Inside the Lenovo A60 smartphone

"What attracted us to this phone initially was the MediaTek MT6573 applications processor. According to an August DigiTimes article, the MT6573 is being fabricated at UMC, and in September of this year will ship approximately 1 million devices, with production being increased to 2 to 3 million units per month going forward to meet its growing popularity with China’s smartphone manufacturers." If MediaTek is going to keep up this pace, we are looking at a shipment volume of some 10 million MT6573 processors - and that before the end of 2011is even reached. Which makes its a rival of the Tegra 2 and OMAP (in volume). The next big socket is a WiFi chip. Given the phone’s price point, most will bet their first born on the Broadcom BCM4329. But if you guessed that, hmm .... what is actually there is another MediaTek device. The MT6620, with die markings BC63620B, is contained within an AcSip WiFi module. But the capacitive touch screen controllers surely have to be Atmel MXT224 and MXT224E. But, you've guessed it again. (Besides you already lost you're first born) The A60 features a capacitive touch screen controller alright, the FT5206GE1 by Taiwanese-based FocalTech Systems "This new device from FocalTech measures in at 11.5 mm². That is actually smaller than the MXT224 (12.88 mm²) and MXT224E (11.62 mm²). Could this be because this FocalTech TSC has a smaller MCU board, or because there is no on-board eFlash, or because its made in a process node smaller than 180 nm? We do not know at this point, but ...! Summary of additional design wins - Samsung K542GACB DDR SDRAMSkyworks SKY77344 power amplifier - RF Micro Devices RF7248 and RF7241 power amplifiers ----- Source: More can be found on Chipworks website.