OMAP3430
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Motorola's MT716 OPhone launched in China, looks just like a Droid with Cliq's keyboard
If only this was a hoax. Yes, that's some bitter talk alright, because this Motorola MT716 from China Mobile is almost the perfect Droid that we once had on our dusty wish list: a similar slider form factor but with a hard-cap keyboard, as opposed to one with spongy mashers. In fact, eagle-eyed readers might have already spotted that this is the exact same keyboard as featured on the Cliq. Compared to its distant relative, other differences on this OPhone include an 8 megapixel camera (with dual-LED flash and 720p camcorder feature), an extra VGA front-facing camera, TD-SCDMA radio, WAPI connectivity (WiFi-compatible), and CMMB TV streaming; otherwise, you'll find the same weedy 600MHz TI OMAP3430 chip, 480 x 854 LCD, AGPS and Bluetooth 2.1 inside. Now if you'll excuse us -- we have a petition to write up.
Palm Pre hits 1.2GHz courtesy of SR71 Blackbird kernel, not for the faint-hearted
Whoa! After breaking the 1GHz barrier just three weeks ago, dauntless modder unixpsycho is back with yet another insane hack for the aging Palm Pre. What's new? Why, this "SR71 Blackbird" custom kernel, which simply pushes the poor little OMAP3430 processor up to 1.2GHz -- that's twice the original clock speed, just so you know. As glamorous as it sounds, potential users are triple-warned about this mod potentially failing the webOS device in one way or another, despite the built-in speed-scaling mechanism to cap the device at 55 degrees Celsius (131 in Fahrenheit). And needless to say, don't expect your stock battery to hold up for more than a few blinks once implemented. Good luck, pilgrims.
Always Innovating's Touch Book in production, finally pictured in non-render form
Always Innovating has stopped innovating for a moment and started production. Its transformer of a netbook/tablet called the Touch Book is now rolling off manufacturing lines on track for shipments starting next month. Anyone who has pre-ordered already will be happy to know that the prices we spied in April are still in effect, meaning $299 for the tablet itself, while the clip-on keyboard comes in at $99 extra. For that price you get an 8.9-inch 1024 x 600 touchscreen, a USB 802.11 b/g/n adapter, Bluetooth, a TI OMAP3430 OMAP3530 processor, and 512MB of memory split evenly between RAM and NAND, plus a further 8GB of storage on an SD card. Not exactly a screamer, but performance running Linux (the only OS available) should be reasonably snappy, and we're curious to see what enterprising coders will do with its internal accelerometer. It does look a little like a knob-free Etch A Sketch...Update: As Kaa pointed out in the comments, we were off by 100 on the CPU revision. It's an OMAP3530, not 3430.[Thanks, Jeff]
Symbian Foundation selects TI's Zoom 2 as first reference design
We already know from our dealings at MWC that the Zoom 2 is a beast to be reckoned with, and that probably explains (at least in part) the Symbian Foundation's decision to deploy it as its first official reference design. Clearly, you're not going to see any retail devices looking much like this bad boy -- but for developers, the important thing here is that the Zoom 2 has pretty much all the gadgetry that you'd expect to see in a high-end model: WVGA display, capacitive touchscreen, HDMI out, WiFi, Bluetooth, FM transmitter, 3G radio, 8 megapixel cam, full QWERTY keyboard, and a top-of-the-line OMAP3430 core. Sure, it runs well over a grand for the kit -- but really, is that much more than an unlocked superphone costs these days? Anyhow, the hardware's said to be perfect both for those working on the operating system itself and on apps that'll use it, so save up that dough, would-be Idou devs.
Texas Instruments and Wind River do up Android right
We just got a great look at the potential of Android on Texas Instruments' new Zoom OMAP34x-II Mobile Development Platform, a sort of sexy cousin to Compulab's exeda. The OMAP3430-powered unit is being built by Logic and is meant for software developers to work on the OMAP3 chipset, but it's actually a pretty neat "device" in its own right, with a 4.1-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen LCD, HDMI out, all sorts of connectivity, 16GB of storage, an SD card slot, large QWERTY keypad and an 8 megapixel camera. There's also a debug board with Ethernet, USB plugs and some other technical stuff. For $1150 developers can pick up a WiFi-only unit, and $1399 buys you a 3G unit -- consumers can buy 'em too, and we can imagine certain enthusiasts wouldn't mind the cost for what basically amounts to the ultimate Android device. The unit runs other flavors of Linux, but we're really in it for the Android, especially thanks to that screen. Wind River has been doing development on Android for a while, contributing to the original source code as part of the OHA, and one of its developers even ported Android to OpenMoko. They've got a refined Android interface running on the Zoom, which includes a tabbed application browser, fancier widgets and a spruced up unlock screen. They wouldn't consider what they're doing a skin or a port, but it's exactly the type of stuff that device manufacturers will be looking for to differentiate their Android-powered handset. Video of all the magic is after the break.%Gallery-45166%
