KTFT to Introduce New Phone
Samsung Electronics Develops WiBro Handset
China's First OLED Production Plant
Toppoly Optoelectronics to Merge with Philips' LCD Operation
Silicon Laboratories Announces One Chip Phone
Analog Devices Announces One Chip Transceiver Compliant with EDGE
Agilent Announces New CMOS Image Sensor
Panasonic Introduces 1GB miniSD Card

KTFT of South Korea is going to introduce an asymmetrical twist phone named Ever Twist (KTF-TR2000). The new phone has a unique design: when the upper folder portion is rotated 180 degrees, it does not cover the lower folder portion completely and the partially exposed keys on the lower folder can be used. The Ever Twist also adopted an OSD (On Screen Display) key. The 1.9-inch screen makes it easier to view photos, video and electronic books. The KTF-TR2000 features a 1.3 million-pixel CMOS camera and MP3 player function. See images at: http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news-10620-KTF-TR2000,+the+micro+phone.html [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Samsung Electronics of South Korea developed handsets compliant with WiBro, the Korean version of Mobile WiMAX. The company is going to exhibit the handset at the 2005 APEC IT Exhibition, held November 18-19, 2005 in Pusan, South Korea.

The newly developed models are a clamshell style, the H1000, and a PDA type, the M8000. The H1000 supports a 2.2-inch LCD and two cameras and the M8000 is a Smartphone with a small keyboard. Samsung plans to demonstrate WiBro connection at the exhibition in collaboration with Korea Telecom, which plans to launch the WiBro commercial service in spring 2006. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Beijing Visionox Technology and Tsinghua University of China announced that they began construction of an OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display production facility in Kunshan City, Jiangsu Province.

OLED displays offer low power consumption and in some applications such as cellular phones and MP3 players, OLED displays have begun replacing LCDs. According to Visionox and Tsinghua University, it will be the first OLED manufacturing factory in China.

The factory will have two manufacturing lines. The first line will be completed before the end of 2006 and the other line will be ready in 2008. Both lines will produce 1-3-inch multi-color and full color OLED displays targeted to cellular phones, MP3 players, digital still cameras and automotive displays. When completed, the two manufacturing lines will produce 20 million OLED displays annually.

Visionox says if the technologies and the market develop, they will consider expanding the line to produce 10-inch or larger full color OLED displays after 2008. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Toppoly Optoelectronics of Taiwan reached an agreement with Royal Philips Electronics to acquire their small to medium LCD panel operation, Mobile Display Systems (MDS). Toppoly specializes in small to medium size low temperature poly silicon TFT LCDs. Philips' MDS has been producing color STN LCD panels for cellular phones and has multiple big name handset producers as its clients.

The merger of the two will complement each other's technologies, manufacturing capabilities and customer bases. The new company will be named TPO. Toppoly will own 25.1 percent of the new company while Philips will own 17.5 percent. Toppoly belongs to Compal Electronics, a major Taiwanese notebook OEM manufacturer. Toppoly has Taiwanese digital still camera manufacturers, U.S. cellular phone manufacturers and PDA manufacturers as its clients. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Silicon Laboratories of Austin Texas began sample shipment of a package integrating an RF circuit and a base band processing circuit, the AeroFONE Si4905, supplied in a 12 mm x 12 mm BGA package. With the AeroFONE Si4905, cellular phone function can be achieved by adding 58 components including power amplifier, memory and passive components. The PCB area required for mounting components is 6.1cm2.

Compared to existing GSM/GPRS phones, component count will be reduced by 75 percent and the PCB area will be reduced by 65 percent. In addition to reduced component count, the new chip can use 4-layer PCB, which is cheaper than conventional 8-layer PCB. Silicon Laboratories says use of the AeroFone Si4905 enables reducing the manufacturing cost of a cellular phone by half. The company will begin volume production in the second quarter 2006.

An evaluation platform is currently available for $5000. The AeroFONE Si4905 integrates an RF transceiver circuit, digital base band processing circuit, analog base band processing circuit, power source management circuit and charging circuit. The company applied 0,13 micron CMOS processing technology.

"One chip" cellular phones are also available from Texas Instruments and Infineon Technologies. Silicon Laboratories' AeroFone Si4905 integrates a power source management circuit for the first time in the industry and offers a smaller footprint and reduced component count for cellular phones. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Analog Devices of the U.S. announced a single chip RF transceiver IC, the Othello-E, which supports GSM/GPRS and EDGE protocols. Currently, Analog Devices offers a dual chip solution for supporting the EDGE protocol. The new device can contain an RF circuit with an analog front-end function, which includes power amplifier, antenna switch and matching circuit, into a 2.1cm2 space. The Othello-E's footprint is 6 mm x 6 mm. 27 components are required for the RF circuit. It is a quad-band device supporting 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz and 1900MHz.

Texas Instruments, Infineon Technologies AG, and Silicon Laboratories offer products integrating an RF circuit and base band circuit into one chip using CMOS technologies.

Analog Devices has already begun sample shipment. The company plans to begin commercial production in early 2006. Analog Devices will showcase the Othello-E at 3G World Congress & Exhibition in Hong Kong November 16 - November 18, 2005. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Agilent Technologies of the U.S. announced a new CMOS image sensor which adopts the Enhanced Performance (EP) pixel architecture. The CMOS sensor, the Agilent ADCC-3960EP, has 1/3.3-inch optics with 1.3 million pixels. It reduced noise to 1/10 of the conventional CMOS sensors through the use of noise reduction circuits. In addition, by revising the 3D analysis of the pixel structure and optimizing the structure, Agilent minimized the image quality gap with CCD sensors. The device integrates a 10 bit AD converter and a real-time JPEG compression engine enabling vivid image capture that is closer to the true colors. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Panasonic, also known as Matsushita Electric Industrial, is going to introduce a new miniSD card, the RP-SS01GBJ1K, with 1GByte capacity for use in cellular phones and digital still cameras. It is expected to sell for about 13,000 yen ($118.18 @ yen 110/$US 1).

With a bundled adaptor, the RP-SS01GBJ1K can be used as a SD memory card. Theoretical maximum transfer throughput is 5MByte per second. The new miniSD card supports a copyright protection function. Panasonic plans to produce 10,000 cards a month. Images are available at: http://panasonic.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/jn051110-1/jn051110-1-1.jpg [M. Robertson, Portelligent]