We love consumer electronic tear-downs, we’ve seen and performed a ton of them. In the past year we’ve seen a pretty considerable level of convergence in multi-use/multi-function IC’s. A few notable corporations have played a major role in what we’ll call “hardware convergence”. One company that really stands out for leading this front is Qualcomm. Founded in 1985, these guys have definitely withstood the test of time. Their “do everything mobile reference designs” cover everything a mobile device needs – BaseBand, AppCore, PMIC, and even radio transceivers. This makes it super easy for ANY run-of-the-mill ODM to build state-of-the-art smartphones. All you really need these days is Google and Qualcomm – save some special extra boutique devices we come across from time-to-time. We can trace similar HW convergence to what happened with age-old PC architecture (leading to the X86 design of modern PCs). Combining all functionality into a tiny package ARM-based processor core is very attractive from a cost and PCB design perspective. Unfortunately, these do-everything IC’s are often met with heavy power requirements. For perspective, each new BlackBerry device that gets launched is met with reduced charge longevity. Of course, LCD screens are getting brighter and larger, but these devices get really hot with use. This has to be related to packing a 1GHz Baseband/App Core/Kitchen Sink under the hood. Is hardware convergence really even a good thing? In our opinion, yes and no. On one hand, it should open the space for smaller companies to develop market-ready and attractive smartphones. On the other hand, if every device uses the same HW and OS, the only differentiating consumer factor is overall physical design. Building that top-of-the-line do-everything-well device requires custom hardware configurations. We’re talking Capacitive touch screens, Laser-navigation devices, and even devices that boost USB transfer speeds. We can compare this convergence to a Toyota Corolla – it’s reliable and gets the job done but doesn’t include the bells and whistles. Our dream device is more comparable to a BMW M5. It’s fast – (maybe not so reliable :S) but allows us to tweak our experience with more options than we’ll probably ever use. Sure, most of those options can be enabled at the Firmware level, but having the supporting Hardware is absolutely required for the optimal, Dr.Wreck approved experience. Let us know what you think!