Nexus 6 teardown reveals Atmel MXT640T inside

Hailed as the iPhone 6’s brother from an Android mother, the time for Google’s Nexus 6 has arrived. As soon as the crew over at iFixit got their hands on the new device, which was developed in collaboration with Motorola, we knew what came next! The team dismantled the recently-unveiled phablet to offer a closer glimpse at its insides.

(Source: iFixit)

Catering to consumers’ appetite for larger displays, Nexus 6 boasts a 5.96-inch touchscreen and features a 2560 x 1440 AMOLED panel. in addition, it runs on Google’s new operating system, Android 5.0 Lollipop, and will be available in both 32GB and 64GB models.

The teardown revealed that the phablet packs 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM, a Snapdragon 805 SoC, various cellular components from Qualcomm, a 3220 mAh “non-removable” battery, as well as 13 MP rear-facing camera and a 2 MP front-facing camera.

(Source: iFixit)

After freeing the motherboard from the display assembly, iFixit spotted its lone IC: an Atmel MXT640T touchscreen controller.

(Source: iFixit)

And for those who frequently break or enjoy tearing apart their phones, you’re in luck. The flagship device received a repairability score of 7 out of 10. Interested in getting up close and personal with the Nexus 6? You can check out the entire step-by-step teardown here.

Phablet shipments will hit 1.5 billion in 2019

Writing for Business Insider, Tony Danova notes that the phablets — defined as a smartphone with a screen between 5-inches and 7-inches — will surpass 1.5 billion shipments by 2019. With that, the devices will soon account for 59% of total global smartphone shipments, up from an expected 35% in 2014. As a result, it is believed phablets will outnumber tablet sales three to one over the next five years.

According to a new report from BI Intelligence, the market has been migrating towards phablets over the past few quarters, and that shift is expected to continue as phablets become the go-to smartphone form factor. “While this is a broad definition,” Danova notes, the advantage is that it captures one of the most important trends in the smartphone market in the last couple of years — the phenomenal popularity of devices such as the Samsung Galaxy line.

As the emerging trend continues to favor larger device screens, phablets are expected to remain the fastest-growig smartphone category through 2019, growing at a CAGR of 27%, nearly double the 15% compound rate for the smartphone market over the same period. Phablets have also accelerated the trend of consumer time spent on visually-oriented social media and messaging apps, with the report revealing that more than half of activity on phablets is tied to social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Cognizant of this trend, Atmel recently expanded its popular maXTouch T lineup of touchscreen controllers with the mXT640T, mXT336T and mXT224T. The new devices offer a comprehensive set of features, supporting next-gen mobile devices such as smartphones, phablets and mid-size tablets with touchscreens ranging from 3.2”-8.3.” With 640 nodes, the mXT64xT series of devices are the world’s most comprehensive capacitive touchscreen controllers designed for next-generation smartphones. The mXT640T supports screen sizes up to 6.2″ with a 1.0 mm passive stylus, up to 5.0 mm thick multi-finger glove sensing, and superior moisture touch performance, while also supports up to 7″ for Windows® 8 compliant devices, and up to 8″ for Android smartphones, phablets and tablets.

“The new T Series enables superior touch performance with single-layer sensors as compared to the most recently announced solutions. Simply put, the latest devices will enable Atmel to extend its industry leadership in the large-screen market to the smartphone and phablet spaces,” an Atmel engineering rep recently explained.

 

Atmel ships second-gen maXStylus Active Pen


Atmel is now shipping its second generation Windows 8.1-certified maXStylus in volume quantities. The new capacitive active stylus controller delivers a near-perfect ‘pen-to-paper’ writing experience on a touchscreen with superior responsiveness.

According to Shar Narasimhan, Atmel Sr. Product Marketing Manager of Touchscreen and Stylus Products, touchscreens ranging from 6” to 15.6” using Atmel’s maXTouch controllers can seamlessly support maXStylus without additional hardware components or design changes.

“These solutions include our recently launched maXTouch T Series devices ranging from the mXT640T to the mXT2952T single-chip solutions. This integrated solution eliminates the need for an additional sensor layer, lowering overall system costs for the OEM without compromising performance,” Narasimhan explained. “The complete maXTouch and maXStylus solution has achieved Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 certification and can be [easily] integrated into [Microsoft] Windows 8.1 or [Google’s] Android OS.”

Narasimhan also noted that Atmel’s Stylus heralds a new era of interaction with smart devices as users seek a more intuitive experience on their smartphones, tablets, notebooks and Ultrabooks.

“These smart devices also require richer feature sets to differentiate their products,” he said. “We deliver the closest pen-to-paper experience available today for users writing with a capacitive active stylus on a touchscreen. Our next-generation maXStylus pen is currently in mass production with tier 1 OEMs and will be available on store shelves in early Q1.”

Today, competing active stylus solutions compromise the noise immunity and power levels of a system as the touchscreen struggles to distinguish between the pen and the user’s fingers. This degrades the overall system power consumption, signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio and pressure sensitivity resulting in missing strokes, dropped touches, poor linearity and an overall inferior user experience. 

With Atmel’s integrated solution, the maXStylus mXTS200 uses intelligent scanning and synchronization with the touch controller to deliver a higher SNR ratio. This results in the best capacitive stylus writing experience available on the market today – without comprising the touch controller’s noise immunity and power consumption of the overall system.

In addition, the maXStylus mXTS200 features intelligent palm rejection and the capability to switch from writing with a stylus to using both large and small fingers, without degrading capacitive touchscreen touch performance.

Interested in learning more? You can check out Atmel’s official maXStylus site here.

Atmel’s maXTouch T hits next-gen smartphone and phablet markets

Atmel has expanded its popular maXTouch T lineup of touchscreen controllers with the mXT640T, mXT336T and mXT224T. The new devices offer a comprehensive set of features, supporting next-gen mobile devices such as smartphones, phablets and mid-size tablets with touchscreens ranging from 3.2”-8.3.”

Key touch features include 1mm passive stylus and maXStylus (active stylus), hover capability, moisture immunity and multi-finger glove support.

“Essentially, these devices build on Atmel’s success of its single-chip maXTouch T series products for large-screen applications – mXT2952T and mXT1664T – which were launched in the second quarter,” an Atmel engineering rep explained.

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the T series deftly incorporates Atmel’s Adaptive Sensing technology to enable dynamic touch classification – automatically and intelligently switching between self- and mutual-capacitance sensing. This provides users with a seamless transition between a finger touch, hover, passive/active stylus or glove touch. Meaning, users no longer have to manually enable “glove mode” in the operating system to differentiate between hover and glove.

Adaptive Sensing also helps significantly reduces the power consumption of a device, thereby extending battery life. Meanwhile, the analog front-end is equipped with advanced and flexible settings to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) prior to digital processing – eliminating signal distortions induced by water and noisy chargers.

“The new T Series enables superior touch performance with single-layer sensors as compared to the most recently announced solutions. Simply put, the latest devices will enable Atmel to extend its industry leadership in the large-screen market to the smartphone and phablet spaces,” said the engineering rep. “In fact, we are already working with a range of ITO and LCD manufacturers to support various stack-ups such as OGS, G1, GF and On-Cell which are targeted for production early next year. Plus, Atmel has begun sampling the new T Series devices with a number of OEMs who have provided positive feedback about the new touch products and their performance.”