This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of ZiiLabs, but it seems as though each time they show their head they seem to fade back into the background as swiftly as they re-appeared. This time they’ve got a hankering for Honeycomb and they’ve got what appears to be some lovely reference tablets for OEM and ODM to be using to bring their own Android tablets running Android 3.x with speed and grace. What these tablets are also made for is housing the brand new ZMS-40 and ZMS-20 processors. These are dual-core and a quad-core chipsets, both at 1.5 GHz.
I’m sure you could go out and own one of these if you were just a regular user, but they certainly aren’d designed to look and feel like the most user-friendly pieces of industrial design. There are two designs (one for each chipset, I bet,) the first being a seven-inch, 1024×600 LCD toting tablet, the other having a ten-inch 1280×800 display. The odd thing about these displays is that they call for both capacitive AND resistive touchscreen functionality – they also support OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics and have front and rear-facing cameras. Another oddity is that they’re both five-megapixel cameras, making these the first 5-megapixel front-facing camera-toting Android devices.
Both of these devices are slated to be revealed at Computex next week, which we indeed will be running around at. What do you think? Something you feel like you want to pick up as a regular consumer? Check out the press release below:
ZiiLABS Announce JAGUAR Family of Android 3.X Reference Platforms
Modular Tablet Reference Designs Enable OEM’s to Meet the Growing Demand for Innovative Next-Generation Android Tablets
Singapore – 26th May 2011 – ZiiLABS, a pioneering media processor and platforms company (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd), today introduced its JAGUAR family of high-performance, energy-efficient Android tablet reference platforms. The modular 7″ and 10″ tablets are designed for the latest Android 3.X compliance and leverage the superior performance, low-power consumption and rich-feature set of the latest ZiiLABS ZMS-20 and ZMS-40 StemCell Processors.
Engineered for high-quality, connected and immersive tablet computing, the JAGUAR platforms enable OEMs to meet the growing demand for next-generation Android tablets that deliver stunning 1080p high profile video playback, immersive OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics, high-quality HD video calling and a rich desktop browsing experience including Adobe Flash Player.
Based on a motherboard concept, the JAGUAR allows an OEM or ODM to bring to market their own Android 3.X tablets in the shortest possible time. The JAGUAR platforms combine the sleek Industrial Design templates (ID), proven high-speed system design and peripheral modularity required to enable OEMs and their ODM partners to innovate and differentiate critical components such as the LCD display, touch controller, cameras, ID and modem connectivity.
JAGUAR reference tablets based on the ZMS-20 will be shown in the ZiiLABS suite (Grand Hyatt Hotel Taipei, Grand Room, #1137) at the Computex 2011 tradeshow in Taipei, Taiwan between 31 May and 4 June. The ZMS-20 features 48 StemCell media processing cores and dual 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 MPCores.
“As consumer demand for a wide-range of smarter, more connected tablets increases, so do the OEMs’ needs to innovate while also shrinking their time-to-market” said Hock Leow, president of ZiiLABS. “The JAGUAR platform combines our deep understanding and experience working on consumer devices and tablets with our ZMS processors, reference platforms, software and certification know-how to deliver a state-of-the-art platform that minimizes the complexities of introducing next-generation tablets.”
“Timing is everything and a frenzied land-grab is taking place in the tablet computing market,” said Sim Wong Hoo, Chairman and CEO of Creative Technology. “Android 3.X and ZMS-20 are designed and engineered specifically for this new and exciting tablet market where growth is expected to approach 100 million next year. The JAGUAR platforms based on ZiiLABS’ ZMS-20 and ZMS-40 processors push performances to a new level that the world has never seen before and OEMs and ODMs can leverage this with JAGUAR to quickly stake a sizeable claim in this explosive market.”
Existing JAGUAR based tablet designs will be able to take advantage of 6 GHz of quad-core computing by migrating to the compatible quad ARM-Cortex-A9 based ZMS-40.
JAGUAR Platforms – Key Features* Powered by ZiiLABS ZMS-20 and ZMS-40
o Dual and Quad Core 1.5GHz ARM Cortex A9 cores with Neon
o 48 and 96 core floating point StemCell media processors
* Robust Android BSP and Middleware
* Designed for Android 3.0+ Compliance
* Modular Motherboard Design to enable OEM/ODM Customization
* Wide-angle 7″(1024×600) and 10″ (1280×800) LCD options
* Capacitive and Resistive LCD touch options
* Up to 2GB high-speed 64-bit memory
o High performance and low-power LPDDR2-800 for super high memory bandwidth of 6.4GBytes per second
o DDR2/DDR3 for low cost
* 5MP rear and HD front facing camera as standard
* Wi-Fi b/g/n, 3G/4G/WiMax and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
* GPS, accelerometer, digital compass and gyroscope
* Stereo speakers and dual Microphone array
* Up to 64GB internal storage
* USB 2.0 port
* SDHC Card sl
* Extended battery life with robust dynamic power management
* Instantaneous On featureAvailability
The JAGUAR Android reference tablets are sampling now. For additional information and to arrange meetings at Computex visit: www.ziilabs.com
