Comments on: Nokia Beats Apple to Compass-in-Phone

By: jaap

jaap — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:22:35 +0000

From picture 4 it seems to me that the magnet is added in the packaging phase.
It appears to float above the chip, same height as the bond wires.

By: Cian O Mathuna

Cian O Mathuna — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:42:26 +0000

Very interesting to see the evolution of what appears to be monolithic thin film magnetic processing on silicon CMOS. Are there any foundries offerring this type of process.

By: Kiyoko Brannick

Kiyoko Brannick — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:43:10 +0000

The processor chip is tagged as a little more recent model number but it and the GPU are most likely the same speed as the 3GS. The old Touch using the same CPU and GPU as the 3G was quicker. Apart from getting the clock speed turned up higher the Contact has much less software to run since it�s not a telephone. It should do more than any iPhone to this day in performance.

By: Jaap

Jaap — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:57:24 +0000

I’m curious about what is required for the logic, it seems like a lot of logic from the picture.
I’m not an electronic engineer, more on the fabrication side of things, but I would like to know what the requirements are for the logic, and how ‘dirty’ the signal from the Hall sensors are. Is it a simple AD convertor and is post-processing done on a central processor?
I would expect that the chip would only be activated if requied. How long does it take to analyze the signal and return a digital value of the orientation of the chip.

By: jared eldredge

jared eldredge — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:29:44 +0000

very informative article – i’m quite curious to see how the 73 differs from this model.