Amazon Event Today -- UPDATES

No one knows anything yet, so it's ALL speculation, (just FYI)

Live Blog Link (c|net)

Wired

Engadget

The Verge


Amazon's Alexa device event today: Here's what you need to know from CNBC


Alexa Hunches "Predictive AI.."

.... well, doesn't that sound recently familiar?

Alexa wall clock (shows timers)

Alexa "guard" devices will have "guard mode"Introducing "Echo Guard." Say something like "Alea, I'm leaving," and she'll move your Echoes into Guard mode. You'll get a notification if they hear breaking glass or the sound of an alarm.

Will also turn smart lights on and off to make it look like you're there.

Launching "Smart Screen SDK" [software development kit] Can add echo show like functionality to anything with a display. (I'll be looking for this, this will be good.)





Lenovo is bringing Alexa to their tablets.

Autos: BMW, Ford, Toyota, Buick, Chevrolet, Infiniti, Hyundai, Nissan, GMC, SEAT, Cadillac, Dodge, Mercedes, Jeep, Ram, Genesis, Mitsubishi, Kia

Google taking over CES?

Hey Google

Engadget

Google doesn't usually have a big presence at CES, but that's changed in a big way this year. You can't help but notice that the monorail circling the Las Vegas Convention Center bears huge letters saying "Hey Google!" Just below, Google has set up a huge, multistory monument to the Google Assistant booth in the convention-center parking lot. It's still under construction so it's hard to say exactly what's going on in there. (Also, there's a superfluous spiraling slide on the side of the booth and a weird Google Assistant ball-pit game near the convention center's main entrance.)

Pokemon Go on Hololens

From Engadget

Microvision is a leader in augmented reality displays. Based on my experience, I think Microvision has a distinct advantage in field of view over currently accessible AR devices.

So, this is where we may be going.  It looks like fun, and like it could have a lot of really interesting and also useful applications.

I really want to see a display like this with infrared camera overlay (imagine how useful that could be for firefighters, building inspectors and looking for lost kittens.)

RoBoHon -- Finally some genuine mobile innovation

This little device really is doing something unexpected. 

People look at it,  ask "what the hell?" and then they want it. 

It would be cool without the projector, but it's REALLY cool with the projector.

I've heard and I've been reading the angst of many stockholders who think this is some kind of farce. 

They want a projector in a phone, or one in a sled. Numbers they can count. I get that. They want to be able to total up numbers of units, put a number on it and calculate company earnings. 

I suspect that kind of thinking by the management at mobile handset companies is the reason that we haven't had significant innovation in smartphones for years. We've had years of marginal improvements, but in spite of the great language for the new handsets that are coming out, the most daring thing I've seen in recent history is the Samsung Galaxy edge, where the display wraps around the side of the phone. -- Is that all they can pull off?

So, now we have a charming little robot that is showing everyone the capabilities of PicoP. The mainstream media hasn't latched onto this yet, but the tech media is buzzing. Cellphone innovation is suddenly wide-open, and the idea of a phone with all the functionality of this robot - now is more likely to look like a low-risk, no-brainer to those big OEMS.

The tiny touch-screen and voice activation are huge here. Sharp has shown the way to a smart phone with a smaller form factor and a jumbo screen. That is an innovation nearly everyone wants desperately.

At this point its hard to not be excited about this. This is getting eyes on MicroVision's technology. I'm sure all the big OEMS have seen it now. There's more to come though, because as much as WE have been paying attention to RoBoHon, and MicroVision -- it's STILL really only noticeable in the Tech and gadget circles.

...when the tech is connected with the new SONY projector, and other products (the Fujitsu glasses with Retinal scan display? (I'm 95% sure that MicroVision is in there, but it hasn't been announced.)

I think we're on the edge of an explosion of interest. Almost there. In spite of the action in the stock of the last week, I've never been more optimistic.

First 10 core chip.

I've been informed a number of times that multi-core chips make video playback (and a lot of other things) much better on a phone. The more cores, the smoother the playback, the faster the loading and better battery life.

This chip ALSO has a very interesting feature that would make streaming video much more efficient (Extremely high speeds.)

So, this is one of those things to watch -- something that will improve the ecosystem for PicoP technology.



From PhoneArena

Pushing the boundaries are we, MediaTek? The up-and-coming chipmaker just made the long-rumored mobile Helio X20 chipset official, in all of its ten-core glory. Yep, you read that right, the speculations were all true, and the X20 boasts ten Cortex cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. 

Well, the way MediaTek achieved this is a bit iffy, as we have two powerful Cortex-A72 units, clocked at 2.5 GHz, then four lowly Cortex-A53 pieces, running at 2 GHz maximums, then a quad pack of Cortex-A53s again, which has been clocked the lowest, at mere 1.4 GHz. MediaTek calls this a tri-cluster approach, but, surprisingly, all this innovation is aimed at the upper midrange phones of the future, as suggested by the inclusion of only two powerful Cortex-A72s.

The system-on-a-chip (SoC) kit also includes MediaTek's integrated LTE Cat. 6 modem, which allows for up to 300Mbps download speeds, if your carrier can provide those, of course, and all main wireless radios, too. The graphics prowess has been relegated to the yet-announced ARM Mali-T800 GPU, which should be just a step below the scorching Mali-T880. 

The tiny fly in the ointment is that Helio X20 supports "only" DDR3 RAM memory, but MediaTek argues that, since the SoC maxes out at Quad HD display support, DDR3 will be plenty. All that jazz is stuffed into the footprint of the current X10, as the X20 is done with the 20nm production process, and yet it offers 40% stronger performance than the X10, at the same time consuming 40% less power. The deca-core Helio X20 will be sampling to customers in H2 2015, which likely means we will see the first handsets or tablets with it for the holidays at the earliest, and most likely in Q1 of next year. Check out the full X20 specs in the slideshow below.

This is a good article, a little old, but I found it the most comprehensive of those I looked at. This is a very small piece of it. There are great benefits to having multiple cores.

From an article about the benefits of multi-core chips: (At engadget)

"Besides offering a better battery, faster loading, multithreading and improved gaming, we saw a lot of new functionality come to our phones over the last year, and multi-core tech is largely to thank. 1080p video playback and capture, glasses-free 3D technology, improved speech recognition and language processing, improved multimedia, higher-resolution displays, and many more features are much easier to accomplish using dual-core capabilities -- and as we start piling on more cores, it'll get even better."