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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 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.
who insist on a completely new design of power supply and data cable for every phone that they bring out :(
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)
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
...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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