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$10 Paper Mobile Phone To Launch This Year
ROU Nuisance Value writes: "Made (mostly) out of recycled paper and coming this year. The Register article makes the phone sound like a non-hoax, and claims that companies like McDonald's are interested in mass distribution. If so, it's destined to replace AOL CDs as World's Most Annoying Giveaway. Inventor's Web site has pictures of prototypes but I'm willing to bet that call quality won't be worth the paper the phone's printed on. She promises a $20 laptop, too. Anybody know if the patents/inventor/company are for real?"
I think you both need your eyes checked :). The numbers on the keypads do line up. That is, the numbers line up but they are shifted left on the button. And, in the unfolded phone, the black buttons are just the bottom layer. The black-on-white numbers are on the unfolded part, in the panel above the guy's thumb.
I don't think there's a claim that it's thin film technology (it's called super thin technology). ;^)
Ahh, those marketing folks pulled a fast one on you, just imagine what they do to non-chemists
Of course those greeting cards that record your voice have a silicon chip in them and it wouldn't
surprize me if that if this turns out to be real, there's a silicon chip in there as well attached
by epoxy to a thin film flexible circuit board which has an embedded antenna and a voltage
regulator in thin film technology.
And the state-of-the art allows for low cost microphone and speaker tranducers (they already
come with those greeting cards), although it looks like from the pictures that it requires a cheap
hands-free cell phone adaptor...
I've seen similar thin film circuit boards with a package-less silicon chip be manufactured for 20
to 30 cents so this isn't really out of the realm of possibility (although I'm guessing a cell phone
chip is more complicated than the ones I've seen).
Just some food for thought...
I can imagine that people who deal with computers all the time think that silicon chips have to be
packaged, but in many "cheap" consumer devices, silicon die are generally wirebonded to cheap
circuit boards and then simply epoxied over. No leads, sockets, connectors, or other stuff...
Given this "cell phone" would probably just 4x4 button cross sense lines, power, ground, antenna,
speaker out, mic in, maybe 24 wires, this is more than what's in your wrist watch, but not by much.
If you have a chance, tear apart one of those greeting cards that can record and playback your
voice... That whole thing cost about $2 to manufacture... The total card cost is dwarfed
by the cost of the battery at about $1... (oh yeah, they have to pay for the paper and
printing too...), doesn't leave much for the electronics (including mic and speaker)...
Admittedly, RF cell phone logic is more advanced than the analog flash memory cells that make up
most of the greeting card, but hey for a few bucks more, you get something better... Right now, 10
million transistor chips cost about $5/die, I'm pretty sure a bare bones cell-phone is on the
order of ~1M transistors... (to put things in perspective, a 6502 had 4,000 transistors)
From the article:
"I'm going cheap and dumb," she told The Register, revealing: "In monetary terms, I want to be the next Bill Gates."
Yeah, Bill Gates is cheap and dumb.
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
As long as we can recycle them again. Cheapo limited use phones - RU kidding, this is great. Give them out in malls and amusement parks to keep track of people, give them out in parks for day trippers in case they get lost. Give them out on field trips, the kids, etc. When its done just toss it in the phone recycle bin and pick up another. For the price of phone card you could have minutes and a phone. Are you kidding this is great.
CMOS camera chips are much cheaper to make than
the conventional charge couple time. Moderate
resolution ones can be manufactured for a couple
dollars. These are the chips you see in Barbie's
Camera, watch camera's, som computer cams etc.
You can put such cameras everywhere for minimal cost.
Which often times aids people who want to know that type of information. And nothing that gets broadcasted over airwaves is really all that secure anyway, fsck the little sim cards -- all for show.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
The page is immensely, well, fluffy. There's almost no actual information ("STT: Super Thin Technology," anyone?). The Press Release is particularly telling. It's basically a pep-talk/biography for the founder of DTC (Randi Altchul). Apparently she's 'taking her Toy Mentality to the Technology and Telecom Industries and having a lot of fun along the way!!!' Sounds pretty fake to me. The Press Release claims that she's been granted more than 20 patents (including ones for the 'PAPER LAP TOP'), but there are no links or even direct references to said patents (like, say, patent numbers) anywhere on the webiste. Almost certainly a hoax or a scam.
Most places in the world now, you can just go buy a pay-as-you-go cellphone for cheap, especially as far as drug-lord budgets go. And you don't have to give your name, at all.
In Canada, anyway, they will always ask for your name and address, but I told the guy 'It's pay as you go, yuo don't need to know', and he just put in 'john doe'.
And in Europe, where wireless is wayyy bigger, nobody ever even asks unless you want a contract... you walk into the store, pick a phone, and walk out 5 minutes later with a working phone and new phone number, and absolutely no record of who bought what.
Seriously... can't you already get pay-as-you-go phones without giving your name or anything else in the US? Because you can in Canada, or all of Europe, and probably most other places too. It's no big deal at all...
In Canada, the merchants still ask....
In Europe, you just buy what's called an 'open' gsm phone, and you put a phonecard in it.. a smartcard that has your phone# and stuff on it... and it's prepaid. You can buy cards anywhere.. and phoens anywhere... you can keep the same number, or just buy a new one whenever you want. No names are ever asked for... it's not relevant.
You can borrow someone's phone because yours got stepped on and as soon as you insert your card, it becomes your phone number... the phone is just an interface.
Doesn't that make more sense?
I mean, is the US that paranoid? (yes)
I agree with you. Unfortunately, we (Americans and most of the developed world) live in a society that views disposible products as convenient and useful and does not really care about the ecological costs involved. AOL CDs are a good example of this (convenient and useful from AOL's perspective of course).
Unfortuately, the widespread release and use of this product will just reinforce our society's dependance on disposible applications. That's why I hope this and similar technologies will fail until a more ecological friendly idea comes along.
The quality on a cell phone like this will probably be piss-poor. If you're lucky, maybe you'll get 300bps.
Better off with that ham radio network stuff.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
But, as I've read, aren't they having enough trouble with REAL cellphones in foreign countries that are filling up the landfills? Imagine what these things would do.
:)
BTW: A hackable one of these would be cool.
Well, the price quoted back then was a bit cheaper... $2 to create? But I'm not surprised to see them at $10. If it catches on, it'll be a landfill hell. But its a cute idea, and you have to love it.
Right.
I give up.
I point at the utter wastefullness of making disposable products for the sole reason that it is possible to create them, never mind the consequences of those things littering the mullheap.
In reply, I get a couple of trolls calling me a 'commie' (guess that's an insult, or at least meant to be one) and such. Also, the fine moderator corps mark my posting as 'troll' and 'overrated' (overrated? It wasn't even rated to begin with...).
Conclusion: don't interrupt the cheering crowd or you'll regret it. Doesn't matter what they cheer about, just cheer along or buzz off.
I'll buzz off...
--frank[at]unternet.org
Oh you mean the $99 (not optional) "Paper Phone Holder". Which looks just like a cellphone with the front missing. Hey look even a battery in there. [/;-)
Yeah, because as we all know beeing a drug lord these days means you don't have much money and all things you want to get must be through legal channels :)
Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
b) If it's actually comparable to disposable cameras, I'm excited. Sure, they're autofocus, no zoom and no f-stop setting, but that's no worse than your average instamatic. If the disposable phone is basically like a cell phone only with no voicemail and no personal directory, then hell! sign me up for 10!
Nitpick, except for the polaroids, single use cameras are not disposable. They must be given, whole, to a film processor, who then sends the shell back to the factory to be reused. Still not the most effecient modle, but they aren't actually thrown away after one use. (the polaroid one shot comes with a prepaid return package and you can get a rebate for sending it back. I haven't sent mine back yet, but I haven't thrown it away either.)
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
trust a press release that uses three exclamation points in a row. "CONCEIVE IT ! ! ! BELIEVE IT ! ! ! ACHIEVE IT ! ! !" Wow, what a scam.
Disposable cameras are fixfocus, not autofocus. Otherwise, I agree. I would love to have a cell-phone that's easy replacable if it breaks, is stolen, lost, forgotten, or whatever...
Unless somebody makes them so small they fit in your wristwatch, of course (without making it bigger, and still being pleasant to use...)
The disposable device is the brainchild of Randice-Lisa Altschul...
How the heck do you end up with a hyphenated first name?
Actualy, if you'll look at the pic, it shows the phone using a 'hands free kit', a fancy way of saying cheap earphone with an integrated clip-on mic.
Of course, I'm sure you're right about the rest of the stuff
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Yes, and current cellphones just love watter. I take mine in the shower with me!
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
I suppose there is, and then you can make snowflakes!
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Maybe this is what Ginger is.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Interestingly, I still keep the old thing around since I discovered through AT&T:
1. You can always dial 911
2. You should always be able to dial the Highway Patrol *55 in an emergency
3. It can be activated at any time if the reason exists.
Thus, mobile phones' most useful application, I believe is in emergency situations, not "Honey, which kind of ice cream should I get" when I'm at the grocery store.
I think its common knowledge that many people have little concept of cell phone etiquette, and unless we establish that, I'll consider them evil.
Hey...remember telephone booths? That provided privacy for both user and passersby.
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--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
"That's more that one phone for each citizen of the U.S."
Not by much, besides, the article only mentions the phones will be produced in the United States. Considering this fabrication technology would be the cheapest technology available in less than a year; it is quite possible this many units will sell worldwide.
3,000,000 Phones / 6,000,000,000 Potential Customers = 0.05%. This doesn't seem unreasonable considering their apparent new hold on the market as well as the fact that fabrication costs may be lowest in these very large blocks. We have no idea what projected sales vs. projected fabrication costs really are.
Besides, being disposable - who's to say the customers won't need to order more than one in the span of a year? 8-).
Ace
Who else needs anonymous wireless communication?
Any decent person who values their privacy perhaps?
The NSA and their ilk will try to tell you that uncrippled encryption is likewise only useful to criminals, yet it clearly has a huge range of legimate uses - some of which would also apply to cellphones that can't be used to secretly identify or track a person, and I imagine there are a fair few legimate uses on top of those.
Semi Topical: Anyone notice the story also on the register regarding BT's campaign against cell phones. Looks like everyone's favorite (not!) phone company doesn't believe in competition and economic evolution, do they?
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Another throwaway toy for the throwaway generation.
Now the cell phone fot a true Urban Survivalist should be able to survive 20m of submersion and a 10m drop on concrete. Equipped with a cast steel case with a built-in bottle opener and a tear gas spray (helluva lot more useful features that tetris).
I'll pass. Why don't they just use those polyurethene packages from the 80s?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Ok, while I can appreciate the technical achievement that making a cell phone out of paper represents, I'm left wondering: Just who are these things for? So, let's go through the list of people who are likely to use these things.
Joe Average: Joe average, like just about everyone else, probably already has a cell phone for his local area/country. So he won't be using them much.
Mr. Suit: Mr. Suit, on business travel might use one of these, but again, he probably has a good cell phone already, or can just use calling cards provided by his company at the hotel or pay phones.
Bart Simpson: The perfect user! Bart likes to make crank calls. What better way to do it than a totally anonymous $10 phone!! (That way there's no chance of Moe chasing him with his psycho knife).
Mr. Crack Dealer: Another natural user. He likes to be anonymous, and to change his phone number often! He'll probably use them frequently to communicate with his pals Mr. Drug Runner, Mr. Hit Man, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Triad
So I thank the brilliant engineers of this device that will surly increase the number of phone calls that Ivana Tinkle gets, as well as the number of times the phrase "have you got the stuff?" is used on the airwaves. Not to mention posh homeless guys searching through dumpsters for dinner AND a phone!
So the idea of paper telephones is not outrageous.
Disposable communications pushes things in the direction of anonymous communications. This will be a good thing ofor the society, over all.
Politicians deserve to be nervous.
I sure as heck hope this are more better than the free phones they have know
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Great! Just what we need: more displosable junk in the landfills... excellent!
Try being able to buy a mobile phone for cash, leaving very little of a paper trail as to who used it. Also, mobile phones are much harder to trace (although the cop shows always make it look easy), and the limited life-span is actually a "bonus" as when it runs out, you have no incentive to keep it. Set the sucker on fire and move on.
Now, will this happen? Who knows. The FCC might screw things up before these even get printed.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
But think about the patents (look for "Altschul" on delphion.com). The patents aren't on any technology to make the phone particularly cheap or light or easy to manufacture. They are on the notion of a disposable phone itself, and a phone that only works for a limited amount of time. Where is the invention there?
Since the article raises the issue of "women inventors", what this demonstrates to me is merely that women can be just as greedy as men. For women who are smart technologists, we have to look elsewhere. Fortunately, they are around.
Aw hell...the brain tumor was bad enough, and now I have paper cuts all over my ear? dang :)
look at this picture....
Is it just me or does it look somewhat fake? The numbers on the buttons of the phone do not line up, and seem to have been cut and pasted using an imaging program.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Why, these phones are made out of paper! We're working on an all cardboard laptop and next year we're planning to completely replace all the audio recordings in the world with aluminum foil!!!
Why are we doing this? Because *you*, the customer demanded it. With products like these our prices can be LOW! LOW! LOW!
Our paper phone slices! It dices! It juliennes! One tomato lasts a month! How much would you pay for an exquisite phone like this? $99.99? $199.99? $299.99? THAT'S TOO MUCH! We're *giving* this phone away for the rock bottom price of only $29.99!
The Fine Print: This product may not be transferred, sold, reverse engineered, given away, licensed, lent, gifted, or crammed up one's dialated anus. The PaperPhone (tm) is copyrighted, trademarked and patentpending. We can and will release our squadron of trained attack lawers on your ass if you think you can get away with copying our product, Chester!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
In the age of Caller I.d. and blocking, people are less likely to misuse their telephone. When the call isn't traceable, however, things could get interesting. The disposable could be the heavy breather's best friend.
Look for regulation to follow swiftly, along with new "options" for which consumers will be bilked by the ever helpful telcos (ability to block incoming calls from disposable phones, etc.).
I have seen a prototype of these, although it wasn't working it was a great idea, just think of it as one of those desposable cameras. It is made out of paper, so you will have problems if you want a nice solid phone, but there are really made for someone who needs to make a phone call while on the run, or their cell is out of service, they can just run into the local Quicky-Mart and pick up a nice phone that can be used for 15, 30, or 60 mins.
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I'm a karma whore, mod me up damn you!
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58.0% slashdot corrupt
To make this work, you'd need one IC capable of doing all of the RF functions of the phone and implementing a microprocessor as well to do the protocol of the phone. We are talking about an 800 MHz RF signal here, and thus an IC that does both UHF linear analog circuits and digital logic functions - that is asking a lot of the IC process, unless you split it into two ICs and then you have to interconnect them. You'd need a crystal for a frequency standard. Microphone, earphone, and battery, and whatever discrete components it takes to glue this together. The rest of it is the "paper" part.
I think you can make it cheap, but I don't see it reaching the $20 price point unless the cell phone companies heavily subsidize it, which means you'd need a monthly charge.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
... the amount of electronics that is going to be thrown away in this way? I work at a small electronics firm, and from last year on it has been nearly impossible to get surface mount tantalum and ceramic capacitors.
Reason: they are being sold by the millions to manufacturers of cellphones. Who wants to sell a couple of hundred to small fish like us?
And this is for non-disposable cellphones only. Make them cheap and exposable, and demand will rise manyfold.
What I heard, at this moment, manufacturing capacity of tantalum capacitors is limited by the rate tantalum mines can dig up the raw materials.
For the surface mount ceramic capacitors, a similar situation exists for the palladium that is used in the end caps.
Any increase in demand will lead to a shortage, and suppliers will only deliver to the largest (not necessarily highest!) bidder.
Oh yes, although the phone is mainly made of paper instead of plastic, this does not mean that the components are as well...
Bruce writes: I think you can make it cheap, but I don't see it reaching the $20 price point unless the cell phone companies heavily subsidize it, which means you'd need a monthly charge.
I've seen Family Radio Service two-way radios for under $20 at Best Buy or one of those stores. They're operating at 467 MHz, so it's lower, but in the ballpark. And unlike this phone, they have an audio amp & real speaker, replacable battery, multi-part plastic housing (at least three molds - front, back, and battery door, likely requiring manual assembly), real (non-membrane) buttons, external antenna (rather than a loop antenna on the circuit board), and probably some LED and/or LCD info (can't remember offhand). Just the packaging on these things, with two-piece vacuum molded clear plastic with an eye-grabbing four-color insert, are relatively expensive.
Strip all that out using an earphone you stick in your ear, one-use battery placed & soldered as a circuit board component, no case (it's integrated with the circuit board), no display or blinking lights, basically cheap out on any component you can, and $10 seems quite feasible with mass market production.
I don't know about the stuff specific to cell phones, but I've designed circuits with short-range 300-433 MHz data transceivers. It's a different RF thing altogether, but even in quantities of a few dozen, you can build them for under $20 (production cost not consumer price).
"Imagine, a mathimatical calculator, given away for free, the size of a bussness card. Who could belive such a thing, I bet it's a hoax, total vapor."
This stuff is going to get cheaper and cheaper. I don't see why it couldn't exist. And after all, in most places in the US you can pick up a phone for free a long with a serive agreement. Notice that this thing doesn't use it's own speakers/mic, so it's really nothing more then electronics.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
if you look hard enough. Look at everyone claming that the Mac cube image was fake "Look at the shadows, they don't line up! there's no way this is real, I know my Photoshop." Proclaimed one mac site. Sure enough, the photo was exactly the same one use by Apple a couple of days later. Most of the good celeb fakes look more real then the real pics (skin tone differences between face and body are more likely in real images then fake ones.)
If the photo was fake then the buttons would have lined up perfectly, pixel for pixel.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
I agree with you. Unfortunately, we (Americans and most of the developed world) live in a society that views disposible products as convenient and useful and does not really care about the ecological costs involved. AOL CDs are a good example of this (convenient and useful from AOL's perspective of course).
You just inspired an idea that could save California - turn a national liability into a national asset - that's right - collect all those AOL CDs that pollute our environment, glue them to sheets of plywood (reflective side facing up), and make huge mirror-based solar farms - free!
Plus, you get more (and more useful) "free hours" out of each and every CD this way.
I calculate each reasonably sized solar farm would want a good two million AOL CDs, so if we build enough farms, we could quite possibly put a noticeable dent in the number of AOL CDs floating around.
I wonder if I can patent this...
Yeah, there was an article on this in Newsweek a while back (many months ago at least). AFAIK, the inventor and company is completely real, and it seems like a valid idea. The quality won't be top-notch, but there are a lot of corners that can be cut. These would be particularly good for people like me who would only want a cell phone so they can call in case they really have to and they're far away from a real phone. Voila! A thirty-minute disposable phone!
The phones, 300 million of which should be produced in the US in the first year, are due to be unleashed on the US market in the third quarter of 2001.
That's more that one phone for each citizen of the U.S. Pretty big first run of a new product, wouldn't you say? And where's the battery? And what wireless network are they going to unleash these 300 million phones on, exactly?
My pal at CMU has been checking out a demo on loan (Electronic engineering major or something.) and says it's legitimate. (Not incredibly high-quality, though of course. He says it's like disposable cameras.)
She promises a $20 laptop, too.
OK I need sleep... I first read that as "a $20 lapdance."
I blame society.
Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.
fax me the phone, will you?
http://www.statepress.com/columns/hepp/index.html
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--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
Why do we create disposable products when reusable ones can be manufactured for just as little cash? These products are not recyclable and will probably release toxic materials as they degrade in a landfill. Why not create an inexpensive phone which can be recharged and used more than once? Oh yeah, then the manufactures wouldn't have the constant stream of revenue from users who used up the battery life.
This seems to be a ploy from the cellular providers to get people who can't afford calling plans to begin using mobile phones and, eventually, they will buy a 'real' cell phone. At that time the mobile providers can lock the users into a contract with outrageous termination fees. They are borrowing the drug dealer's business model -- give the first hit and you'll have a cell phone junkie for life.
-josh
fear is the mind killer
Wow. It seems to me that this'd really be a huge boon to people whose phones are monitored (ie, drug lords, mafiosos, etc) -- they just have to buy one of these suckers, then toss it away in a few hours.