Texas Instruments announced recently that, even though it reported better than expected chip sales during the fourth quarter of 2011, the company will shut down its plants in Texas and in Japan. Texas Instruments has seen an increased demand for its mobile chips but will close the two factories during the next 18 months while increasing its employee numbers at different plants. The move is an effort to cut costs, Reuters said. The company reported a fourth-quarter profit of $298 million, down from $942 milli...

Amazon could have a smartphone on store shelves by the fourth quarter of next year according to Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney. “Based on our supply chain check, we believe FIH is now jointly developing the phone with Amazon,” Mahaney wrote in a research note. “However, we believe that Amazon will pay NRE to FIH but the device and multiple components will actually be manufactured by Hon Hai’s TMS business group.” Additionally, Mahaney said that Amazon will likely use a Texas Instrume...

Brookstone announced a new device Monday morning that allows you to project images up to 50 inches diagonally onto any surface using your iPhone. It is called the Brookstone Pocket Projector for iPhone 4/4S by Texas Instruments DLP and I’ve spent the last week using it. I’m definitely impressed by the product, which slides onto an iPhone much like any other case, but is it worth the hefty $230 price Brookstone is asking? Read on for my review. (more…)

We recently caught up with George Martin, software product manager for Texas Instruments’ wireless business unit, to talk about the company’s recent big wins with Android, TI’s OMAP 5 platform, working with Microsoft on Windows 8 and more. As the mobile landscape continues to evolve at a much faster pace than the computer industry, there’s nothing more important than the processors that enable the amazing functionality in these devices. Where is one of the industry’s top chip mak...

Samsung Romania appears to have accidentally verified BGR’s exclusive report covering the Nexus Prime along with various specs. Romanian paper Ziarul Financiar recently mirrored parts of our report, stating that the Nexus Prime will sport a Super AMOLED Plus HD screen and will run Google’s new Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) operating system. Samsung Romania’s PR teem tweeted the story, which is a practice that is uncommon for official company Twitter accounts as such tweets are construed ...

Texas Instruments on Thursday unveiled its latest mobile processor, the 1.8GHz dual-core OMAP4470, from the annual Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan. The new CPU is destined for smartphones and tablets, and it features a power-sipping design that offers a variety of performance enhancements compared to older processors. According to TI, the OMAP4470 will deliver an 80% improvement in Web browsing performance, a 250% improvement in graphics performance, up to 200% more layered imaging and video compositio...

Just one week ahead of Mobile World Congress, U.S. electronics manufacturer Texas Instrument announced its next OMAP platform, OMAP 5.  The updated 5 platform utilized two Cortex-A15 cores that are capable of supporting 8GB of dynamic memory access while running at speeds of up to 2GHz per core. “The OMAP 5 processor includes individual, dedicated engines for: video, imaging and vision, DSP, 3D graphics, 2D graphics, display and security,” writes Texas Instrument. “The processor also incl...

Earlier today, Texas Instruments took the time to give us a comprehensive overview of some of its OMAP 4 projects. The OMAP 4 platform is incredibly powerful, with immense hardware acceleration providing a haven for offloading graphics and other traditionally CPU-intensive tasks off the actual processor. The company walked us through a number of development prototypes, and we got a chance to see some truly incredible innovation in the video conferencing and 3D-use arenas. Far from simply proof-of-concept craz...

Today, Texas Instrument announced a new, ARM-based, dual-core processor that has a lust-worthy specification sheet. The OMAP4440 processor, which is based on the Cortex-A9 MPCore, will have both cores clocked at 1.5GHz. The chip will provide a “1.25x increase in graphics performance, a 30 percent decrease in webpage load time, and a 2x increase in 1080p video playback performance.” The press release goes on to note that the new chip will support 1080p stereoscopic 3D, 1080p video conferencing...

Details on ARM’s next generation Cortex A-series processor — code named Eagle — have yet to be fully disclosed, but that hasn’t stopped Texas Instrument from letting us know they’ve licensed it. Via a press release, TI announced that it is, “the first company to partner with ARM in the conception and definition of the next generation ARM Cortex-A series processor core to be announced later this year.” Texas Instrument quips that they aim to, “raise the bar in hi...

According to a recent Digitimes article, the China-based Commercial Times is reporting Compal may be forced to delay upcoming shipments of smartphones to Palm. The source states:Shipments of Palm’s two smartphones will be delayed as Compal is waiting for Qualcomm’s new chipset solutions that will enable better performance, said the paper.Such a vague statement is bound to get the rumor mill churning at light speed as people interpret one of the smartphones to mean “Palm Pre”. Good news...

Aw man, another one? We guess so! Hot off the Vertu Signature S Design we manhandled yesterday, we’ve moved on to bigger and better things. We’re talking official Ferrari-licensed limited edition goods here, people. The Vertu Ascent Ti has actually been around for a little while, we did a hands on over a year ago, but the handset has been done up in Ferrari garb, and we’ve got the most precious Ti out of the Ferrari Ti family — Nero. Standard Vertu disclaimer applies: this isn’t ...