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Peer-to-Peer Cell Phones
AlfaNatic writes "Seems like a new company has developed the technology to turn a cellular network
into a peer-to-peer network. Soon you'll be able to share music and files off of your cell. Gotta love it!"
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[since Bandwidth it's a sort of new God..]
:) ... not to mention the RIAA coming to meet you in person while you're sharing.
It would be cool to hog bandwidth with cellphones
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Is that your average cell phone rarely transmits or receives information. As an example, my T68 gets me about 300h battery life on 'standby' with just keepalive equivalents to the network. When I'm talking, this decreases massively, to about 5 or 6 hours. With a P2P network, as described recently on both /. and El Reg, you have continual data transmission and receipt, as you act as a data path for those around you. The battery life of the phones acting as nodes would be massively reduced. In addition, the phones would get warm, as they disappate the whole battery over a much shorter time interval than they are meant to.
People won't use a system where they can get a battery life of about 6 hours, and where their pockets are always curiously warm. Add this to the uproar already about cellphone radiation, and you lose all possibility of such a aystem being accepted. (What's that? This cellphone is ALWAYS TRANSMITTING? SHUT THEM DOWN!).
but if you ask me, this will be the death of the music and movie industries.
--Jack V.
I'd rather use it to call other folks on the network for free than exchange files. I just don't have enough storage on my cell phone to be sharing files, but a nice, cheap VoIP or similar would be great.
of course, if you had RTFA:
"The technology gives users a digital store cupboard for their own media files and lets them pass them on to anyone who wants to use, listen or look at them on their own handset. "
Of course, the word P2P is used incorrectly because I dont think this describes the topology, merely the end result.
This sounds like a centralized client/server topology.
But then people speak of XBOX, PS2 and CD Audio "isos", so using terms correctly isn't something that goes hand in hand with technology.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
What kind of caption is that? That phone may show pictures, but it's the ugliest phone I've ever seen. Moreover, I don't want my phone to do all this crap. Here are the list of features I want in a phone, with a divider before those that would take my PDA out of the picture:
1. Ability to make calls, with clear reception all over the globe at all times of day (this is partly a service problem, but better phones could help)
2. Cancer-free
3. Ability to digitally download voice mail to the phone (with error correction) so I don't have to listen to it on a scratchy connection
4. Ability to act as a modem with just a cheap serial cord, no $500 kits
5. LONG battery life - I mean 1 week standby and 5 hours talk-time, worst-case
--
6. Ability to store phone numbers along with other contact info
7. Alarm clock, todo list, and datebook calendar
That's it. No mp3s, no videos, no file sharing. Just the things that would rock to have in a mobile, self-contained unit. It shouldn't have unnecessary buttons and gizmos. It shouldn't have musical ring tones (customizable ringing, yes; music, hell no). I simply don't understand the impetus for putting crap into a cell phone that would be better taken care of by other devices, separate from the phone.
Now, a Rio or some such that can wirelessly bounce around mp3s (even at a reduced bitrate) might be nice, but a Rio is made for playing music. A cell phone is made for communicating with people.
It's simply centralized data storage, a sort of global clipboard that allows users to share data. It seems they're simply buzzword huckstering. A real P2P phone system wouldn't be cell-based at all, but would transmit data directly phone to phone. There are projects like that out there, but there are serious issues of bandwidth and battery power, particularly with mobile phones.
[Quoting from the article...]
"Some phones use software known as Java that lets them do much more sophisticated things."
Sigh, I hate it when I see evidence that I'm learning about a new technology this way.
Shoot, I may as well just start learning about foreign policy and macroeconomics from my political leaders on TV.
"Provided by the management for your protection."