with two clusters while the G6400 takes advantage of four giving those 100GFLOPS and in some cases in the TFLOP range! All the series 6 in Imagination’s PowerVR line feature OpenGL 3.x/4.x, OpenCL and DirectX 10 (in some versions DirectX 11.1 is implemented). Imagination states that these new chips are 20 times more powerful than the current generation out today while being 5 times more efficient.
It was just a few days after New Years 2012 that we heard the unlimited wireless service provider, Metro PCS, and a group of 12 major broadcast groups that make up the Mobile Content Venture (MCV) had partnered up to plan the release of some product in 2012. At CES, this product came in the form of Dyle Mobil TV service.
The Dyle Mobil TV app will be included on an up and coming Samsung phone, and will provide access to live local television broadcast streaming right to the portable device. The phone showcased at CES sported a retractable antenna but this will not be necessary when the product is out because Samsung and Metro PCS are planning to have the first chipset-embedded smart phone.
Dyle said they plan to have the TV app running in the beta stage in the next few months. They also announced it would be available free of charge but depending on how partners and networks agree on that, it might cost something in the future.
Apart from smart phones, Dyle is working alongside Belkin to come up with a small dongle that can be attached to enjoy the app on an iPad a possibly the full spectrum of iOS devices. This dongle will use the user headphones as the antenna so embedded antennae will not necessary. Currently they are only working within iOS, but there are plans to expand to the Android market soon.
As the app, telephone and dongle are still in the development stage, there is no word on release date or price.
(Side note: Many Japanese phone from a decade ago had television built in. An amalgamation of all past and present tech will certainly happen.)
We’ve all been here before; you’re casually driving your van down a rural Texas road and all of a sudden the van breaks down. What then seems like a family of nice locals coming to your aid turns out to be chainsaw-wielding cannibals looking to turn you into their next meal. If we only had an emergency cellphone that could hold a charge for more than a decade we could have avoided being dinner and called AAA instead.
However unlikely that scenario is (it could still happen), the emergency phone is, in fact, a reality with XPAL Power’s new ‘SmartOne’ cellphone. The phone is designed to hold a charge for 15 years with one AA battery giving the user around 10 hours of talk time. 15 years? Yes or the equivalent of the battery’s shelf-life meaning if you never use the phone, it will stay charged for that long. It can do this due to the phones incredibly simplistic design and power-efficient battery. The SmartOne phone has no screen and uses two LED’s that let you know that the phone is “in-use” and its “signal strength.” That’s pretty much all it has. However the phone is well-built and can stand a sizable degree of punishment making it suitable for inclusion in your vehicles emergency kit. Using the SmartOne is surprisingly easy; insert your SIM card, install any AA battery and call. That’s it. The phone is available now for $50 US and comes with one AA Energizer Ultimate Lithium L91 battery which can be found here: http://www.shop.power-skin.com/spareone-phone
No word on price plans for service. However, in the USA, dialing 911 must be accessable through every and all cellular phones free of charge. (I recently dialed 911 with a HandSpring Visor Prism with a Cellular Springboard, it worked.) Paired with 911, the SmartOne it the necessary backup phone for everyone.
All-in-one micro-chips are the unseen heroes in today’s electronics, and the announcement of Atmel’s new maXTouch S Series Touchscreen controllers are sure to go unsung into widespread adoption. The first, of three, is designated as mXT224S and has a 224-node controller that can handle cameras, smartphones and other devices that incorporates a touchscreen size of up to 4.3 inches. The next in line is the mXT336S which features 336-node controller for screens measuring up to 5.5 inches on the diagonal. This chip could be used to power screens for smaller tablets or bigger phones and next-gen hand-held gaming consoles. The third chip in this roundup is the mXT1664S which is for screens measuring up to an astounding 17 inches, full-size tablets.
The chips also passed Microsoft’s strict guidelines for integration with Windows 8 making them more appealing to companies who are designing new products centralized around the upcoming OS. All chips feature Atmel’s SlimSensor Technology which helps to control ‘display noise’ associated with high-res or HD displays through a combination of hardware and firmware. Another feature all the S series chips use is Atmel’s ‘maXStylus’ which enables multi-touch pressure sensing for both fingers and stylus writing implements. The maXTouch S Series Touchscreen controllers are now available for sampling for mobile developers with full production chips coming in Q1 of this year.
With all the companies showcasing their new displays at this year’s CES (countless televisions), there are equal amounts of products that can take advantage of them. Take the Samsung’s new line of Blu-ray players. The BD-ES6000 model is what Samsung say’s is ‘slightly larger-than-a-disc’ (meaning very compact) and is capable of 3D playback. The player also has the new ‘Disc to Digital’ feature which lets you store your DVD’s on the cloud-based Ultraviolet server that lets you access your movies anywhere, even on mobile devices. Samsung’s BD-E6500 model comes equipped with two HDMI ports that allow you to hook-up more than one device (game console/cable box) to the player with only one connection to your TV which helps cut down on the cable clutter found behind our displays. Both models include Wi-Fi and will feature (a soon to be released) an app that will let you use your smartphone as a remote control.
Don’t eat this egg, unless you want a panoramic view of your insides. Canadian company Tamaggo (consumer technology) has demonstrated their new 360-degree imager that is capable of, you guessed it, capturing a complete horizontal and vertical 360 panoramic image. The imager uses a ‘Immervision Enables’ panomorph 14 megapixel lens and software to achieve the 360-degree pictures and video. Housed alongside the lenses is an intuitive orientation sensor that stabilizes and identifies the direction on both the X and Y axis. The panoramic egg can produce both images as well as live video and can be connected to most mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets with the help of a Mini USB port and Bluetooth for a wireless connection. The Tamaggo 360-degree imager will be available in Q2 of this year at a cost of about $199 USD.
Fresh from the showroom at CES 2012, we are getting a sneak peek at the new addition to the Polaroid camera family. The new SC1630 Smart Camera looks as sleek as most touch phones and while it does not have calling capabilities, though it does have a lot in common with Android phones. At its core is the Android OS giving full access to the over 400,000 apps in the Market.
The SC1630 uses a 16-megapixel CCD sensor to make sure all shots go crystal clear; zero blurriness is their key pushing byline. A 3x zoom, 36-108mm lens allows the user to get detail up close and the pictures are displayed on a 3.2’’ display. Aperture specifications were not made available.
This new Polaroid allows users to upload their pictures quickly and easily to their favorite social networks through built in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, MicroSD, and acellular data plan is available at an extra cost.
At just five ounces, this small package is full of capabilities and features. Face and location detection, 18 scene modes, onboard editing software and many more included features give you the ability to shot, edit, organize and upload on the go. Not to mention its Android compatibility makes available all sorts of photo apps already found on the Android Market. (Though, I feel effects should be added later. Never overwrite the original.)
No price has been announced yet and Polaroid is only saying this camera will be available sometime this year but count on it being on shelves by the 2012 holiday season.
Showing off new technology at CES is one thing, but it’s another to cover it as a reporter. Mobile cameras, phones and tablets can eat through batteries like Cookie Monster at an all-you-can-eat Chips Ahoy banquet. I have several spare batteries, but still wind up scrambling for a re-charge.
RFA Brands ‘myCharge’ wants to help ease this problem and get us recharged and running again with their announced line of chargers. The company offers on-the-go chargers for just about every mainstream device including phones and tablets from HTC, Apple, LG and Samsung. myCharge even features the Portable Power Bank 6000 (for $99 US) that can recharge these devices 4 times over!The PPB 6000 uses a 6000mAh (6 Amps for 1 hour) Lithium Polymer battery to recharge most devices and can provide the user with 24 extra hours of talk time (using 3G). That also translates into 34 extra hours of Wi-Fi and video taking along with an extra 202 hours of music. It can also just about fully recharge a 2nd gen iPad, which is a power hog. The Portable Power Bank comes with built in Micro and Mini USB connectors along with an included USB to Micro USB cable. No more waiting in line for a wall outlet!
