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Open Standards for Cell Phone Components
PoisonousPhat writes "STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Nokia and ARM have formed the Mobile Industry Processor Interface Alliance (MIPI), who seek to define open standards for cell phone components. Forget that expensive camera phone, just plug in a third-party device." Update: 07/30 18:13 GMT by T : Thanks to Alain Mellan for the link to STMicroelectronics.
I bet it will be like PC standards. noone conforms to them
Sorry? Haven't you heard of IBM compatable?
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
I'll agree with you on the data cable, but I've had three Nokias and all use the same charger. I've also used the same charger on a multitude of other phones, many from other countries (I worked in a youth hostel). There were never any compatibility problems on that from in my experiences with Nokia phones.
Bah!
I got tired of buying the car charger every time I got a new phone. My solution? Get a cheap inverter (I got a 75W one from Canadian Tire) and keep it in your car. Then just use your regular charger with it.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
This seems like ARM trying to get everyone adopting their standards. You can bet that ARM IP will be all over it. The ISA will be ARM, communication will be AMBA and the only standards complient accepted development platform will be the ARM SDT.
ARM is trying to get more and more fortified in their mobile phone market and its very difficult to do anything different. Thats why they can charge redicelous prices for their toolkits and the favours to universities (such as discount/free software) have now stopped, because now if you are going to learn low level mobile application coding then it simply has to be ARM. No need for them to attract and convince people to use them any more.
We even wrote our own debugger so we wouldn't have to payt the ARM tax.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
"It will still be impossible to move your phone from one service providers network to another (unless you are in Europe)"
You mean: unless you are in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia or South America?
"When they create a changeable module that will let you move the phone from provider A to provider B for substantially less than the cost of the phone, then cell phone sales/usage will go through the roof."
This was done more than 10 years ago when GSM specifications were created. Your cell phone number and all provider related data is stored on a SIM card. If you want to get a new provider just replace the SIM card.
Unfortunately in some countries it's legal to sell crippled GSM phones which will only work with one provider. However should be able to find non-crippled GSM phones anywhere.
The MIPI spec that is developed by this consortium is also mentioned here. They mention ST as a fourth player as well.
It is too good to be true. The standard they are establishing is for the components inside of cell phones. Not external accessories.
The standard jack on your cd player is probably a 3.5mm sterio plug, this is standard. Most cell phones i've seen have a 2.5mm headset jack, one channel to the earpice and the other to the mic. This seems to be pretty standardized, i can use my jabra headset, the headset that came with my cell phone, and the headset that came with my mini land line phone interchangably with my cell phone, mini landline and my cordless phone.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I have to post anonymously for reasons that I work for Nokia.
Nokia used to have 2 data cables, the DAU-9P and the DLR-3P. Both are RS-232C cables. With the change to USB came 2 new cables, the DKU-5 and DKU-6. The RS-232C cables are being phased out.
Nokia has redesigned the ports in the bottom of its phones to standardize it and all new phones will use the DKU-5 data cable, infrared, bluetooth or a combination there of.
As for power, most of the chargers are interchangeable, with the biggest difference being charging current. The higher the current the faster the phone will charge, and some phones require a high current.
How about open standards for cell phone protocols? Who cares about taking pictures on a cell phone. They should first make the protocol (CDMA) open, at least give people an API to work with. I want to see software that runs on my Linux based cell phone that can (for instance) take Caller-ID information and based on that, totally control the functionality of the phone (i.e. dial another phone number, play some PCM WAV audio out the port, etc etc).. This is long overdue.
This is an open standard for cell phone manufacturers, not end users. It reduces "time-to-market" and produces standard platforms that manufacturers can use their own OSes, etc on top of.
It will NOT produce standard accessories like chargers, cameras, etc for end-users.