Broadcom BCM4329 Chip Brings Cellphones Wi-Fi Without Power Drain

Now cell phone WiFi access will get a lot more efficient, thanks to a new chip from Broadcom. The BCM4329 chip will be used in cellphones that have 802.11n WiFi in order to decrease the amount of power required to maintain that wireless connection.

Normally, WiFi on cellphones takes up a lot of energy. In fact, it's often thought of as a serious battery drainer. But this new chip makes it so a 2.4GHz or 5GHz band connection can occur without using as much power. It uses less power than earlier chips that could only manage the 802.11g standard and no higher.

This chip also offers up Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, an FM tuner and a feature called space time block coding, which makes connections on the outskirts of a network more stable. The Broadcom BCM4329 chip is expected sometime in 2009, though no customers for it have been named yet.