Basic Smartphone Components

Question 1

What is the smartphone ecosystem?

Answer 1

• Content (Apps)
• OS (SW Platform)
• Device Maker (HW Platform)
• Carrier (Network)

Question 2

What does the processor contain?

Answer 2

• Microprocessor
• Microcontroller
• Digital Signal Processors
• Application Processors

Question 3

What is the difference between standalone processors and integrated application processor

Answer 3

CPU and GPU are separated units for standalone compared to integrated which has CPU, GPU, Caches, and DSP on the same chip

Question 4

What are radio combo chips consist of?

Answer 4

• Wifi
• Bluetooth
• NFC

Question 5

What are cellular baseband processor?

Answer 5

4G, 3G, GSM

Question 6

What are the sensors in smartphones?

Answer 6

• Ambient light
• Proximity Sensor
• 3-Axis Accelerometer
• 3-Axis Gyroscope
• Compass
• Barometer/Pressure
• Location: GPS

Question 7

What are key hardware components?

Answer 7

• Multi-core application processor
• Cellular baseband processor
• Radio combo chips
• Memory/Storage: Flash, SDRAM, MicroSD
• Cameras: camera-on-a-chip
• Display: LCD/OLED
• Touchscreen: capacitive multi-touch screen
• Sensors
• Battery

Question 8

What is the limitation of growth of smartphone’s computing power and functionalities?

Answer 8

Energy consumption

Question 9

What are the key attributes of mobile OS?

Answer 9

• Energy efficient
• Dealing with limited hardware resources
• Rich libraries and templates for easy software development

Question 10

What is the objective of smartphone research?

Answer 10

User Experience
- Ubiquity and Interoperability
- Deep personalization
Delightful and disappearing UI
Energy
- Energy Efficient
- Smart Parallelism
- Extreme Integration