Motorola’s first iTunes phone looked lean at less than an inch in width when it was introduced last fall, but the SLVR L7, at 0.45 of an inch, cut that Z dimension almost in half.
The SLVR (Figure 1) is noticeably longer and wider than the ROKR (Figure 2) (4.5 x 1.9 inches versus 4.3 x 1.8-inches). But where the SLVR is larger in size, it is stylishly slimmer, lighter, and less expensive than its predecessor.
The SLVR and the ROKR both have a 1.9-inch, 176 x 220 TFT display capable of up to 262K colors. Both provide a VGA camera with video capture/playback, optional expandable memory and, of course, iTunes. Either model can hold approximately 7 hours of music, or about 100 songs.
The SLVR phone continues the thinner-is-better trend that Motorola launched with its "clamshell" RAZR (Figure 3) phone in 2004.
"Sixty percent of the world buys bar phones, and we wanted to give those buyers something as iconic as the RAZR was for clamshell buyers," said Steve Lalla, Motorola’s vice president and general manager for mass-market products. "Our objective was to redefine what a bar phone was—something cool, and showy; an object of desire to own."
To achieve that objective the SLVR not only had to be super thin, but it also had to project an image of quality and durability. And it had to be economical to manufacture.
Motorola’s first iTunes phone was based on Freescale Semiconductor's DSP56631 dual-core (130MHz Freescale DSP56600 DSP and 52MHz ARM7TDMI-S MCU) baseband processor and MC13777 quad-band GPRS front-end IC. Lalla said his team decided to stick with the DSP56631 for the SLVR, but went with a customized version that has 4Mb (128Kx32) of RAM and 1Mb (32Kx32) of ROM for the ARM7. The SLVR also includes Freescale’s MC13890 power management and user interface device. The front end consists of two chips from RF Micro Devices’ Polaris 2 TotalRadio Module—the RF6025 transceiver and RF3178 transmitter.
Other major components in the SLVR, according to David Carey, president of Portelligent, Inc., who has examined the inside of the SLVR, include an Imageon 2240 media processor (ATI Technologies), an Intel Stacked-CSP memory module containing a 32MB Intel NOR flash chip, and an 8MB Micron Cellular (pseudo-static) RAM. A Broadcom BCM2035 Bluetooth chip, which is mounted on a daughter card, includes an Epcos SAW front-end filter and a score of other passive components.
"Freescale’s architecture includes a digital baseband DSP and a separate controller core that also incorporates the analog baseband and the audio interface," said Carey. "It’s a mixed signal chip; a different partitioning from some other cell phone architectures."
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