Originally published June 26 2005
Cells phones could take over MP3 player functions
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
This article in Electronic Engineering Times questions whether stand-alone MP3 players like Apple's popular iPod have a chance against the cell phone's increasing functionality to take pictures, play and download music, and make phone calls.
Everybody agrees that MP3 technology is going to stay around for a while due to its success and growth.
Will it remain an independent device, generating millions of dollars for Apple and other OEMs?
Or will cellular phones swallow the MP3 functionality in the same way they swallowed the "just for fun"-use digital camera, leaving little room for standalone MP3 players?
It was clear that next year cell phones will try to do even more than they do today, including delivering music.
Consequently, and as early as 2006, the independent MP3 device manufacturers (led today by Apple) might be forced to think differently.
Technical hurdles Three technologies will have to be further developed to move MP3 capabilities into a cellular phone.
First, storage capacity needs to be increased-within a smaller form factor.
There is currently a trade-off between using flash memory technology and micro drives.
Micro drives are great for mass storage, capable of exceeding 40 Gbytes.
But the power consumption and size are relatively high compared to the rest of the mobile phone.
Such devices from companies like Texas Instruments or Qualcomm are different from those of an MP3 encoder/decoder such as that offered by SigmaTel.
This is an interesting approach and not an easy one, considering that the same device also integrates all the audio codec functionality on board.
On the other hand, TI's Omap2420 relies on an external power-management chip.
This approach makes sense, since a cellular phone is a more complex product than an MP3 player, having additional features that require more stringent power control.
At first glance, it seems as if the Omap2420 or a Qualcomm MSM65xx processor would be able to do the job of the SigmaTel STMP3520B, requiring only minor changes and reuse of their powerful, integrated DSPs.
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