android
FXI’s Cotton Candy lets you run Android on any computer/television
Ever wanted to get Android on your computer or TV? While there’s BlueStacks for the PC and Google TV, FXI may have a more elegant solution for you in the form of the Cotton Candy. As pictured above, the Cotton Candy appears to be nothing more than a typical thumb drive, but underneath the tiny exterior lies a beast.
The Cotton Candy will feature a 1.2GHz Samsung Exynos processor, ARM Mali-400 MP quad-core GPU, WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities with a microSD card slot for memory expansion. It even sports a HDMI jack on the other end that will let you connect the device to a television. It will also run on Android’s Gingerbread 2.3.
All you’d have to do to get it to work is plug it into the USB port of your Mac or PC, or connect it to a HDMI cable for your television. Once that’s done, you’re pretty much good to go. We’re not sure what uses there are for this little device yet, but the ability to plug and load up Android wherever you go is a pretty neat concept.
FXI is planning to sell the Cotton Candy in the second half of 2012 for less than $200. Unfortunately at the moment the device has not been sanctioned by Google which means that you will not have access to Android Market.
The Fairphone 2 was first unveiled in June earlier this year, where this particular handset carried a modular design while featuring majority of its components that have been sourced from conflict-free mines. It seems that this particular handset that you can purchase with a clear conscience has begun to ship to those who happen to live across Europe.
Fairphone announced in a blog post, “It’s been almost two years in the making, and some of the earliest buyers have been patiently waiting since July to receive their new phones. As community manager, I want to personally welcome the new batch of Fairphone owners to our community.” The initial 1,000 units are tipped to ship this month, before the other pre-orders follow in January 2016.
In terms of hardware specifications, the Fairphone 2 will run on a Snapdragon 801 chipset, has a 5″ 1080p screen with Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 2GB of RAM, an 8MP camera, with Android 5.1 Lollipop in tow. It will be a dual SIM capable handset with a microSD memory card slot and plays nice with 4G LTE networks, retailing for approximately €525 a pop.
It looks like the upcoming flagship model from Xiaomi will feature NFC support, at least based on a document that was released by China UnionPay. Just in case you are scratching your head and wondering who China UnionPay is, they happen to be the only domestic payment gateway supplier and card organization, and hence, to see them offer detailed support concerning the newly released NFC-based payment system points to the very real possibility of the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5 featuring NFC capability.
After all, the Xiaomi Mi 3 was also mentioned on the list, which so happens to feature NFC, and there is no mention of the Xiaomi Mi 4 which does not come with NFC. Still, such a new payment system would be the ideal tool to see the reintroduction of NFC to the flagship model.
OnePlus did make an announcement in the previous month that the Ceramic variant of the OnePlus X will be released on November 24. True to their word, they did exactly that – although only a pitiful number of units were made available, and not only that, this was through a charity auction. Thankfully for the rest of the masses who are on the lookout for this device, it has gone on sale officially already.
Needless to say, this particular variant is available only by an invitation, although do bear in mind that standard OnePlus X invites are not good here – you will still need to snag yourself a specific Ceramic variant invite before you make a purchase. OnePlus is also on the lookout to offer additional methods of picking up this smartphone, although no further details were revealed.
The OnePlus X Ceramic will be available only in select markets, where among them include Europe, India, and Hong Kong. To date, we do know that OnePlus had made only 10,000 units of the handset available. A case of the early bird getting the proverbial worm here?