Texas Instruments Unveils OMAP44x Development Platform [New Mobile Phone Platform Hopes To Low Costs Of Mobile Phones, Runs Same Processor As iPad]

In case you haven’t noticed, but smartphones are expensive, really expensive, if bought without a telcom subsidy. Over the past few months, we’ve seen several companies unveil mobile phone development platforms that have the mainboard for the phone already developed, with the goal of lowering the cost of development for new smartphones. Now, Texas Instruments has entered that game.

The name of Texas Instruments’ new System-On-Chip platform is OMAP 4, and it looks to be a serious contender in the SoC race. ST-Ericsson had a good showing at MWC but that was a bit slimmed down and intended for sub-$150 phones. TI’s OMAP 4 packs all the features you’d want in a smartphone.

OMAP 4 will have support for ARM A9 processors, which is apparently, the same architecture of chip used in Apple’s own A9 chip for the iPad. TI claims that with their SoC and a ARM Cortex A9 processor, your mobile phone can provide stereoscopic (3D) 720p video at 30 fps per channel. It’s a bit interesting that we live in a world where 720p HD 3D can be put into a smartphone before 99% of the world has a 3D HDTV in their homes.

The OMAP 4 SoC will also support GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth, 3G and 4G/LTE connections on their mainboards. It will also have support for HDMI-out, which is something you don’t see much on mobile phones, but you do see a lot of on MIDs and PMPs. Considering how PMPs, MIDs and mobile phones have been converging in the past 10 years, it’s not totally shocking that we’ll start to see HDMI-out on mobile phones.

Naturally, you’ll have to wait a few months before you can except TI’s OMAP 4 SoC to start arriving in new phones. The unfortunate thing, if everything goes to plan, you shouldn’t even know you have a OMAP4 SoC in your phone, as the manufacturers like to keep that sort of thing quiet.