In one of the first useful upgrades in this ever lasting stream of almost identical Android handhelds, Yinlips and JXD have both announced new players sporting capacitive screens. Lots of people have been including this in their wishlist for “the perfect Android handheld” so there should be a few smiling faces upon hearing this news.
First up is the JXD S5110, another PS Vita shelled device with a 5″ 800×480 capacitive screen supporting 3 point multitouch. The internals of the S5110 are based on the AMLogic 8726, which looks to be the same (or a very similar) configuration as in the JXD S601. It is comprised of a Cortex A9, Mali400 and 512MB DDR3 RAM. The JXD website makes one claim that the device is the first ever handheld running Android 4.0, but later on appears to contradict itself by admitting that the device runs 2.3. Reading between the lines I would assume that the ICS upgrade is due and can be flashed at home once it’s released.
Yinlips decided to stick with the Boxchip A10 for their capacitive bundle of joy, which can also be found in their YDPG16 and YDPG18. The name of their new device? YDPG18A, of course. I believe the SoC is slightly more capable than JXD’s choice, but until now many of their handhelds have suffered from slight audio lag in some emulators, so you wouldn’t be daft to assume the same problem might persist here too. Yinlips went for a 5 point multi touch 5″ screen and once again, the machine ships with 2.3 and can be updated “later” according to the info on willgoo. Yinlips renders aren’t quite as fancy as JXD’s – but you get the idea, all these things look pretty much identical anyway.
So, capacitive screens – check. Still waiting for a real analog pad (2 would be nice, but let’s not go mental now) and a kernel source (and a developer willing to optimize it). So for now let’s just sit tight and see what’s announced for next week.
🙂
Update:
The JXD S5110 is now also available at Willgoo for the princely sum of $99.99. Almost $50 cheaper than Yinlips offering, and shipping with 4.0 too by the looks of it.
All of the Android pmp’s and phones have lag issues. I did a video of the comparison. Turning off frameskip helps a lot but their is still a slight lag.
The video is located here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzXRyFQM3Ts
I spoke with the author of the .emu emulators and he explained why there is a lag and gave me a little bit of hope. Here is a little bit of the email he sent me.
“The audio code on Android requests an safe buffer size from the OS and because of this, the latency may vary depending on the device. Being a multi-tasking phone/tablet/PMP, all the audio runs through a sound server (mixing, volume adjustment, filters) before being sent to the audio hardware which also adds some inherent latency. There are a few things I can try in future updates to try and minimize the latency: allow the user to override the buffer size to a lower value in case the device is able to handle it properly, and re-write the entire audio back-end to use OpenSL instead of the Java audio API, in case the device’s sound driver is better optimized for it. Future Android OS updates may also improve the sound server performance though it’s up to Google on whether they’ll actually work on it.”
Willgoo has offered to send him a device to work on the issue. I have emailed him to send him the device but have not gotten a response yet. It usually takes a few days.
I almost pulled the trigger on this today. I’m just waiting to see what the deal is going to be with the analog. Jxd seems to be able to put together a more reliable system.