( Mobile ) - And it's coming sooner than you think. Right now, most cell phone users drool over handsets that offer VGA (640x480) resolution. Soon, that will be a thing of the past. Texas Instruments is currently working on its third generation OMAP processor, a unit that will effectively allow cell phones to run high definition video. It's not quite 1080p, but it's substantially better than the QVGA nonsense that most of us put up with today.
The new processor will support video with a 1368x720 pixel resolution, a substantial improvement over what you'll be able to view on the Apple iPhone when it launches at the end of this month. To make things even more enticing, the new TI OMAP 3 processor will also be able to handle up to 12 megapixels of photos per second. This can either mean a single 12 megapixel shot or four 3MP pictures taken in burst mode.
Naturally, this level of performance is also translated into all sorts of other applications, meaning that Adobe Acrobat files will load faster and an incoming phone call won't interrupt a function -- "like watching videos or trolling the Web" -- nearly as much.
Now, we just have to wait for the handset makers to catch up on all those other fronts. You know, like giving us a compact display capable of such high definition and integrated cameras that pack that many megapixels.