New (old) mobile carrier...

Just recently switched my mobile phone carrier b/c my (entire) family got connected to the same carrier-network. Better coverage, higher bandwidth and last but not least, family-network offers and included minutes/texts.

My previous carrier (NetCom AS) was better at customer relations and support, but they've gone downhill after they were bought up by another major scandinavian service provider (Telia AB, Sweden).

NetCom touted for a long time about their 4G-network coverage, and for some time (while they had few customers connected to their 3G- / 4G-nets) they delivered quite good HSDPA-connectivity. But after a lot of people migrated from various carriers over to NetCom the last few years, their remote end-networks (small towns) suffered as the base-stations at selected areas couldn't handle the traffic-surge very well (few, if any, of the base-stations had optical WAN-uplinks).

This had a negative effect on my SSH-connections from my smart-phone / tablet, and used to cause a lot of spontaneous traffic-drops and disconnects.

To my surprise (as Telenor is the biggest ISP in Norway, with a grand total of approx. 140 million mobile customers worldwide through various daughter-companies in Russia, parts of Europe and India), I got a minimum of 12-14Mbps via HSDPA (3G), whereas NetCom could only offer (at max) 2-3Mbps.

To my delight, I haven't experienced a single SSH-related disconnect on any of my 3G-devices :)

Telenor FTW!

AMD + SoC + ARM

The previous post was about AMDs current bugdet-line mobile processors. Before that, I posted (in Norwegian) about their plans for future mobile solutions.

They are basing their new budget-line / mobile processors on the "Jaguar" microarchitecture (the pre-decessing C- and E-series are "Brazos" based), and will sport 64-bit dual- or quad-core ("Bobcat" x86-cores) with integrated Radeon 8000 graphics (80-core GPU), significantly outperforming any "Atom"-chips with integrated graphics from Intel.

The new "AMD Embedded G-series System-on-Chip" sets will be made in two versions (or architectures): x86 and ARM. Determining which architecture a chip is based on, is as easy as looking at the CPU-logo; the ARM-version will have an "A" in the lower right corner of the logo and the x86-version will have an "X" (as shown in the picture below).

AMDs "Embedded G-series SoC" seems to be direct competition against Intels "Atom" budget-line. CPU-vendor competitiveness is, as we all know (at least the one's paying attention), a good thing :-P

It will be exciting to see how the combination ARM+Radeon will operate and behave performance-wise :-) since I've been an avid embedded (ARM ) fan for years, it'll also be quite interesting to see AMD play with both CISC- and RISC-based designs in the same series.

AMD press-release:
http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-embedded-gseries-2013apr23.aspx

AMD, SoC og ARM.

AMDs nye satsing på bærbare enheter heter "AMD Embedded G-series System-on-Chip" (kort: SoC), basert på AMDs nye Jaguar mikroarkitektur.

AMDs pressemelding:
http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-embedded-gseries-2013apr23.aspx

Det er nok den nye strømgjerrige serien som skal konkurrere direkte med Intels "Atom"-serie (benyttet i NAS-bokser, nettbrett, mini-laptoper, osv.).

Brikkene skal lages i to arkitekturer: ARM og x86. Om brikken er ARM- eller x86-basert ses nede i høyre hjørne av logoen hvor det blir trykt en "A" for ARM, og en "X" for x86 (bildet ovenfor viser en x86-basert brikke). De vil også komme med to eller fire kjerner som vil kjøre på en klokkefrekvens mellom 1 til 2 GHz. Grafikkmessig stiller AMD seg bedre enn Intel. Disse brikkene har integrert GPU basert på Radeon 8000 som i følge AMD gir opptil 5 ganger bedre grafikkytelse enn tilsvarende "Atom"-prosessorer fra Intel.

Personlig liker jeg veldig at AMD leker med å blande CISC / RISC i en brikke-serie, og det vil bli voldsomt spennende å se hvordan brikke-kombinasjonen ARM / Radeon vil oppføre seg i bruk.

Hardware.no-artikkel:
http://www.hardware.no/artikler/dette-er-amds-nye-atom-konkurrent/132867

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

The next-gen developer-phone from Google/Samsung.

It has a sturdy build with high-quality plastic, and the battery-cover is cleverly fitted into the phone-chassis.

The OS (currently updated Android v4.0.2 "ICS") differs quite a lot from v2.x (which I used before). All of the UI-interaction is now done completely via touch / multi-touch (which Google had envisioned when they started development on Android).

I especially love how you can drag-n-drop shortcuts on top of each other in the new launcher to form popup folders. One of several new, interesting and innovative UI functions. Another is the ability to take a screenshot of the device-display (pressing Power+Volume down buttons simultaneously).

I've been using Android full-time since the early v1.x-days, and personally I love the new UI guidelines, drop-down menus and generally, Android v4.x all-in-all :)

Google has done a magnificent good job in rolling v2.x (mobile-version) and v3.x (tablet-version) into one monolithic source-code tree, capable of making both binary-versions.

Keep up the good job guys! :D

Go-go Andy, GO! ;D

"Andy" has definitely had an international impact on the mobile device market the past twelve months. Google cites statistics gathered worldwide, saying they're activating around 160.000 handsets each day - with a little 'math-magic' this equates to 58 million sold Android handset devices. To compare, 4 months ago these numbers were 20.000 handsets a day - 22 million a year.

All of this is only statistics, however, keep in mind that the Android mobile platform ranked on the top-5 smartphone sales list in only a couple of years - not a bad feat at all considering Microsoft and RIM has dominated this market for quite a few years already, not to mention the arrival of Apple's (dreaded?) iPhone.

Cudos to Google and the Google Teams for bringing us an open-source based solution that rubs shoulders with the biggest, baddest boys in the biz'.

I know I'm more than satisfied with my HTC Desire Android-phone :P