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"Disposable" Cell Phone Actually Repackaged Nokia
ewhac writes "Hop-On.com apparently started distributing the first versions of their disposable/recyclable cell phones, which will offer 60 minutes for $30. Hop-On claims their proprietary technology makes this possible. However, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that, upon cracking open the phones, they found not the kind of disposable cell phone technology covered earlier on Slashdot, but a jury-rigged Nokia. When confronted, Hop-On CEO Peter Michaels dodged by saying the phones the Chronicle took apart were, "promotional samples only. They are not Hop-On production phones." The article also calls into serious question Hop-On's other claims, and also points out California revoked Hop-On's corporate status last month."
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
--G
I dunno what phones cost in the US, but still I would not pay $30 or £ equivlent for a disposble phone. You can quite easily pick up a pay-as-you go phone over hear for £29.99 (maybe about $40??) and for that price, you get a fully featured phone (last time i saw one, it was a Phillips Genie) Im still not sceptical about the whole voice recognition thing.. what if you're in a noisy / bad reception area? will it still be able to recognise then?
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What's the point about disposable mobiles anyway? It's just more pollution. Less quality. It's just plain idiotic.
There should be a big fee on disposable mobiles to cover the recycling costs of the stuff.
Plus mobiles are terminals which do a lot more than voice telephony. This trend will only accellerate in the years to come.
I dount very much that this has 'mistake proof.' VR - has it been invented yet? Is it ever possible? Certainly not in a 30USD phone, and especially not given the non-dictionary words this address book will need to have in it - peoples' names and nicks, and business names.
Mobile/ cell Phones - however cheap they are - are always treated as mission critical appliances wby their owners. Owners will NOT appreciate having to f*** around trying to get the correct number to dial 'cos there's no other UI alternative.
example (and probably what hopon are basing their tech on - if it does exist, but that's another matter)
I have one of these nokias details here with VR for top ten numbers of your choice, and I never use it. Try standing on a noisy street shouting 'Mum, Mum' into the phone and it keeps dialling 'Mee Mee' - your local food delivery place, and you'll see what I mean.
Don't make all tech too simple! How can you 'EZ-Interface' an SMS/ Text msg UI?
That's if it isn't all vapour ware.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Step 1. Sell $250 phones for $30.
Step 2.
Step 3. Profit!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Disposable phones are perfect for a terrorist, drug dealer, or other criminal. Simply go to Wal-Mart ot Target, pay cash for the phone and the minutes, and leave. Or have one of your "associates" do the purchase so that you're not on the store cameras. Currently, someone has to use a credit card and pay some money to sign of for service--that's not difficult to do but does present some barrier.
I'm not trying to troll here--it's just that a disposable phone is ideal for someone trying to remain anonymous and under the radar of the authorities. That's a huge advantage.
Myself, I have thought that I would like a mobile phone--but I'm not willing to pay upwards of $150 for a phone plus the monthly contract. And I'm all about pre-paying because I don't plan to use the phone much anyways. A disposable phone with 60 minutes would likely last me a year. At that point, I think I should be allowed to toss the thing since I know many people who get new phones every year at the $300 price tag. I doubt much of this will ever see the light of day, though, since the possibilities for criminals are huge.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
A little off topic, but Budweiser (as in beer) are doing a promotion here in the UK to win prizes... but it is the way they do it that is interesting.
Several cans contain a "GPS transmitter" - when you open the can, they find your location, and a team of people turn up at your door within a few hours.
First, this is going to be prone to a few problems, like people moving.
Second, the "GPS transmitter" is probably a gps receiver, and a mobile phone. When it is opened, it calls a number and reports the location of the device.
Surely these things can't be too expensive if they are in a beer can? Simply a gps receiver and a phone would cost in excess of £100 - but they would have to buy phones outright, so even more.
If I got one, I'd probably try getting it somewhere that the signals would not get out of (convenient faraday cage... (car maybe)), and take the thing apart.
One of the better ideas for a disposable phone that I've seen came out of a student contest run by [IIRC] Metropolis magazine.
It consisted of a thick "business card" phone -- a circuit printed on plastic and wrapped in paper, slightly larger than your average business card. The phone had about 60 minutes of talk time, couldn't receive calls, and had a single large button on one side. The idea was that you could buy a sheet of these phones for about $5-10 per, print your business card on them, and "burn" your own number into the phone. Pressing the button on the phone dialed that number.
This is, of course, insanely useful. A first-contact client can phone you back with very little effort, without having to pay for the call. 911 emergency phones can be given away or sold in stores. Vending machines could let you key in any number you liked (say, your SO) and print up a batch of phones for you.
I think it's on ultra-low-end applications like these that disposable cell phones will really find their stride. Even if Hop-On was legitimate, they'd have a hard time competing against companies like Cricket. Service is already a commodity, and people seem to like the flexibility and robustness of NON-disposable phones.
Hop-On popped!
-
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
In a former life, I worked on a similar scam (at the time, unknowingly). It was for one of the first of the Customer-Owned Payphones back around 1985, called COCOT or COPTS phones.
.COM boom of a year ago).
I won't memtion the exact brand name, but I was one of two design engineers that designed this payphone. The entire industry was new, having just been deregulated. There were about 5 companies producing them at the start, and about 30 by the end, so the industry experienced explosive growth (just like the
The two owners of the company had us start designing the phone. They then proceeded to march in Investors to see "the phone" work, well before it's design was even finalized. At first, we rigged a mock-up to act something like a phone.
"Harumph, it works", claimed the investors. Eventually, we did design and have a fully functional payphone. But most of the phones out there in the industry were horrible. They didn't look or act like Ma Bell payphones, and the most critical areas, how much to charge for the call, and answer detetion (do I thake or return the user's money?) were dismal and highly unreliable.
In fact at one point it seemed that no-one could get these areas of operation reliable.
I assume it was at this point the owners decided to make it a full-blown scam. They sold the crap out of the phone. They sold EXCLUSIVE rights to manufacture the phone to at least 5 companies that I heard of afterward.
The funniest part of the whole story is that my parter and I actually screwed up the whole scam by making the phone actually work well. Instead of doing a nose-dive in 6 months as they expected, the company endured successfully for 4 years!
If anyone has ever seen the movie "The Producers" by Mel Brooks, then you know the plot - oversell the product many 100% - then BK the company and you don't have to pay any investors back. Well, the same thing happened.
Last I heard from the owners, they were hiding out in Snake's Navel, Arizona, and one actually called me, late one night, drunk off his ass, to bitch me out personally for costing him Millions!! Snicker.
Well anyway, I smell the EXACT same type of scam here. These are the bait for the investors, even with the admission that they are mock-ups of the final design. My prediction is, once the money is raked in, then actual production will start on the phone and they'll find there's no way it can be done for $30.00. The people they hired will be left holding the bag, and the bills for manufacturing phones that actually tunred out to cost $100.00 to $200.00 or so like any other phone.
And the owners? They'll be joining the Scammer's Relocation Program in Snake's Navel, AZ.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I don't see the point, when any "deactivated" cellphone can still be used (and is legally required to) be able to call 911 on the networks they can access.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Totally nonsensical reference to the DMCA.
I'm going to have to post the rules for Slashtard Bingo someday, since I'm the only person who knows them.
- Have a picture
And when someone opened the phone to see what made it tick, they saw no evidence that a disposable phone tech existed, only what appeared to be a cleverly-rigged demo by a company with (as the article describes) a questionable history of legal/regulatory/disciplinary actions against it.
I smell a letter to Fritz Hollings in the making:
You think that they'd be embarassed to have this Web site up. Did you notice...
- The "mock-up" phone on their front page is actually just a peice of Photoshop handiwork?
- The bogus Time article. While I don't doubt that they made Time (it's amazing what $$ can buy you), their fake "page curl" effect that shows their product on page 3 is a bit much.
- I love how, in the article, they credit the Hop-On CEO as the "inventor". Inventor of what? I'm sure he's hardly the first to think of a disposable cell phone. The technology is obviously not his, nor is it Hop-On's. What did he invent?
- Is that Scooby-Doo rip-off kangaroo thing missing her lower jaw? Or is she just as dazed as the investors? Her joey looks pretty stunned by the whole mess.
- Check out this page. Look at the "models" on the bottom left. It looks like they Photoshop'ed the phones into their hands.
- I couldn't help but think, the "Our Future" link at the top should have lead to here.
I initially was wondering if the US-based Hop-on was related to the Australian Hop-on.com.au.
The Australian Hop-On.com.au advertised for months a free Internet service on the back of Taxis, except, it never came. Here is their website, don't bother going to it, it no longer exists.
After going to the US-based Hop-on, I discovered it was in fact the same company, as their mascot was that Kangaroo, the same cartoon character that appeared on the Australian taxis.
So, this didn't really surprise me to hear that their promised disposable phone was a fake after all.
--jquirke