Texas Instruments OMAP(TM) 2 Platform Powers Latest NEC 3G FOMA(R) Phone
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DALLAS and TOKYO, Dec. 11  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Texas Instruments Incorporated  (TI) today announced that its OMAP(TM) 2 platform has been selected to provide compelling multimedia functionality for one of NTT DoCoMo's newest FOMA(R) 3G handsets, the FOMA N903i from NEC.
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InfoWorld - Texas Instruments, the world&#39;s largest maker of mobile phone chips, plans to work more closely with its Asian contract chip manufacturing partners to develop new production technologies, a company spokeswoman confirmed.
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Cingular WirelessÂ plans to offer 3G (third-generation) mobile data service in a number of major U.S. urban and suburban markets next year and in most major U.S. markets by the end of 2006, the mobile operator announced Tuesday.ADVERTISEMENTSolaris 10(TM) OS: Position your business ten moves ahead.Solaris 10 OS has arrived and provides even more reasons for the world's most demanding businesses to operate on this, the leading UNIX platform. Like the fact you can run Linux and Solaris applications side-by-side and run the same OS on SPARC(R), AMD Opteron(TM), and Intel processor-based systems. Discover more reasons and how Solaris 10 OS can move your business ahead today.
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GENEVA, Dec. 19  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- STMicroelectronics  announced today that Samsung Electronics has selected ST's award-winning* Nomadik(TM) multimedia application processor technology for several digital TV mobile phone models for the Korean market.
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Texas Instruments Inc  said on  Monday it had developed a chip to support cell phones with mini  projectors and another chip that would let users record  high-definition video on their phones.
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(InfoWorld) - MontaVista Software planned to announce on Wednesday the latest version of its Linux-based mobile phone operating system, expected to be available in November. MontaVista's MobilinuxÂ 5.0 includes a number of updates, such as improved security, better power management tools, support for various types of connectivity such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on USB (Universal Serial Bus) dongles, and faster startup times. MontaVista says its operating system runs 90 percent of existing Linux-based smartphones. But competition is heating up for the software developer, since analysts have been predicting dramaticÂ growth for mobile LinuxÂ and a number of new consortiums are working on interoperability issues. ABI Research, for example, recently said that it expects cumulative Linux mobile device shipments between 2006 and 2012 to reach 331 million. Mobilinux 5.0's new features help set it apart from other Linux operating systems out there, said Dan Cauchy, director of product marketing for MontaVista. For example, the new OS includes a miniaturized version of SELinux, the security technology developed by the U.S. National Security Agency. The MontaVista version, MicroSELinux, enables role-based access control so users with different security levels can use a single device running Mobilinux. The new version also includes improvements to the software's dynamic power management capabilities. Mobilinux 5.0 includes APIs (application programming Interfaces) so developers can make use of the power management capabilities. In tests, MontaVista applied the power management techniques to MP3 playback on a phone so the device would almost shut off between MP3 packets, said Cauchy. The process allowed the phone to play MP3 songs five times as long as the same phone without the power management technology, he said. The new OS also improves on device startup times, MontaVista said. Mobilinux 5.0 phones typically boot in less than five seconds. The software is small too, MontaVista said. A basic implementation can be done in less than 14M bytes. Mobilinux 5.0 also includes another upgrade that should please developers, the executives said. MontaVista has added the capability to debug over USB. Normally, developers debug over a serial line, but most mobile devices don't have serial ports anymore, Cauchy said. That means developers often have to use a special test environment in order to debug. "We've been badgered by customers to do this, honestly, because it's such a limit without," said Jim Ready, CTO and founder of MontaVista. "This lets them debug on a real phone as opposed to in a lab." Mobilinux 5.0 includes support for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi over USB as well as SDIO (Secure Digital Input Output), which can save developers time developing such support, MontaVista said. The OS will be available in November and initially will support Texas Instruments' OMAP 2430 chips followed by OMAP 3430. Other chips will follow in 2008, MontaVista said.
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Google&#39;s Android software platform for mobile phones&#160;is coming to life in Barcelona with a number of chip manufacturers showing it running on prototype or proof-of-concept phones at the Mobile World Congress on Monday.Freescale, Marvell, NEC Electronics, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments all had Android on show. Most of them expect to see Android phones based on their chips on the market in the second half of this year.The hardware ranged from bulky development boards with daughter cards sticking out at unlikely angles to more compact devices small enough to slip into your pocket. All were built around chips containing processor cores designed by Arm, a British fabless semiconductor company.One of the most polished prototypes is on the Texas Instruments stand -- although TI representatives insisted that it&#39;s just an example of how a finished product could look as the company only makes chips, leaving the development of phones to its customers. &quot;We don&#39;t do plastic,&quot; one said.TI actually had Android running on two different devices. One was based on its OMAP850, a single-chip device containing an application processor for Android and a baseband processor for controlling the phone&#39;s radio interface. The other contained TI&#39;s OMAP3430 multimedia application processor, capable of decoding high-definition television signals at a resolution of 720p. It requires a separate baseband processor, and is designed for high-end multimedia phones.Developing software for a new phone typically takes 14 to 18 months, said Ramesh Iyer, mobile Internet device product manager at TI. &quot;Android cuts that dramatically. It&#39;s a disruptor,&quot; he said.Google is shaking the market in other ways, Iyer said. &quot;Android is a single stack. You don&#39;t have to go looking for third-party solutions. Suddenly, they have defragmented the whole Linux ecosystem into one building block,&quot; he said.Android is entering an already crowded market for mobile phone software: To see how crowded, you only had to look at the NEC stand, where four prototypes containing its Medity2 processor were packed onto a narrow table. One was running Symbian OS, one Windows Mobile, one Android on top of Wind River Linux, and the last was running the same Wind River Linux but with a different application layer based on software from Trolltech and Esmertec.NEC staff expressed surprise at the level of interest in Android, saying they expected more attention for the completed phones based on the Medity2 at the next table. Manufactured for NTT DoCoMo, those phones contained the version of Linux promoted by the LiMo Foundation.The two systems are not necessarily in competition, though. With Android&#39;s focus on the application layer and Limo&#39;s work on the middleware, the underlying services needed to link applications to the Linux kernel, the two can be complementary, NEC staff said.Marvell took the prize for the most secretive Android demonstrations, refusing to allow photographs and declining even to say on which of its communications processors the software was running. The company showed a compact handset running the Android interface with a bare minimum of applications and a more complete installation playing video and browsing the Web on a bulky development board. Shrinking that down to a pocket-sized device will not take long, staff said. In fact, they had one ready -- just not loaded with the Android software.Android&#39;s Linux roots are likely to encourage the development of a wave of new handset applications, said Marvell&#39;s marketing director Vish Deshmane.&quot;You will see a lot more software to run on devices from people who want to exploit the commonality with desktop systems. It&#39;s going to be a boon for the 3G world because more applications means more data traffic, so operators will be happy,&quot; he said.Over at Freescale Semiconductor, staff showed Google Maps zooming in on the center of Barcelona on a development board built around Freescale&#39;s i.MX31 processor. This processor is not intended for mobile phones at all, and is more at home in GPS&#160;terminals or media players such as Toshiba&#39;s Gigabit and Microsoft&#39;s Zune.Qualcomm&#39;s demonstration of its 7201 combined baseband and application processor sparkled, but did not exploit the chip&#39;s full potential. The spinning globe of Android&#39;s Global Time application turned smoothly even without the assistance of the 3D graphics hardware acceleration, for which the drivers are not yet ready, said Rob Woodford.Android phones based on the chip will go on sale in the second half of this year, Woodford said -- but U.S. readers should contain their excitement: the Qualcomm display was overshadowed by a card warning that&#160;it may be prohibited from shipping the products on show to the U.S.&#160;because of a Dec. 31 court injunction obtained by chip rival Broadcom in a patent infringement case.The Mobile World Congress runs through Thursday at the Fira de Barcelona showground.
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HTC's new line-up rebranded Carrier O2's German division has announced a pair of new XDA smart phones, both quad-band GSM/GPRS devices with built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, and running Windows Mobile 5.0 on 200MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 850 processors.â¦
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Qualcomm has unveiled a new multimode chip and associated software that will enable notebook PC makers to embed advanced wireless capabilities into their next-gen products. Called Gobi, the new offering will enable high-speed data connections to the Internet over both 3G and legacy 2G cellular networks, the company said.
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Texas Instruments (TI) has developed the wireless industry&#39;s first digital TV on a single chip for cell phones. This will capture broadcast signals and allow cell phone users to watch live broadcasts ranging.
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(InfoWorld) - A group of mobile phone operators and handset vendors is developing a 3G (third-generation) mobile phone platform that combines many standard hardware and software components in an effort to reduce phone development time and costs. NTT DoCoMo, Renesas Technology, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson Mobile CommunicationsÂ will jointly develop the platform that will support HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) and W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) as well as GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution). Phones that use the new platform could become available worldwide and at a lower cost than other 3G handsets. In addition to the communications support, the platform will include a baseband processor, an application processor with multimedia functionality and a reference design including audio and power supply. It will also incorporate an operating system, with Symbian being the first supported. The companies expect to complete development of the platform in the second quarter 2008. The initiative is the third conducted by some of the companies involved. The first platform supported W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS and the second, still in development, incorporates additional software components. By joining forces to develop such a platform, the phone manufacturers don't have to individually build components that are common across all the phones. That means they can reduce development time and cost and focus instead on creating unique features for their phones. Renesas will sell the platform worldwide, even though most of the partners are in Japan.
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LONDON, December 13  /PRNewswire/ -- With the advent of new technologies and innovations in Europe, telecommunication service providers are increasingly offering fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) solutions.
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The company has become the latest operator to reveal it is investigating technology designed to improve 3G coverage indoors.
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By Prasanna Raman  O2, a smartphone manufacturer, has announced its first third- generation (3G) communications tool, the Zinc XDA.
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It looks like a partnership between AMD, IBM, Sony and Toshiba has produced a new technology which allows faster transistor speeds with the same energy consumption.
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TOKYO - NTT DoCoMo Inc said Wednesday it has developed five new models for the 901i series of 3G FOMA cell phone handsets, featuring an enhanced audio system, and will market one model, the SH901iC, nationwide Nov 26 with other models to follow.
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Orthogon Systems, a wireless, point-to-point provider of MANs (Metropolitan Area Networks) on Tuesday announced OS Spectra, an enterprise version of its current broadband solution.ADVERTISEMENTReducing the Total Cost of OwnershipLearn how to reduce the total coast of ownership in enterprise data management in this case study.