Ericsson just announced the future availability of its new, groundbreaking U500 mobile platform, a next generation architecture that brings a triple processor solution and an avant-garde multimedia subsystem in order to provide excellent multitasking capabilities and cutting-edge multimedia functionality. The U500 platform is set to significantly improve the quality and usability of multimedia services as well as to open new doors for consumer services.

Coming to meet the fast-growing demand for advanced multimedia services and devices, Ericsson's U500 mobile platform is created for mass market handsets and can offer highly advanced features like support for WVGA displays (800 x 480 pixels), enhanced camcorder quality, 12 Megapixel camera, high-end 3D user interface and 3D gaming, superior audio performance and high video quality for an unequaled mobile TV experience.

"The U500 is a powerful multimedia platform with performance, graphics and usability, more resembling a mobile computer than today's mobile phones," said Robert Puskaric, head of Ericsson's mobile platforms business. "With the U500 platform Ericsson will keep its world leading position within the multimedia mass market for years to come"

The newly announced U500 integrates three ARM11 CPUs with hardware accelerators, an advanced multimedia companion chip and digital baseband into a single-die processor to offer a small, powerful and also cost-effective platform. An ARM Mali200 GPU programmable graphics processor is implemented into the U500 platform, providing high-quality graphic features while at the same time keeping power consumption at a low level, which makes it a perfect solution for mobile phones.

Unfortunately, Ericsson's U500 platform will be commercially available only from the first half of 2009, so we must wait more than a year to see what does the Swedish company prepare for us. Anyway, a Sony-Ericsson Cyber-shot phone with 12 Megapixel camera, 800 x 480 pixels display and excellent audio features sounds simply awesome. The future's super-bright, eh?