Extending its line of sleek, small smart phone reference designs, Texas Instruments Incorporated announced its first complete EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) chipset and reference design. Utilizing the company´s industry-leading OMAPTM platform, TI is first to introduce a complete EDGE smartphone chipset and reference design, giving customers the ability to quickly and cost effectively deliver flexible EDGE-based smartphones, feature phones and PDAs, all within a footprint one-half the size of a business card. As with all OMAP chips, developers and software designers can re-use and build upon existing software.

With up to three times the data rate throughput of current GSM/GPRS devices, the TCS3500 chipset delivers the performance required to enable high-quality EDGE-enabled applications such as multimedia, gaming, camera functionality, and video. The TCS3500 chipset is the first of a portfolio of EDGE solutions TI is developing to allow customers to optimally address multiple market segments.

“With the evolution of GSM/GPRS to EDGE, and the rapid growth of the smartphone and feature phone markets, manufacturers and operators are demanding a broad portfolio of solutions to differentiate their products and services,” said Rick Kornfeld, vice president and general manager of TI’s wireless chipset business. “By leveraging the proven success of predecessor OMAP730-based GSM/GPRS reference designs, we are able to offer our customers a complete smartphone reference design highly integrated with all the components required to build full-featured handsets based on the EDGE standard.”