Motorola Droid Bionic teardown reveals custom LTE chipset

The Motorola Droid Bionic is a hot device, and it has been talked about ever since it was announced back in January during CES, and why wouldn’t it be? After all it was a smartphone that not only featured a dual-core processor but with LTE connectivity to boot. However it took Motorola close to 9 months until the public finally managed to get their hands on the device, and a recent teardown of the device may be able to explain why it took Motorola that long to put it out into the market.

Recently analysts at ABI Research managed to get their hands on the device, and upon cracking it open discovered something rather interesting. Most handset manufacturers when making their LTE devices, usually go for something off the shelf, such as using the LTE chipset by Qualcomm which is readily available. However in Motorola’s case, while the CDMA portion of the device was by Qualcomm, the LTE chipset appeared to be all Motorola, which could explain why the company took so long to roll out the handset for public consumption.

The reason why Motorola may have decided to create their own LTE chipset in-house instead of just buying one off the shelf from Qualcomm, has been speculated that it could have something to do with battery life. LTE devices have been known to be battery drainers, but in the case of the Bionic, based on several reviews including our own, battery life has been exemplary. Granted there could be various factors affecting the battery life, such as the larger capacity battery used in the Bionic, but while it has yet to be proven, perhaps Motorola’s in-house LTE chipset could also be one of the contributing factors.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: 4G, Android, chipset, custom, droid bionic, LTE, Motorola, Qualcomm