They start off saying that they promised low prices and they delivered! Follow my story here on that. (link expired)
Then we go into what else is new…
EdenLet’s look at what Android 2.3 and 3.0 (Honeycomb) would be bringing to the table:
- Better OpenGL ES, OpenSL ES support.
- SIP/VOIP
- Multi-touch Keyboard
- Better Copy, paste features
- Kernel Upgraded to 2.6.35
- Better View Support (Honeycomb) and Clean User Interface; Better Memory Management.
Really cool, coming from an android perspective on things, this is great. Really cool. So much to offer and The Eden platform will take it all and make it into great software.
Rohan says also says that there will be a global price, one price for everywhere, 349 here is 349 in Japan, just currency of course, won’t be 349 Yen I am sure.
Onto the device itself, ADAM gets – I Will Comment In Red
- OpenGL works better on NVidia’s Tegra than on anything else in this space – because of their expertise on graphics, their implementation on the built-in GPU of the Tegra 250 SoC is exhaustive and highly accelerated. OpenSL support is something which will come as an update soon (we love Open SL because we love graphical visualizations for audio, which need really fast Fast Fourier Transforms)
- SIP/VOIP. Implementations of SIP and VOIP already exist. With the newly announced official support, programmers can port much more confidently to the Adam. [Nice For Video/Chat]
- Multi-touch keyboard. When we were working on Office Application, we realised how important “Ctrl+z” was, and then decided to design a multi-touch keyboard. Well it seems it is also coming on Android 2.3 and 3.0. Adam comes 2 special keyboard designs, both of which are multi-touch enabled. In our usability studies it was clear that touch keyboard will have annoyingly high error rates. One of the observations made during those tests was, that if you get rid of the lines or space which exist between the keys, users become much more focused on their typing, experienced users had far better word counts and error rates reduced drastically. The other version is a split keyboard which you can use when you are holding your device with both your hands. We have added quick access keys and all your keys can have 2 functions (hence the multi-touch requirement – take a look at the keyboard in the end) [Android Getting This too]
- Better Copy, cut and paste. Now, this already existed since long in the Office environment, and the native implementation is also there. [Also coming on android Phones]
- Android 2.3 comes with Kernel version 2.6.35. The latest which NVidia Tegra works with is 2.6.36! http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=kernel/tegra.git;a=summary (Please see the details on this new kernel online, and you’d know the reason behind that smiley) [New kernel, Amazing, What updates will it bring]
- Honeycomb: In layman’s term “Support of Views within views”. That’s what we have done in the Eden. The Panel system allows for 100s of panel instances, which are views within views (in further simpler words independent windows on-screen). When you’ll install any native application, you will get the feel and UI of the new Android (we are extremely happy that there is far less gloss and web 2.0 designs now). Memory management is something we have spoken about earlier, and was expected in 3.0 as well.
The way we look at Eden, its closer to the Honeycomb than to the Gingerbread (it was intention as well and we did everything in our capacity to know more about Honeycomb, so when it’s launched there should be no surprises. In fact you might remember one of our post from China where I hinted the same! ), and we were really happy to do those changes for you in time. So when you look at Adam in your hands you will not feel under-powered by a Mobile OS.
So Eden is more of a Honeycomb type software update, although it does have Gingerbread type stuff in it. That is awesome, both blended into one. I am amped for this.
Rohan also talks about some features and things they are adding, he is quoted below – Again comments in red
NFC: Well, Adam doesn’t come with NFC sensor. It is little hard as of now to define the use cases for a 10 inch screen device in current implementations. But that doesnt mean we are not working on it! Eve will have NFC and will use it for more than we know its used for! [No NFC, not a huge deal, but EVE? Who is SHE?]
Digitizer: I couldn’t resist commenting back with a simple smiley when someone asked this questions in the comments. I was waiting for this day! Adam comes with an Open Source implementation which converts it into a digitizer. You don’t even need wires. You can use your Adam as a BIG touch screen for all your PCs, so you can draw, paint, sketch, click, select and do all you want! (Did I tell you since it has a screen as well, you can use it as your keyboard also). (Please note, technically Adam’s way of using the screen as touch input for your computers does not make it fall into traditional digitizer domain, but it’s rather an intelligent implementation and hack in to the system) [Really cool, Makes it an art tablet from what I have heard]
The Mystery Feature. It will still be a mystery! One of my wish was to design a product where every fortnight you can receive a new update which isn’t just a security bug fix, but a discovery of something which already existed, sort of un-locking a part. This is my first attempt on the same lines! [Still a mystery it seems]
All credit goes to the Notion Ink blog