Broadcom has just revealedd that it’s sampling a new chip that will be LTE capable. The new chip, codenamed BCM21892, will be more compact and more energy efficient compared to prior Broadcom chips. It’s speculated that Broadcom created these chips in order to compete with Qualcomm in terms of processor, modem, and connectivity combo chips. A little friendly competition is a great way to increase innovation.
Broadcom’s latest LTE chip is said to take up 35% less space than its other chips. Also by being smaller than the other chips, the Broadcom LTE chip is also much more energy efficient, with up to 25% battery life savings. This is great news for many users who suffer from poor battery life.
The Broadcom chip supports LTE-Advanced 150Mbps Downlink speeds with 50Mbps Uplink speeds. It is compatible with almost any 3GPP LTE frequency band and also supports carrier aggregation for both LTE and WCDMA. It is compatible with WCDMA HSPA+ speeds of up to 42.2Mbps, and also supports GSM/EDGE. It supports VoLTE and is backwards compatibility with 3G calls over WCDMA and GSM, with VoLTE calls saving 40% more power compared to WCDMA calls.
The BCM21892 isn’t expected to go into production until 2014, but when that happens, we can expect a flurry of changes to smartphones and tablets alike. We will be seeing slimmer smartphones and tablets. We should also be seeing smartphone devices that last more than 6 hours on 1 charge.
[via SlashGear]
