A small company coming out of stealth mode at MWC this week is making some pretty wild promises about its new silicon -- and phone manufacturers must be buying the hype, because several have apparently have signed their names on the dotted line. The California start-up, Audience, is showing a 2.7 x 3.5mm chip that it claims uses some pretty wild algorithms to go beyond existing technologies like Motorola's CrystalTalk to reduce outgoing and incoming noise on calls by up to 25 decibels, enough to significantly reduce or entirely eliminate the sound of trains and yappy morons at Metro stops, car traffic, and loud music. The firm didn't disclose who its manufacturer partners were, only saying that there'd be further announcements later in the year. What's tha-- huh? No! We said, THERE'D BE FURTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS LATER IN THE YEAR.

[Via New York Times]

Hot on the heels of its dual-3G Gobi chip comes a new trio of units from Qualcomm that cram a modem, multi-band RF transceiver, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, FM radio and GPS capabilities into a 12- x 12-millimeter package. The units support UMTS, HSPA and EV-DO (depending on which you select), and there's also an ARM11 CPU that hums along at up to 600MHz for processing applications. Furthermore, each chip can handle a 5-megapixel camera, VGA display and TV output, and in case you hadn't guessed, they're all fabricated using 45-nanometer technology. No word on where exactly we'll see these used, but samples are scheduled to ship out in Q4 of next year.

[Via PhoneScoop]

In technology, speed is almost universally the enemy of power, and that rule certainly holds true in the world of cellular data standards. You heard it from His Steveness himself -- one of the main reasons we don't have a 3G iPhone on store shelves is because he isn't happy with battery life on HSDPA chipsets yet (consumers' opinions be damned, apparently), and in general, runtimes on 3G handsets large and small flag their 2G cousins, sometimes by a significant margin. Happily, the wiz kids at NTT DoCoMo are on the case, crafting Super 3G / LTE chipsets on 65nm dies capable of burning through 200Mbps at "sufficiently low power consumption" for mobile use. There's still no word on when NTT DoCoMo (or anyone else, for that matter) will be launching a commercial network at LTE speeds, but the company's hailing this latest batch of chips as a "milestone" on that journey -- and let's be honest, odds are good that Japan's gonna be rocking this stuff years before the rest of us anyhow.

[Via PhoneMag]

Apart from Verizon, it seems that carriers and manufacturers alike have kept a pretty steady stance on Qualcomm's far-from-over spat with Broadcom -- and in light of the most recent ruling allowing Qualcomm customers to ship products containing its chips, that stance may be paying off. HTC is the latest major manufacturer to reaffirm its relationship with the chip maker and patent holder extraordinaire, saying that it intends to release ten new models sporting Qualcomm innards by year's end. Big man Peter Chou himself chimed in on the issue, proclaiming "we are pleased to have a close strategic relationship with Qualcomm and look forward to bringing continued industry-changing devices to market." 'Course, you won't be bringing those industry-changing devices to the US if the court system ultimately rules against your bedfellow, Peter. Just thought you should know.

Qualcomm -- a company that's arguably more used to suing than being sued -- isn't finding much luck in its protracted quest to avoid a Broadcom-led ban of its 3G hardware from coming into the States. Following a recent denial of its motion to stay the ban in the court system, the President of The United States himself (or his administration, anyway) has swooped in to render an executive judgment, and it ain't looking any better for Qualcomm. Saying that the importance of protecting IP rights outweighs the inconvenience of the ban, the Bush folks have stood by the ITC's decision to impose the ban in the first place, making it seem all that much smarter now for Verizon to have sidestepped the whole ordeal and paid Broadcom itself. Barring any last minute antics, the ban gets enforced starting tomorrow.

Wireless handsets are becoming better gaming machines, although we're not seeing PSP-level playability yet on that slim-n-fast handset just yet. Toshiba, though, may want to change that -- and it's announced that a new 3D LSI chip that can render 100 mega-polygons per second to take mobile gaming and realism to the next level. As such, Toshy's new "TC35711XBG" chip is slated to be available to OEMs and ODMs in October. With 38 times the performance of existing solutions, built-in shading and reflectivity and WVGA support, we're chomping at the bit to see what this brings to the handset gaming table soon.

We've seen a bevy of pics featuring the iPhone's internals, but this set goes a step further and gets us into the action microscope-style. The gents at μblog sliced and diced some poor specimen and discovered that the chip contains both CPU and RAM, and while both have serial numbers, no brand markings can be made out. These pics are rather beautiful in some ethereal, deep-sea way, though aside from blowing them up and draping them on a wall, we're not too sure what else can be done with them. A reader pointed out that the images look like Legend of Zelda maps, though we're convinced they are definitely more Gauntlet-esque. Thoughts?

[Via Hacked Gadgets]

It seems the feds agree with us that a broad, sweeping ban on little morsels of 3G goodness is just flat-out uncool. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has turned the proverbial hourglass upside down, giving the US International Trade Commission two weeks to justify its partial halt on the import of devices equipped with 3G chipsets manufactured by Qualcomm. The spat originates over a Broadcom claim that Qualcomm's silicon infringes on its patents, and the court system is interested in hearing why the USITC thinks the ban should remain in place while Qualcomm appeals. Intellectual property issues aside, the ITC's cold-turkey ban stands to have a significant impact on carriers, handset manufacturers, and customers (that's us, by the way) as the selection suddenly dries up -- so at the very least, we're hoping everyone affected has a little more time to get their ducks in a row while the patent suit navigates the legal system (please?).

One of the most fragmented up and coming technologies in the mobile segment appears to be mobile TV. Europe's converging on DVB-H, Korea likes T- and S-DMB, Japan does one-seg, and the US seems to be moving toward MediaFLO. We can't necessarily expect a single device to support reception around the globe any time soon (if ever), but two in one is a good start -- and that'll soon be a reality thanks to a newly-developed chip from Sharp. The so-called VA3B5EZ915 (catchy name, if we do say so ourselves) supports both T-DMB and DVB-H while at the same time setting a new record for minimal power consumption. Theoretically, we guess this means travelers could get reception in both Europe and South Korea, though we're betting the more immediate application will be to unify Europe's few deployed T-DMB networks with the more popular DVB-H format without needing different lineups of phones for both. No word on when we might see the new chip in production handsets.

It seems the "set" part of "chipset" doesn't really apply to Qualcomm's latest solutions for WCDMA-based 3G handsets. Their QSC6240 and QSC6270 products -- for UMTS and UMTS / HSDPA, respectively -- integrate pretty much everything you need to make a phone on a single 65nm die (a radio transceiver, modem, processor, and power management subsystem, to be exact). Features include quad-band GSM, support for still cameras up to 3 megapixels, 72-tone polyphony, USB 2.0, 15fps video, and a veritable who's-who of codec support -- all in the manufacturer's choice of one 3G band from 800, 850, and 900MHz, and two from 1700, 1800, 1900, and 2100MHz. So if you were... you know, waiting for a single-chip solution to manufacture that UMTS phone you're planning, now's your chance.

[Thanks, TJ]

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.

We've got all sorts of incredibly tiny chips serving very unique purposes, but Kyocera has developed a 10- x 8-millimeter wireless LAN wafer that should feel right at home in those oh-so-cramped innards of certain diminutive mobiles. The FWMG0-03 module comes in at just 1.25-millimeters thick, and provides full support for 802.11b/g protocols; aside from mounting all of the circuity on a single side of the board, compactness has been aided by the low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) used, "resulting in an enhanced bending strength of 400 MPa which is approximately double that of the general LTCC." The chip draws just 0.85 milliwatts while in standby, 550 milliwatts when transmitting data, and 291 (802.11b) / 345 (802.11g) milliwatts when receiving. While we aren't sure which cellphone manufactures are vying for batches of these minuscule modules, we do know that a trio of operating voltages will be available when these start "volume production within 2006," and SDIO / SPI will be the supported interfaces.

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.

The rumors of Intel searching for a buyer were circulating, and it looks like they were true: Intel is selling off their mobile chip arm -- responsible for the quite successful XScale group of processors -- to Marvell Technology Group for $600 million. With chips making notable appearances in Treo, Blackberry and HTC devices, and pulling in a reported $250 million in revenue last year, we're still scratching our heads as to why exactly Intel would want to get rid of such a successful portion of their business. We'd think powering smartphones would be a priority for Intel right now, but the word is that Intel will have an option to receive $100 million of the purchase price in Marvell stock, so they might not be out of the game entirely. The chip unit currently employs 1,400 people, and Marvell plans to retain the "vast majority" of them, so this move shouldn't be too traumatic for most parties involved. We just hope they keep up with the R&D to get us smaller, faster, cooler and cheaper chips on the regular.