In more Linux consumer electronics news, Computerworld has a short article outlining the latest inroads that the open source OS is making in the already crowded phone-OS space. NEC Corp. said today that it’s working on the development of Linux-based cell phones with MontaVista Software Inc., and an executive of the Sunnyvale, Calif., software company said it’s in talks with other major cellular handset makers on similar projects.
Doesn’t anyone use phones just for dialing anymore? I actually can see the need for an address book with names and addresses, but beyond that I personally have no need for anything else. I especially think that here in the US the ads where they tout screensavers as some sort of benefit a joke. I mean a screensaver for your phone? What the hell for? Shouldn’t you be concentrating on driving or something else?
Anyway that’s just me IMHO, as I know a lot of people won’t be happy until their phones are implanted in their body somehow, but I still just take the view that mobile phones are supposed to phones and not cameras/gameboys/pda’s etc.
I want my phone to be small, light, have a good reception and long battery life. All the rest is waist of technology.
the cell market is so cutthroat every provider is trying to find some gimmick to one-up his competition and grasp onto some new age/preference market that may want the <insert useless> feature.
The flipside of this situation is that any development must be cost effective with maximum ROI.
This is why you pay $5 a month for a 1k midi ringtone, or can pay $200 for a phone that plays worse games than you had on your atari 2600 which sells on ebay for $10.
Its amusing to see how dumb consumers really are.
“Can you hear me now?”
Personally, I have no problems with things like video in cell phones. I mean, afterall … wouldn’t it be cool to be able to see the person you’re talking to.
HOWEVER …
the cell market is so cutthroat every provider is trying to find some gimmick to one-up his competition and grasp onto some new age/preference market that may want the <insert useless> feature.
I think the most important thing right now is to get the audio part right and to prevent being cut off during the course of a conversation. From having to talk to people on cell phones on a regular basis (I personally don’t own one and don’t plan on owning one anytime in the near future), I’d say they are nowhere close to the above goals.
If some company could do that, they may find that they don’t have to force customers into some asinine <sp> yearly contract in wich they customers are charged $5,000 if they want to cancel.
It is clear that most people just want a cell phone with good voice quality and anything much beyond that is pretty useless. Why can’t companies understand this? Surely, they’re not that dumb, are they?
These cell companies/providers are mainly targeting the youth and gadget freak market, where a demand for these “useless” features does exist.
Take Japan’s case, for example, the providers there did not have the money for upgrading their networks to 3G and adding all of those multimedia goodies because Japan has been living under an economic recession for the past x years.
What they did there was target the youth market, who had enough disposable income and interest in all of these new features to keep buying upgraded cell phones and paying for all these new services. That is how most of Japan’s advanced cell infrastructure got financed, because the money could not have come from anywhere else. What is starting to happen in North America now is that the providers are trying to bootstrap themselves into increased infrastructure and profitability the same way that the ones in Japan did.
Its a common fact that video phones have always failed because although they look cool in movies, when people use a phone they usually don’t want people to see what they look like or what they are doing (bad hair day, no makeup, sticking a finger in the nose, etc.) while they are talking on the phone. Let alone making sure the camera is always pointed at their face. Correct me if I’m wrong but most video-phone trial systems failed because initially the users found the gadgets ‘cool’ but after a few weeks they turned off the video and went back to their old ways of voice only, or avoided using the system altogether.
Some reception problems will just always be unbeatable though, like multipath, signal fade, and so forth. Mobile data reception is the hardest thing to accomplish perfectly. Especially when its near-realtime feedback and no large buffer to play with to eliminate many of these problems. But completing the last 10% of the effort to have near-perfect service is 90% of the work, and probably (for most) not cost effective. There is also lots of finger pointing when doing signal analysis because of so many vendors being involved, and so many variables to contend with. It will probably be a long time until the technology is near-perfect. Just my 2c.
It will probably be a long time until the technology is near-perfect. Just my 2c.
In that case, I am willing to wait
This is going to rule the world….! Linux-cellphones
That’s a good thing for linux . Now all the applications
we have on linux could run on the phone . I don’t need
video on my phone .All i want is a decent browser
to read osnews.com (muuzila or opera or yah baby links )
and a ssh client .That’s all i need .And ehh quake 3 ..
for fun
Considering the popularity of BSD in Japan, and the nice licence, I just come to wonder why Nippon Electric don’t choose to cram a BSD into their phones instead.