It's not ready for prime time just yet, but Texas Instruments (among others) appears to be getting closer to a projector that'll cram inside a phone with enough brightness and clarity to make it usable. How cool is that? Granted, this isn't a real phone here that we got to play with -- but it's phone-sized. You get the idea. Read on for the full pictorial!

In an effort to introduce yet more cost saving measures, Motorola has announced that it will change its 3G chipset supplier from Qualcomm to a combination featuring both Texas Instruments and Freescale (a spinoff of Moto, coincidentally). Motorola hopes to achieve lower manufacturing costs while increasing margins for its shareholders by changing chip suppliers away from Qualcomm. We think it might be beneficial for Qualcomm to rethink its royalties game plan starting -- now.

Texas Instruments loves Bluetooth. The RF and semiconductor company announced that it'll take what experience it has in the ZigBee arena into the Wibree realm since it apparently loves all tech ending in "ee." Seriously though, Ultra Low Power Bluetooth (which took over the Wibree standard just recently) will be TI's focus here as it tries to ply into the short-range connection explosion that we're still waiting on to occur between watches, toys, sensors and more. We love Bluetooth (who doesn't?) and ULP Bluetooth's potential to be a low-cost wireless connectivity scheme that expands beyond cellphones and PCs seems to be ripe for exploitation.

If anyone doubted Texas Instruments' sincerity in taking the mobile projection world by storm, now would probably be a good time to start boiling some crow. Making good on its wishes to cram DLP into even the most minuscule of locations, the company will be demonstrating its newfangled DLP pico-projector to select media groups, and apparently, those interested in taking a peek better have a front row seat. The mini projector will supposedly "fit in your fingertips," but beyond that vague descriptor, we're not exactly sure about the hard measurements. Notably, it appears that TI's wee PJ could act as a standalone unit "or as an integrated component in a mobile device," which would definitely spruce up current smartphone offerings. Sadly, there wasn't an estimated timeframe as to when we'd (barely) see these devices crammed into cellphone enclosures, but it's just a matter of time before we're streaming live television shows and simultaneously beaming 'em up for all of the subway car to see.

It's not terribly uncommon to see a manufacturer try to push a product (or platform) into every crevice of your life, and it seems that Texas Instruments is diverting quite sharply from its calculatorish ways of old and making an aggressive push to get that DLP logo slapped on everything you own. While we've seen (literally) the diminutive Microvision display do its thang here at CES, TI is hoping to steal that thunder away by talking up its forthcoming palm-sized DLP projectors. The "fully featured" Pocket Projectors, which are co-developed by OMAP, would weigh "less than one pound," use the .55 DLP chip, and could purportedly connect to handsets or PDAs to beam up that big(ger) screen imagery for a crowd to see. Unfortunately for TI, these devices are not (at least initially) supposed to be integrated units, which could easily get overlooked if those built-in alternatives can muster acceptable quality. Additionally, TI is hoping to get that DLP logo stamped on your brain even when you visit the cinema, as the company now has its technology in 3,000 theaters worldwide and is frequently throwing logo-clad splash screens onto the canvas during pre-show advertisements. So if you wonder why you're strangely drawn to the DLP sets during your next HDTV shopping trip, trust us, it's not the mirrors, it's the marketing.

[Via AboutProjectors]

As multimedia features typically associated with higher-end handsets -- music players, video cameras, 3D acceleration, and the like -- start to trickle down to the mainstream, chip suppliers are looking at ways to make the requisite chipsets mainstream, too. Enter TI's OMAPV1035 "eCosto" single-chip platform; with an ARM9 processor core, the 1035 will be manufactured using a 65nm process when it begins volume production in early 2008. Features include EDGE support (but no 3G in sight -- we question that logic for a multimedia chipset that isn't due for another year), 30 fps video streaming at resolutions up to 320 x 240, 3D gaming, and support for still cameras up to 3 megapixels. Just as long as we get an HSDPA version of this goodness, TI, we're with you one hundred percent.

As manufacturers gear up to ship second- and third-generation handsets with mobile TV support, it seems the lines between phones, televisions, and the TiVo in your family room will be doing a bit of blurring. Texas Instruments is demoing new functionality in its DTV1000 "Hollywood" (no, not that Hollywood) digital TV chipset this week that, when paired up with their OMAP2430 core, offers users DVR and picture-in-picture functionality -- both features usually reserved for more traditional tee vees. Also notable is that TI's solution requires far less buffer memory to get DVR working than other solutions, resulting (hopefully) in cheaper handsets. The software and hardware are available immediately to manufacturers for integration, setting the stage for retail devices some time in 2007; with any luck, that'll line up nicely for US entrants in the DVB game to get rolling.

We all know that Qualcomm likes to play up its market dominance everywhere possible -- and we also know they've taken some heat for it in Europe -- so it comes as little surprise to us that would-be CDMA competitors in the South Korean market are raising a fit. Texas Instruments and Broadcom have appealed to South Korea's Fair Trade Commission, alleging unfair practices by Qualcomm in bundling its CDMA chipsets with application processors. Presumably, the argument is that manufacturers should be allowed to mix and match chipsets without taking a hit on cost and without losing their relationships with suppliers, and since Qualcomm lays claim to portions of virtually every wireless standard -- not just IS-95 and CDMA2000 proper -- the implications of this are fairly far-reaching. Qualcomm's Korean offices have been raided by investigators in the past on similar allegations so we're not terribly confident this tussle will change their attitude, but we can dare to dream.