Mizi Research announced an “ultra low-cost” mobile phone reference design based on its Linux-compatible phone stack. The Korean firm says it is collaborating with an unnamed manufacturer to develop a complete hardware/software design that will take as little as three months to bring to market.

(Click for larger view of Mizi Prism/Mobile mock-up)

The new phone design will support CDMA, GSM, GPRS, and Edge cellular protocols, says Mizi, and there are plans for adding TV and GPS support. The phone will offer Mizi's application suite, including phone, multimedia, messaging, Internet, PIMs, and Java.

Prizm 3.0 application screens
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Prizm is a lightweight stack that incorporates its own small-footprint, embedded graphics stack. This makes it a bit less customizable than GTK-based heavy stacks, but able to run faster on less expensive hardware.

Prizm architecture
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In May, Mizi Research updated Prizm's graphical user interface framework for consumer electronic devices. Prizm 3.0 switched to Python as its main application programming language, and has gained visual effects such as dragging, sliding, fading and accelerated smart scrolling.

Prizm UI Framework
(Click to enlarge)
Prizm supports concatenated SMS and EMS protocols, and its email system supports POP3, IMAP4, MIME attachments, and SMTP. Web browsing features include support for MMS 4.0, WAP Push, and Macromedia Flash. I/O support includes USB, Bluetooth, IrDA, and serial connections. The Prizm SDK (software development kit) is based on an Eclipse 3.0 GUI framework and is available for both Linux and Windows development hosts.

Prizm Phone Server
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Stated Mizi CEO Young-Jin Seo, “I am looking forward to see 2 mil+ devices ship with Prizm in 2008, and ten times that amount in 2009.”

Availability

The low-cost Prizm mobile design will be available in Q3, says Mizi. The company will demonstrate the design at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona on February 11-14 at its booth (Hall 2.1 A76).

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