steves favorite question (RE: Do we REALLY need a phone?)
I like questions like this. Questions like this deconstruct what we know, reorder what we have lazily come to accept, restructure what we want and need and will buy. remixing the phone as we know it. what new thing will take its place? making calls isnt the killer app. freeing the phone and freeing the network is. So think about that. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ortwin Regel Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 12:37 PM To: List for Openmoko community discussion Subject: Re: Do we REALLY need a phone? The problem with small handheld devices is that most of the time it's cheaper to put everything into the device than to create variants. Modularity causes problems with design and space and is also expensive. I also still need a GSM modem and will for a few years. Sure, I'd like to use WLAN, Bluetooth and UMTS whenever possible but these networks don't cover the whole country / most of the planet. When there is no other network, I need GSM to get onto the internet, even if it's slow. Ortwin On 4/20/08, Stefano Cavallari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (sorry for the length of this message) I was thinking today about how the phone system is quite dead without no one noticing it. We are paying unreasonable tariffs for just sending data which happens to be voice. The whole motivation behind having a number is no longer existent as with portability and roaming you don't do switching anymore. So you don't want to access the telephone network, you want to access the Internet, then do whatever you want from there. Yes in the meantime you may still want to do normal calls but the focus is in doing VoIP and IM. Because of this I think the next moko should be designed around this and be mainly a handheld. With no included GSM module so you can focus in the interesting part of the product and don't bet on the next mainstream communication technology (mobile wimax? UMTS? EDGE? CDMA something?) and just provide the one you are sure they will be supported for much time (wifi, bluetooth). Then you just provide some module to access the chosen network, like a SDIO card (probably with a big external part like most wifi ones). I was thinking of a beast like a bluetooth UMTS dongle. There are already USB UMTS dongle right now which emulates a serial port. So it's a no brainer to take an existing design, strip the usb-serial chip and put a bluetooth-serial chip and a battery (the usual nokia one which most GPS and the Neo uses). This gives the advantage of not having a powerful antenna attached to the ear (when talking) or anyway near you (when messaging, browsing). You can put it near a window and get better signal, and so on. Of course some may find the SDIO more appealing or not. Anyway if you keep this component separated you let the user choose whether they really need GSM, you can develop the hardware WAY faster and most important, you don't have to wait for the comm. modules to be functional to start selling, and if a comm. module happens to be a total market/design/whatever failure you still have the main product (the handheld) selling well. Just my (long) 2 ¢ -- ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 3:10 AM, Stefano Cavallari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then you just provide some module to access the chosen network, like a SDIO card (probably with a big external part like most wifi ones). I was thinking of a beast like a bluetooth UMTS dongle. There are already USB I used to think like that too. Maybe it's a good idea. It would certainly be way better for the environment. However, it costs more in several ways (engineering, components and space) to make it modular, and for the idea to make sense you are relying on a couple of things: that the handheld will satisfy you for such a long time (10 years maybe), and that it will make sense to continue to build modules with whatever interface you chose at the beginning (considering that the minimum-sized module you can build at the beginning will be looking excessively big in a few years). But technology moves faster than you expect. I think especially now, LCDs may be replaced with OLEDs and EInk displays (both of which are less fragile, and each of which has other advantages), and multitouch is becoming popular, and embedded projectors may be the next must-have phone feature in a couple more years, and graphene-based processors will eventually be orders of magnitude faster than current silicon ones (if we are looking far enough into the future). Developers especially will tend to want to write software for the newest devices. However the Newton has had one of the longest lives, and the best upgradeability too, because of the PCMCIA slot, and the software that was so far ahead of its time. Some people reportedly still use them now, and have been able to to add various wireless networking technologies to them. So there's a device that really did have a 10+ year life. But most people think they are too bulky. Still if the device does more, bulk can be tolerated, especially in exchange for a really high-res screen. The next thing I would really like to see standardized is batteries. There are so many approximately the same size, but purposely incompatible. We've had names for standard cylindrical batteries for longer than most people can remember, so why not a rectangular 1Ah LiIon battery with just a letter name, like maybe R for rectangular? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
On Monday 21 April 2008 08:54:15 Shawn Rutledge wrote: On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 3:10 AM, Stefano Cavallari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then you just provide some module to access the chosen network, like a SDIO card (probably with a big external part like most wifi ones). I was thinking of a beast like a bluetooth UMTS dongle. There are already USB I used to think like that too. Maybe it's a good idea. It would certainly be way better for the environment. However, it costs more in several ways (engineering, components and space) to make it modular, and for the idea to make sense you are relying on a couple of things: that the handheld will satisfy you for such a long time (10 years maybe), and that it will make sense to continue to build modules with whatever interface you chose at the beginning (considering that the minimum-sized module you can build at the beginning will be looking excessively big in a few years). I wasn't going that far in building the device 100% modular despite it would be cool. I was talking about just the UMTS/GSM part as it uses different frequencies in different regions, and it's not deployed everywhere. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
The problem with small handheld devices is that most of the time it's cheaper to put everything into the device than to create variants. Modularity causes problems with design and space and is also expensive. I also still need a GSM modem and will for a few years. Sure, I'd like to use WLAN, Bluetooth and UMTS whenever possible but these networks don't cover the whole country / most of the planet. When there is no other network, I need GSM to get onto the internet, even if it's slow. Ortwin On 4/20/08, Stefano Cavallari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (sorry for the length of this message) I was thinking today about how the phone system is quite dead without no one noticing it. We are paying unreasonable tariffs for just sending data which happens to be voice. The whole motivation behind having a number is no longer existent as with portability and roaming you don't do switching anymore. So you don't want to access the telephone network, you want to access the Internet, then do whatever you want from there. Yes in the meantime you may still want to do normal calls but the focus is in doing VoIP and IM. Because of this I think the next moko should be designed around this and be mainly a handheld. With no included GSM module so you can focus in the interesting part of the product and don't bet on the next mainstream communication technology (mobile wimax? UMTS? EDGE? CDMA something?) and just provide the one you are sure they will be supported for much time (wifi, bluetooth). Then you just provide some module to access the chosen network, like a SDIO card (probably with a big external part like most wifi ones). I was thinking of a beast like a bluetooth UMTS dongle. There are already USB UMTS dongle right now which emulates a serial port. So it's a no brainer to take an existing design, strip the usb-serial chip and put a bluetooth-serial chip and a battery (the usual nokia one which most GPS and the Neo uses). This gives the advantage of not having a powerful antenna attached to the ear (when talking) or anyway near you (when messaging, browsing). You can put it near a window and get better signal, and so on. Of course some may find the SDIO more appealing or not. Anyway if you keep this component separated you let the user choose whether they really need GSM, you can develop the hardware WAY faster and most important, you don't have to wait for the comm. modules to be functional to start selling, and if a comm. module happens to be a total market/design/whatever failure you still have the main product (the handheld) selling well. Just my (long) 2 ¢ -- ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Do we REALLY need a phone?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 The problem with small handheld devices is that most of the time it's cheaper to put everything into the device than to create variants. Modularity causes problems with design and space and is also expensive. I also still need a GSM modem and will for a few years. Sure, I'd like to use WLAN, Bluetooth and UMTS whenever possible but these networks don't cover the whole country / most of the planet. When there is no other network, I need GSM to get onto the internet, even if it's slow. Ortwin Exactly: There are only two places where there's a WLAN I can actually access and I can easily just use a computer in both those places. Without GSM/GPRS, for me the neo would become a very expensive alarm clock and little else. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIDXEKjK3MZIZPmKIRAmGzAJ9A0Inza6BRGv1ysB5aOA6DKltPXACg3E+P JYQgUtlzrYx6fC+JDxTwUkE= =MYZ2 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Do we REALLY need a phone?
(sorry for the length of this message) I was thinking today about how the phone system is quite dead without no one noticing it. We are paying unreasonable tariffs for just sending data which happens to be voice. The whole motivation behind having a number is no longer existent as with portability and roaming you don't do switching anymore. So you don't want to access the telephone network, you want to access the Internet, then do whatever you want from there. Yes in the meantime you may still want to do normal calls but the focus is in doing VoIP and IM. Because of this I think the next moko should be designed around this and be mainly a handheld. With no included GSM module so you can focus in the interesting part of the product and don't bet on the next mainstream communication technology (mobile wimax? UMTS? EDGE? CDMA something?) and just provide the one you are sure they will be supported for much time (wifi, bluetooth). Then you just provide some module to access the chosen network, like a SDIO card (probably with a big external part like most wifi ones). I was thinking of a beast like a bluetooth UMTS dongle. There are already USB UMTS dongle right now which emulates a serial port. So it's a no brainer to take an existing design, strip the usb-serial chip and put a bluetooth-serial chip and a battery (the usual nokia one which most GPS and the Neo uses). This gives the advantage of not having a powerful antenna attached to the ear (when talking) or anyway near you (when messaging, browsing). You can put it near a window and get better signal, and so on. Of course some may find the SDIO more appealing or not. Anyway if you keep this component separated you let the user choose whether they really need GSM, you can develop the hardware WAY faster and most important, you don't have to wait for the comm. modules to be functional to start selling, and if a comm. module happens to be a total market/design/whatever failure you still have the main product (the handheld) selling well. Just my (long) 2 ¢ -- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Stefano Cavallari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (sorry for the length of this message) I was thinking today about how the phone system is quite dead without no one noticing it. We are paying unreasonable tariffs for just sending data which happens to be voice. The whole motivation behind having a number is no longer existent as with portability and roaming you don't do switching anymore. So you don't want to access the telephone network, you want to access the Internet, then do whatever you want from there. Yes in the meantime you may still want to do normal calls but the focus is in doing VoIP and IM. Because of this I think the next moko should be designed around this and be mainly a handheld. With no included GSM module so you can focus in the interesting part of the product and don't bet on the next mainstream communication technology (mobile wimax? UMTS? EDGE? CDMA something?) and just provide the one you are sure they will be supported for much time (wifi, bluetooth). Then you just provide some module to access the chosen network, like a SDIO card (probably with a big external part like most wifi ones). I was thinking of a beast like a bluetooth UMTS dongle. There are already USB UMTS dongle right now which emulates a serial port. So it's a no brainer to take an existing design, strip the usb-serial chip and put a bluetooth-serial chip and a battery (the usual nokia one which most GPS and the Neo uses). This gives the advantage of not having a powerful antenna attached to the ear (when talking) or anyway near you (when messaging, browsing). You can put it near a window and get better signal, and so on. Of course some may find the SDIO more appealing or not. Anyway if you keep this component separated you let the user choose whether they really need GSM, you can develop the hardware WAY faster and most important, you don't have to wait for the comm. modules to be functional to start selling, and if a comm. module happens to be a total market/design/whatever failure you still have the main product (the handheld) selling well. Just my (long) 2 ¢ -- I have always been a big fan of the maximum modularity and abstraction, and I totally agree on this part of your idea. I also agree that the telephone system is a dying system, but since all of your friends/family use it, and since we stil have no real mobile alternative, i think its a bit to early for throwing away the whole gsm parts. And that's why I like modularity: like you said, every one can choose wether to have gsm, wifi, wimax, umts, or a some sort of star trek transponder. But since this would be a complete redesign of the system, and a reinvention of the concept of mobile handheld. The idea is really innovative, but difficult. Sure nothing to produce after the gta3, but maybe to start developing.Ideally the modularity could be extendend to some sort of wireless, maybe bluetooth. btw, we already discussed a modular design some time ago... but I don't remember how we decided. -- My corner of the web: http://blog.ramsesoriginal.org ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
I disagree with that GSM phone is dying. In Europe almost everyone over 12 has a GSM phone and use it every day. How can you state it is dying? On the other hand noone knows what would happen to the Internet if all those people would choose to use VOIP instead of PSTN (Public switched telephone network). The two networks have completely different characteristics and PSTN is better for voice communication. Schmidt András ramsesoriginal wrote: On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Stefano Cavallari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (sorry for the length of this message) I was thinking today about how the phone system is quite dead without no one noticing it. We are paying unreasonable tariffs for just sending data which happens to be voice. The whole motivation behind having a number is no longer existent as with portability and roaming you don't do switching anymore. So you don't want to access the telephone network, you want to access the Internet, then do whatever you want from there. Yes in the meantime you may still want to do normal calls but the focus is in doing VoIP and IM. Because of this I think the next moko should be designed around this and be mainly a handheld. With no included GSM module so you can focus in the interesting part of the product and don't bet on the next mainstream communication technology (mobile wimax? UMTS? EDGE? CDMA something?) and just provide the one you are sure they will be supported for much time (wifi, bluetooth). Then you just provide some module to access the chosen network, like a SDIO card (probably with a big external part like most wifi ones). I was thinking of a beast like a bluetooth UMTS dongle. There are already USB UMTS dongle right now which emulates a serial port. So it's a no brainer to take an existing design, strip the usb-serial chip and put a bluetooth-serial chip and a battery (the usual nokia one which most GPS and the Neo uses). This gives the advantage of not having a powerful antenna attached to the ear (when talking) or anyway near you (when messaging, browsing). You can put it near a window and get better signal, and so on. Of course some may find the SDIO more appealing or not. Anyway if you keep this component separated you let the user choose whether they really need GSM, you can develop the hardware WAY faster and most important, you don't have to wait for the comm. modules to be functional to start selling, and if a comm. module happens to be a total market/design/whatever failure you still have the main product (the handheld) selling well. Just my (long) 2 ¢ -- I have always been a big fan of the maximum modularity and abstraction, and I totally agree on this part of your idea. I also agree that the telephone system is a dying system, but since all of your friends/family use it, and since we stil have no real mobile alternative, i think its a bit to early for throwing away the whole gsm parts. And that's why I like modularity: like you said, every one can choose wether to have gsm, wifi, wimax, umts, or a some sort of star trek transponder. But since this would be a complete redesign of the system, and a reinvention of the concept of mobile handheld. The idea is really innovative, but difficult. Sure nothing to produce after the gta3, but maybe to start developing.Ideally the modularity could be extendend to some sort of wireless, maybe bluetooth. btw, we already discussed a modular design some time ago... but I don't remember how we decided. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
On Sunday 20 April 2008 13:49:29 Schmidt AndrXs wrote: I disagree with that GSM phone is dying. In Europe almost everyone over 12 has a GSM phone and use it every day. How can you state it is dying? I said it is dying but few realizes it yet. Sooner or later people will want a internet connection with them. And the step from that and no longer needing a the full fledged phone network is quite small. On the other hand noone knows what would happen to the Internet if all those people would choose to use VOIP instead of PSTN (Public switched telephone network). You can potentially use less bandwidth if you choose more intelligent codecs. And yes I'm for paying actual bandwidth for mobile Internet. The Internet doesn't mean necessarily broadband and flat prices. And remember that IM is way more efficient (both from the human and the hw point of view) and cheap than VoIP, so many people would just switch to IM. It's because of absurd SMS costs and size limits that few uses them. The two networks have completely different characteristics and PSTN is better for voice communication. With GSM you are already using a digital protocol with a very lossy codec, and the latency is quite high (about 400 ms last time I checked). VoIP let's you choose the codec quality and associated costs. A better provider gives you lower latencies and jitter. People will just switch to the best one. So VoIP is potentially way better than PSTN :) ramsesoriginal wrote: On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Stefano Cavallari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (sorry for the length of this message) I was thinking today about how the phone system is quite dead without no one noticing it. We are paying unreasonable tariffs for just sending data which happens to be voice. The whole motivation behind having a number is no longer existent as with portability and roaming you don't do switching anymore. So you don't want to access the telephone network, you want to access the Internet, then do whatever you want from there. Yes in the meantime you may still want to do normal calls but the focus is in doing VoIP and IM. Because of this I think the next moko should be designed around this and be mainly a handheld. With no included GSM module so you can focus in the interesting part of the product and don't bet on the next mainstream communication technology (mobile wimax? UMTS? EDGE? CDMA something?) and just provide the one you are sure they will be supported for much time (wifi, bluetooth). Then you just provide some module to access the chosen network, like a SDIO card (probably with a big external part like most wifi ones). I was thinking of a beast like a bluetooth UMTS dongle. There are already USB UMTS dongle right now which emulates a serial port. So it's a no brainer to take an existing design, strip the usb-serial chip and put a bluetooth-serial chip and a battery (the usual nokia one which most GPS and the Neo uses). This gives the advantage of not having a powerful antenna attached to the ear (when talking) or anyway near you (when messaging, browsing). You can put it near a window and get better signal, and so on. Of course some may find the SDIO more appealing or not. Anyway if you keep this component separated you let the user choose whether they really need GSM, you can develop the hardware WAY faster and most important, you don't have to wait for the comm. modules to be functional to start selling, and if a comm. module happens to be a total market/design/whatever failure you still have the main product (the handheld) selling well. Just my (long) 2 ¢ -- I have always been a big fan of the maximum modularity and abstraction, and I totally agree on this part of your idea. I also agree that the telephone system is a dying system, but since all of your friends/family use it, and since we stil have no real mobile alternative, i think its a bit to early for throwing away the whole gsm parts. And that's why I like modularity: like you said, every one can choose wether to have gsm, wifi, wimax, umts, or a some sort of star trek transponder. But since this would be a complete redesign of the system, and a reinvention of the concept of mobile handheld. The idea is really innovative, but difficult. Sure nothing to produce after the gta3, but maybe to start developing.Ideally the modularity could be extendend to some sort of wireless, maybe bluetooth. btw, we already discussed a modular design some time ago... but I don't remember how we decided. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
Well, no matter whether it's dying out or not; while I tend to agree that it actually is; I'm also sure it will still be ubiquitous for probably the better part of another decade. Plenty of time and market share available to manufacture and sell people the best open GSM phones :) :M: ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
On Sunday 20 April 2008 14:23:26 Stefano Cavallari wrote: You can potentially use less bandwidth if you choose more intelligent codecs. And yes I'm for paying actual bandwidth for mobile Internet. The Internet doesn't mean necessarily broadband and flat prices. And remember that IM is way more efficient (both from the human and the hw point of view) and cheap than VoIP, so many people would just switch to IM. It's because of absurd SMS costs and size limits that few uses them. my impression is that sms is used far more then phone calls here in norway for quick and simple communications. im systems have the problem that they are just that, systems. sure, one could use jabber as a glue, but most of my contacts are on msn, not jabber. and in other parts of the world its aol and yahoo messenger that counts. same deal with voip systems. the most popular is skype, but thats a closed system. as in, the only client that can access it is the official, closed source client. so when going from current systems to voip and im (and current voip clients can often double as voip clients, or the other way round) your just pushing the abstraction back a step. oh, and isnt the 4G LTE system thats supposed to take over for UMTS at some point in the future planned as a IP based system? as in, any voice calls performed will be done via voip anyways. its just that the handsets and the network operators have agreed on a common standard. question is, will said voip standard be implementable in open source ways. or are the controls required by the telcos so stringent (for fear of someone finding a way to shut the system down) that only big corps can do it in a black box fashion? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 2:51 PM, kenneth marken [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sunday 20 April 2008 14:23:26 Stefano Cavallari wrote: You can potentially use less bandwidth if you choose more intelligent codecs. And yes I'm for paying actual bandwidth for mobile Internet. The Internet doesn't mean necessarily broadband and flat prices. And remember that IM is way more efficient (both from the human and the hw point of view) and cheap than VoIP, so many people would just switch to IM. It's because of absurd SMS costs and size limits that few uses them. my impression is that sms is used far more then phone calls here in norway for quick and simple communications. As far as I can see it, sms is way more used then calling in the private field, but calling is more used in the buisness field. im systems have the problem that they are just that, systems. sure, one could use jabber as a glue, but most of my contacts are on msn, not jabber. and in other parts of the world its aol and yahoo messenger that counts. XMPP (ex Jabber) [1] gives the possibity through so-called gateways to talk to other services. I for example talk through jabber to my friends in icq, in msn and in yahoo talk. But, like the article says, xmpp has even the possibility to combine im and sms. Having such a system on a phone shure makes sms obsolete. same deal with voip systems. the most popular is skype, but thats a closed system. as in, the only client that can access it is the official, closed source client. That's really true. And sad. But a system like the one used by XMPP, just in the voip field (I think even XMPP is going that way), would really make the pstn obsolete. And even more: voip has often the possibility to make calls to pstn and recive calls from it: so if a phone is equipped with a gien voip system fine, else you simply call the pstn network through the voip system. so when going from current systems to voip and im (and current voip clients can often double as voip clients, or the other way round) your just pushing the abstraction back a step. oh, and isnt the 4G LTE system thats supposed to take over for UMTS at some point in the future planned as a IP based system? as in, any voice calls performed will be done via voip anyways. its just that the handsets and the network operators have agreed on a common standard. I don't know about this, but it sounds intresting.. question is, will said voip standard be implementable in open source ways. or are the controls required by the telcos so stringent (for fear of someone finding a way to shut the system down) that only big corps can do it in a black box fashion? That's often the question, and if companies like OpenMoko become known, the possibility of having an Open Source implementation also grow. I also would say that I don't know about Stefano, but i thought of this as a modular system when I read this mail: If you feel the need for gsm you put in the gsm module, if you think oyu need 4g you put in that chip, and if you think you need something else, then simply use something else. Doing this way you, for know, you simply creatre the gsm module. Then you create some 4g module, and people can buy it, upgrade their phone, put it in a new barebone system, or whatever they want. Having a modular approach gives true freedome, in my opinion [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP -- My corner of the web: http://blog.ramsesoriginal.org ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
On Sunday 20 April 2008 15:14:58 ramsesoriginal wrote: On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 2:51 PM, kenneth marken [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sunday 20 April 2008 14:23:26 Stefano Cavallari wrote: You can potentially use less bandwidth if you choose more intelligent codecs. And yes I'm for paying actual bandwidth for mobile Internet. The Internet doesn't mean necessarily broadband and flat prices. And remember that IM is way more efficient (both from the human and the hw point of view) and cheap than VoIP, so many people would just switch to IM. It's because of absurd SMS costs and size limits that few uses them. my impression is that sms is used far more then phone calls here in norway for quick and simple communications. As far as I can see it, sms is way more used then calling in the private field, but calling is more used in the buisness field. i guess it depends on how high priority the communication has in the senders mind. sms is very much a when you have time kind of system. im steps it up a notch via its presence system. and a phone call is very much a drop everything else, NOW! way of communicating. im systems have the problem that they are just that, systems. sure, one could use jabber as a glue, but most of my contacts are on msn, not jabber. and in other parts of the world its aol and yahoo messenger that counts. XMPP (ex Jabber) [1] gives the possibity through so-called gateways to talk to other services. I for example talk through jabber to my friends in icq, in msn and in yahoo talk. But, like the article says, xmpp has even the possibility to combine im and sms. Having such a system on a phone shure makes sms obsolete. same deal with voip systems. the most popular is skype, but thats a closed system. as in, the only client that can access it is the official, closed source client. That's really true. And sad. But a system like the one used by XMPP, just in the voip field (I think even XMPP is going that way), would really make the pstn obsolete. And even more: voip has often the possibility to make calls to pstn and recive calls from it: so if a phone is equipped with a gien voip system fine, else you simply call the pstn network through the voip system. ah yes. i forgot about all that. and yes, it would be quite the solution. now that i think about it i have been pondering converting email into xmpp, given the recent interest in push email and all that... as in, why use multiple protocols when one can use one? so when going from current systems to voip and im (and current voip clients can often double as voip clients, or the other way round) your just pushing the abstraction back a step. oh, and isnt the 4G LTE system thats supposed to take over for UMTS at some point in the future planned as a IP based system? as in, any voice calls performed will be done via voip anyways. its just that the handsets and the network operators have agreed on a common standard. I don't know about this, but it sounds intresting.. indeed. but i cant say i have kept up to speed on recent developments. this is only something i picked up from wikipedia and similar sources, so... question is, will said voip standard be implementable in open source ways. or are the controls required by the telcos so stringent (for fear of someone finding a way to shut the system down) that only big corps can do it in a black box fashion? That's often the question, and if companies like OpenMoko become known, the possibility of having an Open Source implementation also grow. I also would say that I don't know about Stefano, but i thought of this as a modular system when I read this mail: If you feel the need for gsm you put in the gsm module, if you think oyu need 4g you put in that chip, and if you think you need something else, then simply use something else. Doing this way you, for know, you simply creatre the gsm module. Then you create some 4g module, and people can buy it, upgrade their phone, put it in a new barebone system, or whatever they want. Having a modular approach gives true freedome, in my opinion hmm, pcmcia or expresscard? i recall early ipaq pdas had a sleeve for those kinds of addons that allowed the humble pda to access wifi and gsm networks. added quite a bit of bulk tho. and was not a similar sleeve system bounced around for the neo? primarily for use with wifi? [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
On Sunday 20 April 2008 15:14:58 ramsesoriginal wrote: [...] I also would say that I don't know about Stefano, but i thought of this as a modular system when I read this mail: If you feel the need for gsm you put in the gsm module, if you think oyu need 4g you put in that chip, and if you think you need something else, then simply use something else. Doing this way you, for know, you simply creatre the gsm module. Then you create some 4g module, and people can buy it, upgrade their phone, put it in a new barebone system, or whatever they want. Having a modular approach gives true freedome, in my opinion Yes that's exactly what I was talking about. In fact it is independent of the phone system is dying argument as most advantages applies for legacy phone system use. It's just that I thought this because of the other reasoning :) -- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
I want to comment on the modularity thing. PCMCIA is not even an option. If you look at the trend, you will notice that more and more comes in SoC (System on Chip). This is complete systems with internal bus, etc. This is micro system technology. I know that we will see more of those and they will be standard items you can buy. (SDIO cards has the normal SD-card size, mini SDIO has the same size as a mini SD card) I guess that in a few years you can buy all of these (some are already for sale): - WiFi mini SDIO module - Bluetooth mini SDIO module - GiFi mini SDIO module - UMTS SDIO module - GSM SDIO module - SDIO TV tuner - SDIO DAB receiver ... So a device with 4 SDIO slots could be the future. -- Please don't send me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html Join the FSF as an Associate Member at: URL:http://www.fsf.org/register_form?referrer=5774 ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
On Sun April 20 2008 11:09:07 am Flemming Richter Mikkelsen wrote: I want to comment on the modularity thing. PCMCIA is not even an option. If you look at the trend, you will notice that more and more comes in SoC (System on Chip). This is complete systems with internal bus, etc. This is micro system technology. I know that we will see more of those and they will be standard items you can buy. (SDIO cards has the normal SD-card size, mini SDIO has the same size as a mini SD card) I guess that in a few years you can buy all of these (some are already for sale): - WiFi mini SDIO module - Bluetooth mini SDIO module - GiFi mini SDIO module - UMTS SDIO module - GSM SDIO module - SDIO TV tuner - SDIO DAB receiver ... So a device with 4 SDIO slots could be the future. What I think would be a great scenario is the ability to go the Openmoko website and customize a GTA0x like you would customize a PC. Add GSM, GPS, Wifi, BT, Accelerometers, SSD, or anything and price would vary based on hardware built in. This may be impossible today, but it could open plenty of doors in the future. Ideally, we could let the consumer decide what radios/memory/case they need and cost would adjust based on features. -- Brandon Kruger [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://onedollarlinux.com BLOG - http://onedollarlinux.com/personal/ Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
