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So Raz and I were over at the Global Sources China Sourcing Fair yesterday - it was quite impressive to say the least and we had a good bit of intruigue at the Rockchip booth.

We spoke with the assistant to Rockchip CEO, a Ms. Fu, and this is a paraphrased transcript of what was said.

So what are the hardware differences between RK2808 and RK2818?
RK2808 only has support for SD RAM; RK2818 has support for DDR2 RAM. Also, 2818 has hardware acceleration.

For better video playback?
Yes.

Will you upgrade the RK2818 to support Android 2.2?
Our next chip will support Gingerbread, (3.0) and will come out in Q1 2011.

Will this be a new generation of chip? RK29...
Yes, RK29. The sample will be finished 1 month later and we will have a Q1 2011 launch.

What about 3D?
Both 2D and 3D.



So - take that for what it's worth fellas.

ALSO: on the blog will be going up videos that Raz and I took at the fair of some goodies.

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Totally lacking in sense and style.

Ingenuity™ by maderin1 - The New Fragrance

Yes ladies and gents, please do note that if you are going to jump on any RK2818 device it will never get an update to 2.2.

They will use their upcoming RK29xx gen chips to run 3.0, but i would not be surprised if it turns out to run 2.2.

The RK29xx gen chips will also handle 1080p playback.

i love the politician-like reply to the question about updating 2818 to 2.2 - completely avoided it and bragged on about the other things they are doing ... pretty much says it all, really does seem the rockchip philosophy is "one chip one Android" and thats it - rockchip really are control freaks at heart

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The lady we talked to was very competent, confident, and knew exactly what she was saying at any point, rather like you say - a politician.

She was pleasant but asked us to clarify a few things about the RK2818 after we had said the WiFi was slow... she's definitely quite sharkish and on the ball.

As for 2818.. yeah it looks like that's reached the end of the line. And they put out rumours that it would be upgraded to 2.2, and so the wheel keeps on spinning.

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Totally lacking in sense and style.

Ingenuity™ by maderin1 - The New Fragrance

Really, go Rockchip for being honest. Some businesses would just tease and never give a direct answer.
It's not a bad thing; when you buy a Rockchip device it'll function well right out of the box. Sure, it'll stay the same forever, but Rockchips implementation of Android is currently one of the best around.

Oh, and maybe this subforum should be changed to 'All Rockchip Based Android Device Talk'. RK2808 has siblings!

[quote="aaroNiGHTS"]Really, go Rockchip for being honest. Some businesses would just tease and never give a direct answer.
It's not a bad thing]

Well it wasn't really that she was being honest, it came out while she was bragging that the RK29xx gen chips would go straight to 3.0, when asked about 2.2 she said no and said something about licensing issues with Adobe for flash (???). Anyways take what you read here as just what we heard, nothing is concrete.

Yeah, I was just scribbling down what I caught of Raz's questions and her answers, but this isn't OFFICIAL stuff - this is all hearsay right now.

You might look upon it as a guideline of what you may expect, rather than the definitive proof of what is to come.

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Totally lacking in sense and style.

Ingenuity™ by maderin1 - The New Fragrance

The only thing that i was glad to hear was that the RK29xx would do 1080p, which is something that has been making Rockchip pmps a little less attractive (even though with better UI's) that their SoChip brethren.

I also have to add that this year the people at Rockchip were far more cooperative than last April, last time it didn't seem like there was much point to them being here, but this time they brought reps from all the design houses that actually design the players. Maybe we got more info and help this time because they saw us filming stuff, but i hope that the contacts that i made actually amount to something.

[quote="Huggy"]
So what are the hardware differences between RK2808 and RK2818?
RK2808 only has support for SD RAM]
If the hardware differences really are that slim it might be possible for the 2.1 firmware to be reverse engineered to run on the 2808 devices. If the source for it ever got released it might help a lot too. Probably not completely feasible, but its at least possible