Believe it or not, this is far from the first we've heard of bringing high-def video to cellphones, and it's not even the first application to dabble in mobile 1080p. Still, we'll take all the innovation we can get in this space, and when the real Touch HD ever arrives, we'll be ready and waiting with Full HD capabilities. Announced at ISSCC 2009 in San Francisco, Renesas Technology is showing off an application processor that enables handsets to process 1,920 x 1,080 resolution video at 30 frames-per-second; the processor's core has a maximum operating frequency of 500MHz and supports MPEG-4 AVC / H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video formats. There's no telling when the 6.4- x 6.5-millimeter chip will be available en masse, but we need the HTCs of the world to get us a 1080p phone and a retina implant or two to read 0.2-size fonts before it even matters.

You can just tell from the wording in Broadcom's latest press release that it's still beaming from the late September court ruling involving it and Qualcomm, as we've never seen any one company so excited about a piece of silicon. The BCM2049 combo chip is built on 65-nanometer technology and combines Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and an FM transceiver in one convenient place. Obviously, the chip is being aimed at up and coming music phones, and it also features SmartAudio voice processing, Bluetooth audio streaming and an FM transmit function that will surely be next to worthless in mid- to large-size cities. Whoever made it onto Broadcom's early access list can get samples now, but you'll have to bypass the bouncer in order to get pricing.

Okay, look, whether you adore or despise the iPhone, it's pretty hard to make a cohesive argument that it's slow or lags its competitors in offering the "full Internet." Somehow, though, a pair of Intel execs at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei this week have whipped up a whole spiel based on the shaky claim that the iPhone's a dog for processing power and isn't capable of offering a rich Internet experience, going on to suggest that ARM architecture is to blame for the nasty pickle Apple's gotten itself into. Here's the best part, though: until only very recently, Intel itself was a huge player in the ARM game with its XScale line, now owned by Marvell. Isn't it too soon to harsh on a technology you so heavily bought into, guys? Of course, the moral of the story -- if you're buying the execs' line, anyway -- is that the iPhone wouldn't suck if they'd gone with an Intel stack, which they claim is a good two years ahead of the best that ARM has to offer. Said Intel's Pankaj Kedia, pressing on with the smack talk: "I know what their roadmap is, I know where they're going and I'm not worried." Of course, knowing the roadmap inside and out gets a little easier when you're a ginormous ARM licensee.

[Thanks, Renai L.]

Remember how the BlackBerry Thunder (RIM's rumored touchscreen device) was said to possibly come LTE-ready? An eye-brow raiser for sure since the US networks won't deploy LTE until 2010. Nevertheless, here's how it could be done. ASOCS and Fujitsu just announced what they are calling the "world's first wireless Multicomm processor." The system-on-chip can run up to three wireless air interfaces such as GSM/EDGE/GPRS, WiFi, HD Mobile Digital TV, and GPS concurrently. Better yet, device manufacturers "using ASOCS ModemX technology can ship a single-chip mainstream MultiComms baseband solution in parallel with LTE development and later add LTE as a low-risk software upgrade." Get that? LTE or pretty much any other wireless service added via software update. Hot damn!


[Via Thumb Report]

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.

If we can look for a moment beyond the Playstation 3's wallet-busting, shortage-creating, timeline-stretching ways, Toshiba would like us to envision a world where a wide variety of devices are powered by variants of the superconsole's Cell processor. Sony's obviously been eating up an overwhelming majority of the chip's publicity leading up to the PS3's launch, but Toshiba played (and continues to play) a major role in the Cell's development, and they're touting that a beefer 65-nanometer version of the chip will launch in 2007, a scaled back midrange version in 2008, and a mobile variant by 2010. No word on what sort of functionality is planned for the 2008 and 2010 models -- or just how scaled back they'll be -- but for Toshiba's sake, we wish them a smoother launch then the Cell-powered devices (ahem) we've seen thus far.

[Via Mobile Magazine]