Parts List

[Da_Blitz]

Well i have just been doing some research into the chipsets we can use. as you may knom i mant to use as few manufacturers as posible. the reasoning behind this is two fold, it makes things simpler and if we can get one part in small quantities then it is likly we can get several differnt chips from them in small quantities

now that thats out of the way, i have some corrections for some of the hardware, it has been stated that there is an upper limit on the flash and how much we can have in the system, this is untrue. it turns out we can have more but the interface the requires "glue" or in other words extra circutry. what this means is there is a posibility to use the 32Gbit flash chips that samsung has on thier website

one thing i have looked into is the current situation with the DDR RAM, i have made some intresting discoveries with regards to this and have decided to go back to using mobile DDR RAM only instead of offering the normal ram as well. this puts a cap on the upper limit the design will have, effectivly limiting it to 256MB (4 chips) the reasoning behind this is that the 1Gbit chips were twice the size of 2x 512Mbit chips and consumed more power, the funny thing is that depending on how it was wired up 2x 512Mbit would consume more power, however we would need 8x chips to hit 512MB. this may sound wierd to go to the solution that has the potential to chew more power but with a couple of tricks it can be made to use as much power as the 1Gbit chip

we do this by using 32 bit chips rather than 16 bits, with the 16 bit chips we would have them in parrallel to make a 32 bit bus to keep the performance up. instead we will have the chips one after each other so that unused chips can be put in a low power state. now this iswhere the low power chips are really good, unlike thier PC targeted cousins they can be put into an ultra low power state where they dont refresh thier memorey contents, the power consumption in this state would barley light an LED. unfortunattyl i dont think we will be able to take advantage of tis feature due to linux's cacheing system and how linux allocates memorey (basically we would need to defragment the memorey to try and use as few chips as posible)

the other advantage the mobile chips have is that thier normal power requiremnts for most tasks are lower than normal chips, when not acsessing the contents of one of the chips it can be put into a low power state saving power blah blah ... you get the point.

Now at this point you are all probelly thinkin, "well he is talking about ram and power why didnt he put it in that post about saving power by turning off LED's" well here is where i start talking about the design decisions behind which chips i have selected.

first up is the HDMI chipset. now this is a bit contravesal as it includes encryption but what you porbelly dont know is that its backwards compatible with DVI, however it is most likly compatible with VGA (even with an adaptor) so a second connecter will have to be put somewhere. thu adavantag the HDMI gives us is that it transmits both videa and audio, meaning we will be able to put that 7.1 chipset that has been mentioned to geed use, it also supports SPDIF which has been asked for.

this chip is great for us because it takes a VGA signal and gives out a HDMI compatible signal, it handles the encryption and everything else, as far as i can tell all we need is a key and perhaps not even that (besides you could always "clone" the key from your HDMI DVD player) the funny thing is because we have the chipset bieng fed by a vga signal we can route that to a connector and have good old VGA support. nice and simple no software required.

next we come to bluetooth, part of my "minimum spec". as i have said i wont to use a enhanged data rate chip, the reasoning behind this is that it is lower power. the anoying thing about this is that it needs an RF shield which means more things to manufactuer. the solution, buy a prebuilt module from infeon that has the RF shield built into it. nice and samll and is basically an "attach an antenna" design that also offloads part of the processing (up to HCI it says)

now for another explanation of some of my design decsions. i am trying to use single chip solutions to reduce the cost, both in terms of cash and board space (mostly board space). lukily for us neally ever second generation chipset for every RF protocal you can think of has a single chip solution.

back to where the story left off. i know i am running out of serial ports (async and sync (SPI and ttl rs232)) however does anyone fancy a gps reciver, i have found a single chip solution that looks very nice and also reminded me that phones are supposed to come with GPS so that you can be tracked by "emergency services" [begin silent wisper] or the CIA/NSA [/end silent wispering]. now i would like to be as complient as posible so i might have to include a chipset like this, however we are running linux so i recomend you setit up to tell them you are on the moon . more seroslly thogh it would not be hard to make it report a location under user control if you are that scared about it, and it would nicly round off this design

ok the next one we have is very very nice, infeon also make phone chipsets based on arm up to 250Mhz. not bad at all, the advantage is that this thing has serial ports on it and can help us extend the IO of the iMX3. it can also be used to offload part of  the processing of whatever we desire as well as allowing the phone to work without the iMX3. it supports multiple antennas and HSDPA so we can get stupidly high download speeds. We could build a PDA around it if we needed

the problem is that nearly everything is a single chip solution so it will be hard to find a chipset without the ability to hook up a screen and keypad. it does mean that if we needed to we could have 4 SD card slots . i am thinknig that this should be connected to 4 buttons and the mcrophone/speaker as well as a gpio line from the iMX3, when the iMX3 drives the line high the chip knows that the iMX3 should make all the descions otherwise pickup the call when the button is pushed, i would also connect the secondary screen to this processor as it would mean that we could display the incoming number when the iMX3 is unavlabile to do an adress lookup.

this is by no means complete, it still requires alot of thenking on how to design the solution, the actuall problem hasent even been outlined yet (i wiill leave it until we have all the hardware decided)

i am also thinking of micron for the actuall image sensor, how many mega pixels do we want?

flash is flash, i am thinking of using samsung beacuase of the insane denisities they have

anyway hera are the links to the hardware i have been talking about:
http://www.infineon.com/cgi-bin/ifx/portal...ageTypeId=17099
http://www.infineon.com/cgi-bin/ifx/portal...ageTypeId=17099
http://www.infineon.com/cgi-bin/ifx/portal...ageTypeId=17099
http://www.samsung.com/products/semiconduc.../K4X51323PC.htm
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconduc...Flash/index.htm
http://www.micron.com/products/cmos/

[speculatrix]

Linear Technology have created a very useful power control chip that takes in 6 - 40V (e.g. from firewire or external power supply), or a regulated 5V from USB, charges a LiIon battery and provides power for the actual device... it will seamlesly switch between power sources, so it makes powering a portable device a doddle. Part LTC4089 or LTC4089-5.

http://www.linear.com/pc/productDetail.do?...78,C1089,P21672

[speculatrix]

For audio devices, Micronas have some very sophisticated multi-channel devices with built-in DSP functions:
http://www.micronas.com/products/by_functi...ex.html&l=71987

they have a new "MAP-M" device which is described as a dsp + digi+ ana system on a chip

[Da_Blitz]

more than likly we will have a linear devices chipset in there, the MAP chip seems intresting, it offers more outputs than some of the other chips i have seen as well as making them more flexible. i dont belive the DSP will be of much use without someone willing to write firmware but it could be nice for a bounty

back to the charger, sounds nice but we will need another one as well as it is likly that we will need 1.8v 2.5v 3.3v and 5v for usb

well back to the music chip i havent heard of them which is also a bad thing. that means i havent seen thier chips avalible from comman distributors which might mean they are hard to get, however i am intreseted in thier single chip dvb-t tunners, but this is still a function better served by USB unless there is board space (you dont want it then dont get it soldered on)

The MAS (http://www.micronas.com/products/by_function/mas_35xyh/product_information/index.html) chip looks promising with its inbuilt decoding and mixing of AC-3 and dts as well as spdif input/output/bypass and i2s interface, ithe other chips are intresting in that they can work without firmware, the firmware is just for aditonal features the others have built in bassadjustment and the usual other features in ROM which is nice, get an audio file or two on board and it is quite posible that we could see some nice plugins (i am hoping for the decoding like tho other chip but i belive it will most likly be effects related)

in facti think i just found a distributer. more info latter. whoever i would like to hear somenes comments on having a DSP unit in this thing considering that there will most likly be no extra stuff unless you buy it from the chip maker or write it yourself

[speculatrix]

FYI, Ironwood do all kinds of interesting adaptors for prototyping, such as BGA sockets - quite useful when you're prototyping and need to replace a blown SDRAM bga device!

https://www.ironwoodelectronics.com/

[Ferret-Simpson]

I'd like to make a point.
Now that I have  PDA-Phone, making it so that the phone can operate separately from the PDA seems like kind of a stupid idea. No offense.

To accept a call, you first have to know that there IS a call. This means a ringtone. That needs the OS and the daemon. To even connect to the network, if you're on a contract, or keep more than about $15 of credit on your PAYG phone at any time WITHOUT PIN protecting the MicroSIM, You've either got a very good and complex reason, or you're pretty thick.

To enter the PIN, you need either a full keypad, or to do it from the OS, like with Windows Mobile on the Universal. . . Since we're not having a full PhoneChip-controlled keypad, there's no point in making it possible to recieve the calls you can't hear without activating the PDA.

It's a good idea in theory, but it's a bit of an x86 to do in practice. The first o2 XDA (HTC Wallaby) could do this, and the Phone chip could control the LCD accordingly. They haven't bothered in the later versions, so they much have had a good reason why. I think, honestly. . It's more important to get a decent set of open source tools for phones, something that does currently not exist. . Than worry about a feature that is to be honest. . a bit complex needing time and thought that would be better spent on other areas.

All in one shielded Bluetooth? Fantastic. Don't suppose it's EMP proof? XD GPS? Good idea, I'd use it since I'm just starting Geocaching. If no-one else wants it, lose it. You can get a Bluetooth GPS for £40 these days.

256MB RAM, yeah, that's cool. Current trend is for 128mb so 256 still keeps us ahead. Not to mention it's DDR not the usual SDRAM.

The Camera? What's the max that the dedicated bus can handle? The 3.2MP sensor in the N73 is nice, but then I'm happy with the 1.3MP in the Universal.

2MP if you can get it and it'll fit on the Bus, 1.3MP otherwise. 3.2 is a bit excessive when we'll be using it for 3G-Videophone and Video-over-IP aswell. Hail UMTS2100!

The HDMI chipset looks good, I'm continually plugging my Zaurus and my Uni into my VCR (I have a complicated home cinema system that centres around a VCR) and playing music with it, so a HDMI port makes my life for Video playback alot easier (Yeah, my DVD player just broke.)

[Da_Blitz]

actually the ability to make a call without the cpu is a saftey feature, i belive its a requirement that any phone can dial 000, 911, 119 or any other emergency phone number as long as there is a connection to any cell phone tower, it dosent matter how much credit you have or if you dont get covereage with your provider, as long as there is a signal, also some phones never go below 10% on thier battery so that they can make an emergency call. this all works even if you have stuffed up the PUK code

actually we can quite easily make the gsm chip handel the phone stuff, you connect all of that stuff to the gsm chip and write the firmware to control it, then have the main CPU bo able to control it as well, if the main CPU is off (we can tell by using an IO pin) then the GSM processor takes over all of the functionallity (basically reciving a call and making one) sure you dont get the nicefeatures such as who is calling but i dont use them and people did survive without them
dont forget that it is posible to have 2 devices listening to the keypad at the same time

jurys out on the camera, we will see if it stays in the final design

[Ferret-Simpson]

If we're connecting up to the full keypad then go for it! And if we keep the external "Samsung" screen on the back then we can still show caller phone number, and the number we have dialled, and the Pin Code request. .  etc.

Jury out on the camera? Ok, I don't know what that means 100%, but I think they should remember that it's pretty much a requirement for a 3G phone that it can do VideoCalls. . . Otherwise there's not much point in it being 3G (Yes, I know about the Data speed, and I only use 3G for videocalls XD Data costs too much.)

[Da_Blitz]

i have always thoght that video aclls were a bad idea, how do you keep the camera still?

anyway it means that the camera is undecided, and looking at bieng droped

[adf]

. to be honest I'm not that keen on the camera to begin with.  Video calls aren't an issue for me, and mostly phone cams (due to tiny lenses) take crappy pictures.  A cheap usb pencam can do as well or better, and the cameraless phone/pda would be banned from fewer places (not to suggest that my pda goes tohigh security or high profile places, just pointing out a trade off)
At any rate,  it is power, durability useability and a good OS I'm looking for ( the penguin would be a  novelty for this alone) and that stuff seems covered so far

[Ferret-Simpson]

The camera oesn't have to be perfectly still. Slight movement isn't a serious problem on a CIF resolution 10FPS video call. It's designed so that Bodly Language, Facial features etc can be seen via the other end. Using a USB webcam, would it still be possible to make videocalls? Believe it or not, Since they're the same price on my Tariff, I videocall as much or more as Voicecall, defiantely more when I'm in a well-covered UMTS area. It's much less impersonal than a voicecall is, even though video calls are hardly likely to win you an Oscar for best picture quality.

If it gets dropped it gets dropped, nothing I can do about it. XD

[Da_Blitz]

mm, i do hate calling people to begin with, and i convey more infomation through tone than body language

im happy to use a webcam instead, i am aiming more for desktop replacment or mini laptop than phone type features, thats why there is the enphisis on data transfer (EDGE, HSPDA, UTMS)

[Da_Blitz]

just came across some more info, turns out freescale make a wifi chip, i havent seen it but i hope they still make it

link: http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS4915836559.html

[Ferret-Simpson]

So. . You're an Anthropologists Nightmare, or an Anthropology Student's dreamboy?

If a USB webcam can be used by the phone as a video source for 3G videocalling then I'm happy for it to be left off.

Data transfer over GSM is less of a concern for me, and probably for anyone who isn't rich and who has looked at the rates charged by their Cell network.

£3 a megabyte? Maybe in an emergency, say if the rest of my accesspoints are down, or to do a quick websearch while very AFK.

The point of a phone is to call, If I want the internet 80% of the time I'll be within range of TheCloud, or at home. 99.999 percent of the time when I'm out, it's not urgent enough to necessit spending a ridiculous amount on browsing for it.Targeted for internet-use is probably a bad plan. You may not like convergent technology, but most people do, and it does have it's advantages. Zaurus replacement First, Phone Second, xG handheld browser.  .465th.

[adf]

So. . You're an Anthropologists Nightmare, or an Anthropology Student's dreamboy?

If a USB webcam can be used by the phone as a video source for 3G videocalling then I'm happy for it to be left off.

Data transfer over GSM is less of a concern for me, and probably for anyone who isn't rich and who has looked at the rates charged by their Cell network.

£3 a megabyte? Maybe in an emergency, say if the rest of my accesspoints are down, or to do a quick websearch while very AFK.

The point of a phone is to call, If I want the internet 80% of the time I'll be within range of TheCloud, or at home. 99.999 percent of the time when I'm out, it's not urgent enough to necessit spending a ridiculous amount on browsing for it.Targeted for internet-use is probably a bad plan. You may not like convergent technology, but most people do, and it does have it's advantages. Zaurus replacement First, Phone Second, xG handheld browser.  .465th.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=141154\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Noooooooo!!!!   I just got unlimited gsm (at dialup spedds, I admit) for $25 us per month.  gsm data tranfer is definitely a big deal for me. I could live with out it (in fact I do, as I haven't yet got my voq to talk to my Z--time constraints, in part) but it would be very nice not to have have to.