Icera announces world's smallest HSPA+ voice and data platform for Android smartphones

BRISTOL, UK: Icera Inc., the soft modem company, announced that it is sampling the latest in its Espresso platform series, targeted at HSPA+ smartphones.

The Espresso450 comprises Icera’s latest baseband and RF technology and delivers quad band HSPA+ up to 28Mbps together with full quad band 2G/3G voice support functions in the industry’s smallest footprint, a tiny 700mm2.

Icera is already recognized as the performance leader in high speed cellular data technology, but the Espresso450 platform is the first to combine this with a complete radio interface layer for the Android operating system and full validated voice technology. As a result, phone manufacturers can now build products combining the world’s most powerful communications modem with their choice of the highest performance application processors to offer truly unique user experiences in the thinnest, lightest form factors, scaleable from 2G to 3G to 4G.

Stan Boland, president and CEO, Icera, said: "Icera has evolved quickly from its start-up phase to being established now as one of only two major vendors in the data-intensive mobile broadband chipset market, with Icera being famous for continuously offering the world’s highest performing chipsets. We are now taking the important step of applying this knowhow to the much larger smartphone market.

"We’re sure to produce the same results – transformation in user experience, much smaller form factors, new competitive cost points - and now with great voice quality too.”

Espresso450 uses Icera’s latest radio technology, the Livanto ICE9225 multi-mode transceiver and Livanto ICE8065 soft baseband processor. Implemented in low power 65nm CMOS technology, the ICE9225 radio delivers an unprecedented level of integration in a small 6x6 package.

ICE8065 comes in a small 7x7 package and is the latest in a new generation of 40nm soft baseband chips which runs all of the modem physical layer, protocol stack, voice codecs, echo cancellation, noise reduction and equalization in software. The result is that the Espresso450 platform delivers a high performance modem platform scaleable from 2G to 3G to 4G.

Icera’s entry into the smartphone market is set to drive a new wave of innovation and differentiation among smartphone manufacturers by allowing a new choice of selecting the best modem to partner with the best application processor without compromise. This permits super-fast product development cycles for new high performance phones which is a major factor for success in the fast-growing Android-based market.

Icera is engaged with leading application processor partners on pre-integration of the Espresso450 platform with the latest application processor platforms to accelerate the fast design of complete smartphones. Samples of first phones using Espresso450 will be showing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month and first products are expected to ship in late 2011.