University unveils its NVIDIA Jetson-powered M4 Morphobot for search and rescue, delivery and possibilities that are out of this world. Academics Mory Gharib and Alireza Ramezani in 2020…
FriendlyElec did a lot to enable easy and quick OS installation. Sacrificing some traditional connectors is a bit of a bummer, but with the well-designed case in mind, it’s definitely not as major of a drawback as it initially seems. What we dislike is the lack of a power switch and wireless connectivity, the latter of which will generally take up one of the two USB ports. Even with minor design flaws, the R6S is a great system based on the modern and powerful RK3588S chip with top-notch software support. It’ll perform great no matter the task: from IoT applications to home routing and various types of servers, the R6S can be relied on.
We thank everyone who participated in this giveaway, as well as our friends at NVIDIA for supporting us. The team at magazin Mehatronika congratulates the winners of the…
The Mixtile Blade 3 is a well-made computer, primarily designed for clustering. This is the main idea behind the inclusion of the U.2 connector, along with another daughterboard meant for interconnecting several Blade 3 units using custom-made PCIe cables utilizing SFF-8643 connectors (offering much better cluster performance than traditional Ethernet-based clusters), as well as providing a SATA 3 connection and a 12V 6-pin power connector.
Currently, however, the Mixtile Blade 3 is only useable as “just” an SBC computer, which is why we didn’t mention much about its planned cluster functionality earlier during the main review sections. 16 GB of RAM and 128 GB of eMMC, as well as great external storage connectivity are all major elements adding up to quite an appealing package, viable as a tiny ARM-based server, media center, or even a desktop replacement.
The LilyGO T-HMI has landed before us, packed in a tidy semi-transparent plastic box, surrounded by black cushioning foam. This tiny dev board is based around an ESP32-S3R8 MCU and a 2.8” resistive TFT touchscreen with a 240 x 320 resolution. The set also includes a small plastic stylus (very similar to the one used on some older Nintendo handheld consoles) and a pair of cables: one for connecting a 5V battery and one for connecting a Grove sensor (Grove is the name of Seeed Studio’s plug-and-play system of sensors and peripherals).
Before continuing, we’d like to thank the manufacturer for providing us with a review unit.
For the 160 USD MSRP, the BPi ARMSoM W3 brings a lot to the table, giving users a powerful SoC, solid RAM, on-board storage and a decent set of IO. The build quality is, like most Banana Pi boards, good, and all of the provided OSs work well. For home users, there are better (and cheaper) solutions which offer less robust connectivity, but often are significantly smaller and come with built-in cooling. On the other hand, for industrial consumers, or those looking to create custom designs implementing Banana Pi’s ARMSoM series of core boards, the ARMSoM W3 represents a reference design and a great development starting point.
Magazin Mehatronika, with support from NVIDIA is giving away two Jetson Nano Developer kits.
The Jetson Nano is a small edge AI system made by NVIDIA, perfect for students, makers and educators.
Powerful enough for computer vision applications, the Jetson Nano supports external cameras, enabling powerful projects, aware of their surroundings.
Since the Jetson Nano itself is a module, with a reference carrier board in the kit, it’s possible to integrate it into custom end solutions. This level of flexibility is required for industry usage, as well as more serious projects.
More information, and the giveaway submission form can be found at the following link.
Saildrone is making a splash in autonomous oceanic monitoring.
The startup’s nautical data collection technology has tracked hurricanes up close in the North Atlantic, discovered a 3,200-foot underwater mountain in the Pacific Ocean and begun to help map the entirety of the world’s ocean floor.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the company develops autonomous uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) that carry a wide range of sensors. Its data streams are processed on NVIDIA Jetson modules for AI at the edge and are being optimized in prototypes with the NVIDIA DeepStream software development kit for intelligent video analytics.
There is absolutely no doubt that teenage engineering’s OP-1 is one of, if not the most influential, synthesisers of the decade. However, as we’ve already seen multiple times with the Swedish brand’s products, trying to fit them into a single conventional category doesn’t do them justice. The OP-Z is more than just a sequencer, the TX-6 is more than just a mixer, so it only makes sense for the OP-1 to be more than just a synthesiser.
Aside from the legendary synth engines, the OP-1 features a powerful sampler, drum machine, effects processor, sequencer and virtual tape recorder, making the whole package feel much more like a DAW than a simple instrument.
It’s no secret that NVIDIA’s AI SBCs run toasty at times. The massive stock passive heatsink is generally good enough for the job, but due to the presence of an on-board fan header on many carrier boards, it’s simple enough to install an active solution.
Still, the well-respected ICE Tower lineup of SBC cooling solutions has made its way onto the Jetson, and promises significantly better thermals than possible with passive systems thanks to high-performance desktop-like heatsinks and copper thermal pipes.
When we reviewed the awesome Orange Pi 5, we noted some minor throttling, but still suggested the use of a heatsink, at least. Despite the RK3588’s impressive abilities at minimising performance drops during intense computation, the core clocks undeniably drop as the chip approaches 90°C. Needless to say, running that hot isn’t really healthy for an SoC, either.
To solve this, the team over at 52Pi has produced a tweaked version of the ICE Tower cooler for the Orange Pi 5. Fundamentally, it’s the same idea: chunky copper heat-pipes, large heatsink and an RGB fan in a desktop-like cooling system.
These two boards, as of the time of writing, sell for around $17 and $25, for the Maker and Zero versions, respectively. The PoE expansion board is $4, and is a worthwhile addition.
Our overall experience is mixed. Armbian CLI works well, but much better OS support is required. More performant boards are becoming the standard, but for project which don’t require a GUI, the Banana Pi BPi-P2 is more than enough.
PoE capability is the saving grace — enabling sleek solutions for IoT nodes. As an edge sensor data collection station with PoE, the Banana Pi BPi-P2 series offers one of the cheapest complete packages on the market, starting at just $21.
For the price, Intel truly gives a lot. A top-notch port selection, great performance, fast connectivity and great thermals grace this tiny computing box, making it capable enough to be an everyday computer. Its true strengths, however, lie in its power efficiency and expandability, making it a serious tool for computing at the edge or for smaller servers. It’s perfect for large scale deployment in education, as well as for smaller workspaces requiring dedicated computers for certain tasks.
AI-powered spaces are no longer just a vision of the future. They’ve arrived in today’s streets, stadiums, cities and public transport hubs — and they can be used across industries and applications.
NVIDIA is hosting a deep dive into this topic at its inaugural Smart Spaces Summit, focused on AI-powered innovations within traffic and transportation. The virtual event takes place Wednesday, June 21, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. CEST.
At COMPUTEX 2023, NVIDIA announced the new Jetson AGX Orin Industrial module, which brings the next level of computing to harsh environments. This new module extends the capabilities of the previous-generation NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial and the commercial Jetson AGX Orin modules, by bringing server-class performance to ruggedized systems.
Robotics hardware traditionally requires programmers to deploy it. READY Robotics wants to change that with its “no code” software aimed at people working in manufacturing who haven’t got…
An intriguing platform for development based on the ESP32S3-based Wroom-1 module, equipped with a color TFT LCD, WiFi and BLE 5, a Grove port, a mic, a speaker, an SD slot, and a rotary encoder…
Creating a functional device of your own isn’t exactly easy if you start with a blank piece of paper. Development systems are tools that make it easier to try out an idea, but they can hardly be stuffed into a functional product. With its devices, LilyGO tries to guide users one step closer to the finished product, but not without some sacrifices in the form of a vastly reduced GPIO. TEmbed is a unified system consisting of an ST7789 1.9′′ 320-by-170 TFT color LCD, a rotary encoder, an array of 7 RGB APA102 diodes, a microphone, a speaker, one Grove connector for external sensors, an SD card slot, and a battery connector. The backbone of the T-Embed is the Espressif ESP32S3 SoC, with 16 MB of Flash and 8 MB of PSRAM memory. The Wroom-1 module it’s situated in also provides WiFi 802.11 b/g/n and BLE 5 support.
NVIDIA’s Jetson series of modules has always brought an exciting amount of processing power for mobile and edge AI applications—this being their intended use case. The Jetson lineup also includes several developer kits: modules on reference carrier boards in a format quite similar to single board computers. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll even call these boards “SBCs” in the rest of this review. Let’s not dwell on the semantics for too long—if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.
The SBC we’re taking a look at today is NVIDIA’s new Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit, which was announced this March at NVIDIA’s GTC 2023 event. The module it’s based on has been around slightly longer but has only just now made it into the SBC format. Designed for rapid prototyping, it brings a powerful set of AI hardware and software in a standalone form factor.
Edge AI is finding new uses every day – from fully autonomous robots to edge servers for data analysis. Low power consumption is essential for such systems, enabling…
The excitement around Raspberry Pi’s product releases is always massive – their products, shaped by years of community (and top-notch first-party) support are representative of the way a piece of development tech is meant to function. From perfectly stable SBCs with mature OSs to the Raspberry Pi Pico MCU board which has been a community favourite since its 2021 debut, ease-of-use and and a highly polished user experience differentiate the company’s offerings from those of its rivals.
The Raspberry Pi Debug Probe which we’re taking a look at today explains its purpose quite splendidly by name alone: it’s an open-source debug probe providing both an UART and an ARM SWD interface, all at a very attractive $12 price.
The Robotistan PicoBricks Zero to Hero Development Kit strikes us as a product worthy of your time. With well though-out projects, huge community support thanks to the utilisation of a popular platform and good IDE support, it’s quite a capable package. At its $49, $69 and $89 asking price for the Base, IoT Expert and Zero to Hero kits, respectively, the PicoBricks lineup offers a lot to those looking to embark on an maker journey.
NVIDIA’s GTC 2023 keynote has just ended, with GTC itself ending on March the 23rd – which means an array of exciting new industrial announcements just went live. You can always watch the full keynote at the following link, but we’ve also curated a selection – which you can find in this article – of the most important announcements given during the event.
Banana Pi’s BPI-Pico-RP2040 is a cleverly designed iteration of Raspberry Pi’s Pico design. Experience gained over the course of two years allowed the Banana Pi team to present their own idea of a RP2040-based development kit. We’ve received our unit from the manufacturer for review purposes.
It’s worth noting that in just over two years since its January 2021 release, the RP2040 netted itself quite a lofty market position. Even though it’s based on the ARM Cortex M0+, a decade-old platform, it has many specific peripherals and unique features which set it apart from the droves of M0-based systems releasing as of recent – look at some of Ti’s new MSP chips (MSPM0G and MSPM0L series) or ST’s STM32C0 chip series, to name but a few.
However, as we stated a moment ago, Raspberry Pi did something special with the RP2040. It’s the only (at least known to us) dual-core purely Cortex M0+ chipset.
Yet another SBC landed on our review desk. This time around it’s the Orange Pi 5, a recently released RK3588S-based high-end model from Orange Pi – a company whose main products are ARM-based SBCs oriented towards makers. These are the most common type of SBC – with significantly more rare x86-based ones forming the majority of the rest (RISC-V CPUs are also used in single-board computers, rather seldomly, however).
Pickering’s new series of reed relays have an impressive data-sheet. Distinguished by their impressive power rating in a tiny package, they enable highly reliable high-power relays to fit in a product of any size.
The LattePanda 3 Delta is a gorgeously made Windows 11-capable x86 SBC with great performance and heaps of connectivity options. None of the competing ARM-based systems come quite close, and most of the x86-based systems don’t offer nearly the same level of polish. The $279 asking price is also impressively low, especially with current inflated market prices in mind.
We’ll be direct – don’t skip out on this one!
The Galaxy Z Fold 4 is Samsung’s best and latest. It’s their absolute flagship, packing all the tech they’ve got. It’s impressive, and it’s got the highest productivity potential of all the mobiles on the market right now, but its near-$2k price tag puts it in the same ballpark as much more powerful traditional phone-and-laptop combinations.
Miniware makes tiny things. The company specialises in shrinking usually bulky and hefty equipment into tiny pocket-sized gadget while sacrificing the least amount of features. Naturally, this is a tricky feat which requires a good bit of engineering know-how.
Best known in the maker circles for their TS-series soldering irons, Miniware is a company which produces quite the array of products – from tiny portable oscilloscopes and logic analysers to SMD tweezers (our review here) and more. So far we’ve had quite a positive experience with their products, and the general community consensus is similar.
This is why we’ve already got high hopes for the review unit we’ve got in our hands – the MDP-P906 PSU. The manufacturer provided us with the unit free of charge, but does not in any way influence our opinions stated here.
As single board computers progress and become more and more powerful, so does their use as a desktop replacement become ever more viable. We’ve talked about this before – with several companies marketing their products as capable of such feats while accomplishing the task with varying levels of success. We’re not quite there yet (with the exception of some Intel-based SBCs which encroach upon the desktop territory both in performance and price), ARM SoCs are quickly catching up to their x86 siblings and in some high-end cases even surpassing them.
But as technology tends to do, what once was the very summit of our prowess has since slowly trickled down and seeped into inexpensive parts, enabling the advent of many technologies in the consumer field. With that being said, it’s not hard to fathom the incredibly low prices and (relatively) powerful performance modern SBCs bring. Sure, the Raspberry Pi was the trendsetter and before its debut it had been incredibly difficult to obtain any serious “disposable” computational power. Nowadays, however, with so many contenders available, the SBC form factor is a market in its own right.
Despite the fierce competition, the latest entry in Raspberry Pi’s portfolio, dubbed the Pi 4B (our review of it can be found here), remains one of the most powerful and the most popular board on the market. Naturally, a wide array of accessories for the model have popped up, some of which are quite necessary thanks to the Pi’s poor thermal performance. Cases have also been popular from the inception of the SBC as protecting a computer’s guts from dust generally seems like the right idea.
In a market saturated with boards, cooling solutions for the former and boxes to shove the former two into, how do you stand out?
Sinovoip, the company behind the Banana Pi series of development kits and SBCs had an interesting product idea: to create a Raspberry Pi Pico pin-compatible development kit based on the 240 MHz Tensilica LX7 ESP32-S3 dual-core SoC. Instead of a dual-core RP2040 with 264 KB of SRAM, we have the LX7 based chipset with 512kB of SRAM and 2.4 GHz support, alongside Bluetooth 5LE (no fancy Pio state machine stuff, however).
We have the speed, processing power, pin-to-pin compatibility, the same dimensions, and ultimately the same target audience. Even though the ESP32-S3 features 45 GPIO pins, the form factor has to sacrifice quite a few of them, breaking out only 24. A Neopixel LED has been added on-board.
Unlike the RP2040, which can be programmed using CircuitPython, MicroPython and C (Processing), the BPi supports CircuitPython, C and Espressif’s own IDE.
CircuiPython is pre-loaded on the board is geared towards STEM projects. All Adafruit ESP32-S3 Feather examples worked perfectly – with potential small changes of GPIO pin numbers. Standard WiFi connection examples also worked perfectly first try – so its safe to say that the board is fully compliant.
In the last issue we’ve taken a look at two of Würth’s excellent boards designed for the Feather ecosystem – the MagIC3 FeatherWing and the Sensor FeatherWing. Both of these offer great features and ease-of-use for a low price. In our tests, both units delivered exemplary results and demonstrated the flexibility of the format.
Today we’re taking a look at two more Würth boards which were generously provided by the manufacturer – in different form actors, but both based on their own Calypso WiFi module.
The Calypso module itself is a shielded subunit with castellated connectors intended to be used as a complete WiFi subsystem for embedded devices. At the heart of the Calypso lies a networked MCU containing a 802.11 NWP and an ARM M4 core. Additional timing and RF external antenna-driving circuitry is also located under the shield. What truly sets it apart, though, is the ProWare firmware which controls the entire TCP/IP stack and network connectivity.
Calypso’s main goal is completely delegating all connectivity processing from the main MCU or application processor onto its own subsystem, thus freeing up system resources. Compared to most other options which communicate using wide parallel connections and require the main controller to constantly maintain the connection using SDK routines, Calypso uses a simple UART connection and AT commands. This is akin to the way Würth’s sensors handle data – offering pre-processed digital data streams instead of raw values which require additional software calculations and conversion.
Sinovoip’s Banana Pi family has gotten another interesting member. In our hands today is an MCU development board with the newest Espressif ESP32-S3 SoC – a dual-core Xtensa LX7-based chip clocked at 240MHz. The board’s called BPI-Leaf-S3 and shares the form factor of Espressif’s own ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 system, with which it shares the pinout. This does make it a drop-in replacement for the latter in projects. There’s 320kB SRAM and 384kB flash storage on the board, alongside 8MB of external flash and 2MB of pseudo-SRAM.
ESP32-S3 SoC, like all ESP32 chipsets, has integrated radios – namely the 2.4 GHz, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 (supporting the Low Energy Physical Layer – with long range and fast 2 Mbps data transfer). Out of the 45 GPIO pins available on the SoC, the board breaks out 36 (among which pins with specialised SPI, I2S, I2C, PWM, RMT, ADC, UART, SD/MMC host and TWAITM functions are available).
The board also features RST and BOOT keys as well as one Neopixel RGB LED on pin 48. What sets the Leaf apart is the USB Type-C connector, a 3.7V Li-ion battery port (with a charging circuit – akin to those Adafruit’s Feather boards have) and a separate four-pin I2C (GND, 3V3, SDA, SCL) connector for attaching hardware to the main SoC serial bus.
Each time we get a bit of teenage engineering kit, it takes us on a journey during our review. The Swedish company seems to make just about anything they feel like making – which includes everything from serious, albeit quirky music devices – to adorable record cutters and singing dolls. This playful variety is what defines the brand – and what makes the brand. Reviewing their more “serious” products in the past – we’ve still stumbled upon heaps and heaps of personality. It’s certainly interesting and charming to see a brand push out products they truly want to.
This philosophy definitely gave rise to the TX-6 – a tiny battery-powered portable mixer with a bunch more features packed right in. It’s just… a peculiar device which has so much going on under the hood that calling it a “mixer” feels almost wrong – for it is so much more than that.
But a mixer at heart it is! The six stereo channels (which can be also used as up to 12 unbalanced mono channels or 6 balanced mono channels), six channel control strips and a two-slot effect processor define the main workflow of the TX-6. The inputs for these are found along the top edge – spaced incredibly tightly alongside the USB-C port used for charging and digital audio. On the bottom side there are two buttons (which we’ll explore shortly) and three outputs – a main audio out, an auxiliary out for effect loops and a cue out for monitoring. The sides are mostly empty – save for a single white flip-switch and a status LED right next to it. The whole chassis is built out of a solid block of aluminium. It might seem like a vanity-driven choice – but given its size a relatively heavyweight material needed to be used to stop it from flying off the table upon the slightest tug at any of the cables connected to it (faux leather was also put on the back to provide some grip – while it looks visually stunning, rubber feet might have worked a bit better for this). An adorably tiny OLED display wraps the design up – and displays useful data by utilising a clever UI.
Before digging deep into the TX-6 – it’s worth noting once again how tiny this device is – its 9cm by 6.2cm footprint is minuscule. It’s so small and compact that the headphone adapter almost looks like it should be a volume knob (and that’s what we thought it was upon originally seeing the design – not to mention that it’s larger than the actual master volume encoder).
Teenage engineering has generously sent us the TX-6, alongside a set of slimline cables and a matching bag for the mixer. However, all opinions stated here are our own and were not directly influenced by the company. So – without further ado – let’s dig into each major set of features the TX-6 has and see how it performs.
STEM (standing for science, technology, engineering and mathematics) kits have become increasingly relevant as educational institutions slowly switch from traditional to more hands-on learning experiences. With us today, we have the Raspberry Pi Pico Advanced kit from renowned makerspace company Elecrow – which has extensive experience in designing such sets, especially aimed at younger audiences. We feel that the equipment provided here, as well as the online documentation have been carefully selected and thought out.
The focus of the set is the Raspberry Pi Pico MCU board which is at the heart of most projects – usually based around sensor input, some processing and output on one of the peripheral devices provided.
The kit contains 32 modules which can be combined in a variety of ways. There are also 32 projects documented online which are designed to teach the user a variety of concepts in programming and electronics.
We’ve taken a look at the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. We found it to be a great cheap SBC which is seriously feature-packed. For just $15, you get a quad-core A53 CPU, 512 MB of RAM and 2.4 GHz WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity. It’s a great deal – and a drop-in replacement for the older generation small-format Pis. All of this netted it a very high 9.3 out of 10 in our review.
The Radxa Zero, which we’re taking a look at today, is a direct competitor in the small-factor SBC market – offering the same footprint as the smallest Raspberry Pi. However, multiple upgrades make it a more attractive, albeit more expensive (in some configurations) offering.
For starters, what’s holding the Zero 2 W back is the RP3A0-AU chip’s integrated 512 MB of RAM. And that’s your lot. While simpler projects might get away with that – good luck running any hosted application on one (it’s a whole another debate on whether running something like that on a Zero is justified, but…)
The Radxa Zero comes in a few different RAM configs, starting from the low-end 512 MB one, and going all the way up to 4 GB. The 2 GB and 4 GB RAM models also come with on-board flash storage, which can go all the way up to 128 GB for the highest-end configuration.
Since there are quite a few configurations of the Radxa Zero – and memory isn’t the only spec differing between them – let’s start with what remains the same across the board – even on the lowest-end configuration.
Seeed’s Wio Terminal is an all-in-one contender in the educational development kit market. By interfacing with the real world, these boards allow programs to come to life and enable students to visualise concepts easily. Dev boards are of great appeal to the hobbyist community, as well – enabling makers to create complex devices with minimal involvment in hardware design. These two communities – the education market and the maker space – have been actively utilizing this tech for over a decade now. The ease of use enabled brands like Arduino and Raspberry Pi to gain traction and their almost legendary status in the industry which they have today.
The tools available at any price point continue to evolve rapidly. In the 90s, it would cost millions and take years to build some of the hardware components we mass-produce for pennies nowadays. It simply makes sense that – a decade later – we move on from the classic bare-bones MCU board format and get something more – at least in the price bracket.
See, the price of an Arduino Uno has mostly remained the same – at around $28. It features the beloved ATMega328P, an 8-bit, 20 MHz, with 32K of flash, 2K of RAM and a whole 1K of EEPROM. It’s not a lot – but there’s a suprising amount of things which can be (and have been) done with this chip. The great support and tens of thousands of projects are what draws people towards the Uno – and what’s cemented its rightful place in tech history.
Foldable phones have been all the hype in recent years. Strictly speaking, these are not a new idea. The first concept foldable phone was the Nokia Morph – which never saw a functional prototype developed. In the early 2010s, Samsung and LG – the forerunners of OLED tech – developed functional displays which could handle some bending. While the early-to-mid 2010s were filled with prototype foldable devices, 2018 was the year when the first commercially available foldable hit the market – the Royole FlexPai.
What the FlexPai did was prove to the world that there was a place for a foldable phone in the consumer market – but what it did not achieve was perfection. The screen was fragile and easily damaged, the specs weren’t anything to write home about and the hinge – the lifeblood of any foldable – proved to be a much bigger issue than anticipated.
A hinge is an obvious ingress point for dust and water – so early models often had serious durability issues. Part of the smartphone’s ubiquity lies in the simplicity of its design – no motors, bearings or other mechanical moving parts which can easily break or malfunction. This is exactly why models with pop-out front cameras are traditionally seen as unreliable and why many curious ideas like the LG Wing never entered the mainstream.
While Royole had introduced their first foldable a year before Samsung had its first contender – Samsung’s 2019 Fold was the first true noteworthy device of the sort. Nevertheless, early review units had issues with the protective foil on the screen, as well as numerous reports of gritty hinges. Also, the crease. The crease is simply a part of life for foldable owners. This line naturally occurs on all inwards-bending displays. Samsung engineered their hinges to bend the displays at rather sharp angles (which is good), which sadly does increase the prominence of this line, visible at every angle except a straight-on view of the screen.
Samsung’s entry-level flagship phones are often overlooked due to the more apt Plus and Ultra models. However, year after year, these standard S-series models keep offering great performance and many of the exciting new features expected from the next generation flagship. That being said – the death of the beloved Galaxy Note lineup and its merger with the Galaxy S Ultra lineup did limit some of the most unique features – like the S Pen to the highest-end flagships the company makes.
While models like the Galaxy S21 FE (or even the mid-range Galaxy A73) are focused on bringing older higher-end specs for relatively low prices, entry-level flagships are all about top-notch core specs, but without all the non-essential bells and whistles. At its starting $749 price, it’s an intriguing choice for those searching for a sub-$1000 Android flagship.
At this price range, there are several other options, however – including the Asus Zenfone 9 and the Pixel 6, retailing for slightly lower prices, as well as the OnePlus 10T, usually going for a bit more. We can’t go without noting the iPhone 14 as well – retailing for $799. The competition in this price range is stiff – so the Galaxy S22 has to put up a valiant effort.
And the looks definitely don’t disappoint. While visually reminiscent of the S21 FE, the S22 features a Gorilla Glass Victus Plus screen and back (no more plastic backs!) and an aluminium frame. This frame feels almost like steel, and the entire build feels substantial in the hand. There’s a good selection of colours – Phantom Black, Phantom White, Green and Pink Gold. Exclusively through Samsung, there’s also a choice of Graphite, Cream, Sky Blue and Violet. These exclusive colours harken back to the S21 design with the camera bump being a discrete colour. In late Q2 2022, the S22 also dropped in a Bora Purple – the same striking hue available on the company’s new foldables.
Following the success of the Galaxy S20 FE and the general popularity of the Galaxy S21 series, Samsung has once again taken to producing a new FE-series device. These “Fan Edition” phones usually come later in a series’ life cycle and pack a punch at a mid-range price. And the name? It stems from Samsung’s claim that feedback is collected from users to create the best compromise between features and price possible – with the fan-favorite features making the cut.
In theory, this is a similar concept to Apple’s iPhone SE lineup – offering flagship-level performance with a lower price-tag while sacrificing some non-essential features. Unlike the SE, however, the S21 FE doesn’t sacrifice its design or display.
In fact – the S21 FE uses a 6.4-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X (marketing talk for an AMOLED screen with HDR10+ support and better color accuracy) – quite similar to the one that the S21 uses. This means its screen outperforms older Samsung devices and is a significant step up, even for people coming from mainline S20 models.
Oddly enough, Samsung tends to use two different chipsets in its flagship phones depending on the region the unit was sold. Usually, their own in-house Exynos SoCs have been used on international models, with some regions using a Snapdragon chip. With the S21 FE, however, international models now use the Snapdragon 888 (the same chip all the S21 models use), while (as far as our research can tell) Exynos 2100-based handsets are only sold in Australia. This is good. Snapdragon chipsets have always slightly outperformed their Samsung counterparts.
The triple camera setup on the back seems unchanged from the decent system found on the back of the S20 FE. This means it’s behind what the other S21-series phones offer – but above Samsung’s non-flagship offerings.
Like the standard S21, the S21 FE comes with a plastic back (which does, however, feel pretty decent in the hand), aluminum frame and a Gorilla Glass Victus-covered front panel. This should make the front as durable as the panels on the iPhone 12 and 13 range. Clearly, no expense was spared on this front.
The LattePanda Team launched the world’s thinnest pocket-sized hackable computer – LattePanda 3 Delta with global electronic components distributors. The collaboration will ensure that the product choice for LattePanda 3 Delta is passed on to customers through quick, easy online selection via the website of global electronic components distributors and LattePanda.
“LattePanda Team is so proud to cooperate with the global electronic components distributors for this joint launch. It delivers an exciting message to our customers that they can gain fast, easy access to our high-performance and hackable LattePanda 3 Delta anywhere in the world. Our collaboration will assure even higher levels of customer service,” said Sandy Zhang, CMO of LattePanda Team.
LattePanda 3 Delta is poised to define a new era of computing and drive mega creativity for tech enthusiasts and industry innovations. It gets a significant performance boost by upgrading from the Celeron
N4100 of the LattePanda Delta to the Intel 11th-generation Celeron N5105 processor with up to 2.9GHz burst frequency, maintaining almost the same pinout and layout as the previous version to allow for effortless system migration or upgrading by replacement. Compared to its previou version, the CPU of LattePanda 3 Delta speeds up to 2 x faster while the GPU speeds up to 3 x faster to support usage like playing a 4K HDR video and running heavy games.