World's Smallest HSPA+ Voice & Data Platform for Android smartphonesannounced by Icera

Icera, the soft modem company, has announced it is sampling the latest in its Espresso platform series, targeted at HSPA+ smartphones. The Espresso 450 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 Espresso 450 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.

Espresso 450 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 Espresso 450 platform delivers a high performance modem platform scaleable from 2G to 3G to 4G.

Samples of first phones using Espresso 450 will be showing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month and first products are expected to ship in late 2011.