iPhone RF and Audio Quality?

[bobolito]

Usually noise cancelling and filtering is done in hardware to offload the CPU. Remember the CPUs in these devices are not like a full computer and have to save power.

[spleck]

Originally Posted by bobolito

Usually noise cancelling and filtering is done in hardware to offload the CPU. Remember the CPUs in these devices are not like a full computer and have to save power.

I was not implying that the audio processing is done in "software" like some App running on the main CPU, so it has nothing to do with being "like a full computer".

MOST devices have their own ROM which may or may not be updated with the firmware of the main device. The BlueTooth chip in the iPhone alone has a 4 Mbit ROM where SOFTWARE is loaded, despite the fact that it is a hardware chip. They also have the option of tying the chip to the main ROM. Most chips are hardware specialized for an instruction set, but the instructions for those chips are still "software".

In fact, I just check and FR, HR, EFR, and AMR codecs are handled by Infineon's X-GOLD chip which most definitely has an upgradeable firmware. This leads back to my question on whether the GSMA/3GPP define the profile for the codecs or if its left open to the implementer, similar to MP3 encoders or the quantization matrices used in video encoding.

Obviously, there are a number of factors that affect voice quality between the iPhones and none of them were updated for the 2.0 software on the original iPhone. After looking at the hardware, it would be up to Infineon to release an updated firmware for the original X-GOLD chip in the iPhone to make any considerable improvements if possible--which of course, will probably never happen, especially since Apple has moved on to the newer X-GOLD chips.