Texas Instruments has just made its OMAP 4 system-on-chip official, and garnished the announcement with the first development platform for it, aggressively titled Blaze. We already caught a glimpse of it in
prototype form earlier this month, and the thing is quite a whopper -- you can see it on video after the break and we doubt you'll accuse TI of placing form before function with this one. The company's focus will be on promoting innovative new modes of interaction, with touchless gesturing (or "in the air" gesture recognition) figuring strongly in its vision of the future. Looking at the SOC diagram (available after the break), you'll find that its grunt will be provided by the same ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore class of CPU that
powers the iPad, though TI claims it will be the
only mobile platform capable of outputting stereoscopic 720p video at 30fps per channel. Perhaps its uniqueness will come from the fact that nobody else cares for the overkill that is 3D-HD on a mobile phone, whether it requires glasses or not. It'll still be fascinating to see if anybody picks up the chunky Blaze idea and tries to produce a viable mobile device out of it -- we
could be convinced we need multiple displays while on the move, we're just not particularly hot on the 90s style bezel overflow.
posted February 15th 2010 8:09AM
3D HD on a mobile phone may not be all that .. but imagine this on VR goggles.
@Axitaxiwaxi Are you kidding, if everyone has a 3D equipped phone which has a 3D capable camera, we can hold our phones up and see the world in 3D!
that's what phones lack: video out (not pico projectors)...
@KM
Yep, and video out is supported by just about every SoC in existance, it's just disabled by the OEM. It sucks. I don't understand why they would rather cram a projector inside of a phone instead of giving HD output which the chips are perfectly capable of doing.
@KM
quite a few nokia n series have tv out - n95, n96, n97 and n900 to name a few; shame it's only composite video :-(
motoroi/scholes I think will have some micro HDMI connector which I think is the way forward... unless phone has USB host mode so you can use a displaylink adaptor.
Your fingers would have to unbelievably small to use that keyboard...
@JustThatNerdyGuy Watch the video, the device in question may be larger than you believe it to be.
@JustThatNerdyGuy looks to be about 1.5 to 2x my Blackberry Curve's Keyboard. The whole thing is friggin' Huge, but it is a DEVELOPMENT platform after all. Dev Platforms should be friggin Huge and have everything under the sun to allow companies to develop what they want on it and then put it in there own pretty little packages for retail.
Lets play a drinking game...you have to take a shot for every comment that will not read the title or the article and decide to comment on how the device is ugly as if it's available to the public..
Prepare to get drunk.
@Tes
The features and functions of the phone are awesome, in air gestures very interesting.
But wow the device is like that girl who really awesome, but you dont want to be seen in public with her.
@Maj
Yeah...that's mostly because it's for developers to figure out a use for all the bells and whistles and manufactures to shoehorn it all into a decent package. It's not for us.
Wow that thing is huge! It certainly has connectivity well covered. I'd prefer something that is mostly screen real estate with a touch keyboard. Did I mention that thing is huge?;)
I am excited about this.
@(Unverified)
so... much... want!
ds emulation is the only thing id use both screens for....
TI-83+ or bust.
Nothing beats Mirage + Phoenix.
@Alex
Damn you! You beat me to the TI-83 reference. :-)
It looks neat, but where are the graphing/statistic functions!? It doesn't even have Sin, Cos, or Tan. Instant fail! TI-83 Silver edition kills this thing with its dual-speed 6/15 MHz processor, and 96kb of ram! :-)
@darkazure Why would you need Sin, Cos and Tan functions when the bulk of devs pre-calculate them and store them in an array
@Menthos
WOOOOOOSH
"full size" SD media....SDXC?
Figures Engadget couldn't go the entire article without mentioning the god damn bezel.
You and your god damn bezels, why are you so obsessed with bezels?
@Prevacator It's not just Engadget, it's everyone. Bezel complaints are among the dumbest comments on device design ever.
Am i right in thinking that thing has 2 screens?!
why?!
other than that it looks amazing :P
That's hot
surely being engadget there should be outrage over speculation as to capacitive or resistive touch screen?
Forget WinMo 7, this is the real iPhone killer!
Am I the only one chuckling when Robert whipped that brick out?