Posted on June 15, 2007, at 8:55 am .
Just when you thought DALSA might be doing some business with RIM, Tessera Technologies comes up with some pretty teeny cameras. Now that the Curve’s out, and the Pearl 2 en route, camera technology is of prime interest to RIM, and anything that saves as much room as Tessera’s OptiML WLC chip will raise a few eyebrows. On top of sheer size, manufacturing costs are cut significantly as well.
Using OptiML WLC technology, thousands of lenses are manufactured simultaneously on a wafer, and then bonded at the wafer level to create the optical element of the camera. The result is simplified assembly and up to 30% cost savings for the optical component of the camera module. OptiML WLC technology also reduces the size of the camera to a minimum, delivering up to 50% size reductions over conventional camera modules in camera phones today.
Posted on June 11, 2007, at 7:27 am .
Update! Gizmodo’s reporting that the Pearl 2 will be packing high-speed EV-DO Rev. A and be skinny to RAZR-like proportions. In addition their sources are saying we’re looking at a Q4 2007 release on Sprint.
Our buddy Jibi posted some Pearl 2 speculations on BGR over the weekend, stemming from some domain sleuthing akin to the Curve situation. Model numbers 8110, 8120, and 8130 are all on the plate. Jibi’s guessing that the 8110 will be a Pearl with an upgraded camera but no Wi-Fi, and the 8130 will be a Wi-Fi Pearl plus CDMA world phone action. As for the 8120, we’re looking at UMA (which is supposed to be called GAN, apparently), released with OS 4.3.0 and timed with T-Mobile’s other Wi-Fi handoff devices. All sounds like some pretty reasonable predictions – only time will tell if they hold.
