Here I thought Qualcomm’s Gobi chip was impressive. Gobi is the one that supports both major 3G standards, EV-DO and HSPA, so your device isn’t tied to a particular data carrier or network. Sounds great, but that’s so yesterday. Tomorrow (well, next year to be honest) brings Qualcomm’s MSM8960 chipset. What’s so special about it? A handset with this chipset will support “CDMA2000, 1xEV-DO Rev. B, and Simultaneous Voice-Data Operation (SV-DO), as well as multi-carrier HSPA+ and LTE.”
So Qualcomm is pretty much covering the gamut of current and near-term wireless data connectivity, with the notable exception of WiMAX. Like Gobi, this approach should offer benefits to both consumers and device manufacturers. Consumers gain more freedom of choice, while manufacturers can design a single solution using one chip. That ought to reduce production and design times, not to mention adding some cost benefits. I’m not sure if I overlooked it, but I see no mention of GPS support on the MSM8960 platform. I know that Gobi offers GPS, so I wonder if that feature is dropped from this future offering.
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