Product category:
Reference Designs
News Release from: Agere Systems | Subject: Truentry X125
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 26 September 2006
Handset platform integrates CD-quality
audio
Truentry X125 is billed as the industry's first platform for delivering much more affordable entry-level cellphones that feature compact disc-quality music.
Agere Systems has introduced the Truentry X125, the industry's first platform for delivering much more affordable entry-level cellphones that feature compact disc-quality music Agere's Truentry X125 platform consists of semiconductor system chips, software and a product development kit
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 24 Oct 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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The platform delivers: the entry-level segment's fastest processing speed - three times faster than most typical cellphones in use today; the most integration; and a bill of materials product cost as low as $30.
At such low cost points, the cellphone market has the potential to accelerate its growth rate substantially, particularly in developing nations such as India and China.
This higher speed benefit of the X125 platform makes downloading CD-quality music in an entry-level handset faster and easier.
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In addition, Agere's audio software and hardware electronics circuitry and processing technologies play integral roles in delivering sound quality comparable with industry-leading music players.
This allows converged music cellphones with higher music quality than today's typical entry-level cellphones.
Housed together with storage technology inside an entry-level cellphone, Agere's platform gives entry-level cellphone users unprecedented access to several hundred songs, which can be played at high-quality sound.
These entry-level platforms are performance and cost optimised for basic and voice-centric cellphone solutions - the largest and most rapidly growing segment of the cellphone market.
The second chipset in Agere's portfolio of Vision architectural platforms, the X125 hits the market at a time when music player capability is becoming a widely craved feature in the cellphone market.
By the year 2007, thirty% of worldwide mobile handset shipments are projected to handle full-track music playback.
"CD-quality music is rapidly becoming a 'must have' application for voice-centric and basic cellphones", said Denis Regimbal, Executive Vice President of Agere's Mobility Division.
"The challenge has been figuring out how to achieve high-quality music and other higher-end, multimedia features on cellphones while making them much more affordable".
"The X125 overcomes this hurdle and unleashes breakthrough musical quality on entry-level phones".
Agere's platform provides 12 features that reduce BOM costs, including: integrated speaker amplifier; integrated CD quality stereo; integrated polyphonic sound synthesiser; integrated Universal Serial Bus 2.0 On-the-Go controller with charging; integrated power management circuits to support all phone peripherals; and integrated battery charging circuits with overvoltage protection.
By providing a dedicated applications processor separate from the communications engine, the X125 platform reduces a cellphone manufacturer's product development costs and boosts overall processing speed.
The boosted horsepower provided by the dedicated applications processor enables several key benefits including: receiving phone calls or surfing the web while playing music; easing of applications software code development, test and verification for cellphone manufacturers because it doesn't impact the core communications engine; reducing power consumption because the more power hungry applications processor can be powered down the majority of time a phone is on; and freeing up cellphone manufacturers to focus on developing applications and man machine interfaces, without worrying about impacting the communications engine.
The X125 platform supports advanced audio processing including dynamic noise suppression, echo cancellation, full-duplex speakerphone and a stereo equaliser.
The X125's analogue baseband integrates the GSM/GPRS/Edge handset features such as power control, frequency control, analogue baseband processing, audio mixing and conversion, real time clock and power management.
Compliant with the Edge wireless standard, the platform processes three times the data capacity (236.8Kbit/s) and three times more subscribers than GPRS.
More cellphones are based on the GPRS standard, 46% this year, than any other, though the growth in Edge phones is projected to increase steadily during the next few years, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).
The X125 platform also includes Agere's proven and robust Edge protocol stack now shipped in more than 11 million phones including more than 50 different models.
The EDGE protocol stack was built on the back of Agere's robust GPRS stack, which has shipped in more than 135 million phones.
The X125 platform also includes Agere's OptiVerse Software Architecture that provides an extremely fast way to get a cellphone to market.
The architecture includes a system layer that provides a standard set of interfaces so cellphone manufacturers can focus their engineering efforts on value-added applications.
Spanning from the entry-level to the highest-end, cellphones range in price from about $40 to $350, according to Will Strauss, President of semiconductor market research company Forward Concepts.
Platforms for higher-end cellphones than the X125 have bill of materials costs much higher than $30.
Agere plans to start shipping the platform in production quantities in October 2006.
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