LONDON — Infineon Technologies appears to have won the coveted prize of baseband supplier for the upcoming Apple 3G enabled iPhone.
Zibri, the hacker behind the ZiPhone application, claims to have made the discovery while trawling through the code for the iPhone beta SDK.
Reports suggest the code in the latest SDK includes a line that makes reference to the Infineon SGOLD3H chipset, also known as the PMB8878.
Infineon (Munich, Germany) already has the baseband socket for the existing EDGE version iPhone with the SGOLD-PMB28876.
According to Infineon, the SGOLD3 is fully HSDPA category 8 capable, with a potential download data rate of 7.2Mbits/second.
According to Zibri, the specification of the 3G iPhone — expected to be unveiled in June — includes support for cameras of up to 5 megapixels, MPEG4/H.263 hardware acceleration and video telephony, streaming, recording and playback.
There is no mention of GPS or mobile-TV support, all possible with the PMB8878, and, as the iPhone hacker notes, even if this is the chip Apple will go with, the company may choose not to implement all the features - most notably DVB-H and memory card support, which could drain power significantly.
Apple's CEO Steve Jobs has on many occasions said the reason the original iPhone did not support third generation data rates was because of concerns about the chip set's power drain.
As has been pointed out, in the S-Gold2/PMB8876, Apple chose to turn off the FM radio support and MMC/SD card compatibility.
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