Apple may make the highest performance smartphone chips, but they’re only used in Apple’s phones, tablets, and PCs which means they have a limited market share.
Meanwhile rivals including Qualcomm and MediaTek (and to some degree Samsung) sell their chips to multiple phone makers, which has helped them ship a lot of processors.
With a product lineup ranging from entry-level to premium chips, Qualcomm has dominated that space in recent years. But according to a new report from Counterpoint, MediaTek took the top spot for the first time in the most recent quarter.
MediaTek also has a wide range of solutions, but the company is probably better known for its mid-range chips than for its high-end solutions. And while flagship phones grab all the headlines, the truth is an awful lot of mid-range phones are sold, which certainly helped with MediaTek’s rise. Counterpoint suggests the US trade ban on Huawei probably didn’t hurt either.
Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.
- MediaTek Becomes Biggest Smartphone Chipset Vendor for First Time [Counterpoint]
According to Counterpoint, MediaTek became the top smartphone chip vendor in Q3, 2020 with a 31-percent market share, putting the company ahead of Qualcomm, Samsung, Hisilicon (Hauwei), and Apple… but Qualcomm has the top spot with 5G chipsets. - Piunora has the guts of a Raspberry Pi 4 with Arduino form factor, M.2 PCIe socket [CNX Software]
Piunara is a tiny computer that beats with the heart of a Raspberry Pi 4 Compute Module, but features a carrier board with Arduino features. The only catch is that it’s still under development and probably won’t be available for at least a few months. - Librem 5 Evergreen Linux phone first impressions [Notta Pro / YouTube]
This video provides a fairly critical look at the shortcomings of using a Purism Librem 5 right now and why it’s best thought of as an enthusiast/developer-centric device. Some issues have already been addressed via software updates. Others have not. I’m linking to the reddit thread rather than the YouTube video because the discussion is worth reading. Also worth noting – the Librem 5 can run alternate operating systems and has more powerful hardware than the Pinephone, but a smaller developer community so far. - Dasung Paperlike HD-FT E-Ink monitor review [Matteo Accardi / YouTube]
This video review of the Dasung Paperlike HD-FT E Ink monitor covers just about everything you’d want to know about using the 13.3 inch E Ink monitor with a frontlight, touchscreen, and $999 price tag.
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A usb cable is how I connect my arduino board to the RPi. It gets power, ground and a data connection. If the microcontroller has a uf2 bootloader it can be programmed as a usb flash drive. With high quality arduino boards starting at $6, there are lots of useful peripherals which can provide functions that the RPi does not have.
Arduino software runs great on the RPi4 and official Segger J-Link software is available for RPi.