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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 are. Nobody really conforms to all of them, 100%. Plus, there are so many standards, you're not gauranteed anything.
I been wanting a standard interface just for recharging. I hate buying new recharging equipment (desktop, cigarette lighter, etc.) every time I get a new phone. I also hate buying multiple versions of charging equipment for the multiple cell phones in my household.
This has worked so well with laptops, which are much bigger and more expensive than cell phones, so there's obviously more of a demand for it.
I can take any laptop, and swap hard drives. And I can swap, well, PCMCIA cards.
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?
An open standard could open up a huge market for 3rd-party products and accessories, much like the PC standard did for computer components. This is exactly the sort of thing that could really boost cell phone technology, by allowing smaller, more nimble companies to roll out new products into a broad market.
Of course, it's so good to think of, I can't imagine that it would actually happen!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
who insist on a completely new design of power supply and data cable for every phone that they bring out :(
This looks more like an internal standard to aid developers to devlop embedded software / hardware components that build a cellphone and won't have any real effect on users.
The possibilities for software reuse will be limited to low level things like drivers, because all phone manufacturers feel the need to customise the software to make their product unique
This idea is good in theory. I've always wanted to get a cell phone and have the availability of nice features without having to spend outrageous prices. Now (in theory) I can buy a cell phone, basic model, and then buy an external device for whatever extra features I want, and have them work on the next phone I buy in 2 or 3 years if I want.
There are a ton of possibilities for external things, they just need to design the OS for the Nokia phones, which also shouldn't be too much of a hassle.
But you know this is going to be expensive as hell.
I sell out to The Man every day.
I just got the sanyo 8100 for $100. It was a Sprint promotion for new subscribers. I also considered a third-party device on a cheaper phone, but it was rather bulky and unmanagable. Open standards however would make for faster development and deployment of new technologies. Not to mention two-way radio across service providers THAT would be great.
Strangely absent from that list is Motorola... This is probably a good thing, but their absence is very conspicuous.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
If the mobile phone companies start using standards how are they going to be able to force you to buy a new data cable, cigarette charger, hands free kits, and the like?
Oh, and God forbid that they have to stop charging $30 for a cheap as hell car charger and $50 for a data cable for the phones.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
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!
It will be undone by the competing standards for transmitting the signal (CDMA, GSM etc). It will still be impossible to move your phone from one service providers network to another (unless you are in Europe); which means you get to buy another phone. 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.
Kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich but the boss gets richer off you. --Dead Kennedys
Is this the same Nokia who haven't changed the design on a charger since the introduction of the 5110 more than 5 years ago? And whose data cables are valid for a whole range of phones, rather than just the one model?
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
Standardized rechargers will never come, though, because that would commoditize them instead of forcing you to buy a particular one for your phone. I would love to see the day when one "wall wart" can power anything, but it's just not gonna happen!
stuff |
With standardized cell-phone components, I am sure companies will be even more likely to stuff every last feature known to man onto their phones. Personally, I think it's getting ridiculous. I don't want to play Tony Hawk 4 on the 1" x 1" screen on my cell phone or struggle with watered down GPS functionality or grainy photos. On the other hand, what I do hope is that chargers become standardized. Now that would be something useful.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
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
What more standards do you need ???
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
>Motorola... The next Xerox?
Who's Xerox?
Data cables and handsfree headsets compatibility could be better though, but also that problem is going away with bluetooth, and IR has been there to replace data cables for a long time already.
Then again, are any other manufacturers any better?
"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.
...a cell phone that would have as "flexible" architecture as PC.
Imagine this:
- Case: Different looks, about same width but different lengths. It provides two or three "slider layers" that enable you to install components.
- Necessities:
a) GSM decoder module (your frequency variant, possible sat phone)
b) Battery: Different sizes, different capacities. Separately a small power management module (change batteries, replace them, examine power levels, switch between batteries)
c) Main CPU. Different speeds and possiblities.
d) Internal memory (different sizes, may use more than one module)
e) Keyboard (normal, big, different highlight colors, qwerty whole, qwerty 2-parts (on 2 sides of screen)
f) Screen. Text-only, b&w, big, color, whatever you wish.
g) Speaker and receiver. May be different inputs.
h) SIM card socket. Possible double, triple, big, small...
- Extras:
MP3, Radio, FM, MIDI, IRDA, Bluetooth, USB, loud speaker, camera, TV pilot, whatever you imagine you can put in a phone.
And the case provides a single bus you plug your modules in. Each module occupies certain number of "slots" (of course keyboard, battery and LCD are big. Toys like MP3 player take way less).
You buy parts in variants you need. Want a good SMS'ing box? Qwerty and big b&w screen. Want gaming platform? Gamer's keyboard, color screen, strong CPU and a lot of memory. Want to keep it small? "mini" case and only necessary stuff of minimum sizes. Want a laptop-like thing? Carry a half-pound brick in your pocket with everything installed and 5 strongest batteries and built-in AC charger.
Add to that fully or mostly open-source communication software layer so people could write their own apps for it...
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TI/ARM/Nokia have been in bed together from the beginning of the cell market. With TI's OMAP structure(which includes and ARM and is the baseline for all of Nokia's future phones), it is not hard to believe that the three are trying to increase their market share by forcing out those nasty startups and the motorolas of the world. I can hear the sales pitch now, "and our software/hardware already meet the upcoming standard" Nokia has the software, TI/ARM the hardware. as for the various standards, change a couple analog components, and the they already have the software routines to handle it.
Yeah the hardware is the first step, but I think the problem (at least in the USA) is that there aren't very good standards across the carriers. Up until recently you couldn't SMS an ATT mobile user if you were on Sprint. This sucks. In Europe and Asia you can SMS anyone (ok almost ~ 90%)as long as they have a mobile number, regardless of the carrier.
Why can't all audio jacks on cell phones for earpieces all utilize the SAME standard jacks such as on CD layers. And all power jacks should be the same, too. The ONLY reason to change the design every week is to force people to spend more money on home/office/car chargers, headphones, etc every time they get a new phone. It is nothing short of criminal. Cell phones are purposely designed to have different connectors to accessories for no good reason, other than extorting more money on the same accessories that need to be repurchased time and time again.
Get the fucking head phones and power cable standardized, THEN we'll talk about cameras/texting/keyboards and all that junk.
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."
Microsoft has given you low expectations.
pcmcia, compact flash, ISA and PCI all work great. I really like the fact that I can take my CF from my camera to my laptop or my PDA. The M$DOS file system may not have been free, but it's well known enough to have outlived Microsoft's use of it and will live on after they abandon it for their patented file systems. I also like the fact that CF can easily be used as an IDE drive and you can stick any filesystem you like on it. Standards in hardware that really nail down the interface are good and CF is a good example.
Those companies that follow the M$ way and make dinky devices that don't work are shunned and their crap does not sell. Yes, you can make a PCI card that won't talk or a USB device that takes some obsucre command language over the standard interface. If you can't use is without a Windoze driver, I don't want it. I have a few of these devices around and a windoze98 computer to talk to them. I refuse to buy XP as I know most of those devices I have won't have drivers for it. Microshaft tried to screw everyone. What they did was screw themselves.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
Ummm...Tjis consortium could be cooperate with this.
;-)
Hey Nokia: remember that you are from Finland