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Cell Phone On A Chip
sebFlyte writes "Texas Instruments have developed a new chip for mobiles that, according to some, should make is possible to make a cell phone for less than $25, bringing it into the realm of possibilities for low-level corporate giveaways, or a reasonable loss leader for getting people started on pay-as-you go mobile offerings."
From the article:
Mobile phones contain a number of potentially dangerous substances, such as arsenic, cadmium, ZINC and lead, which can harm the environmental if the handset is not disposed of in a responsible manner.
Oh really? So, why in the world is there this incredible push to make lead-free devices, when it appears that the zinc alloys seem to be the most-likely substitute for lead?
I'm fairly green myself. The question I have is, why adopt whack-a-mole policies that are likely to replace current problems with other problems?
I can finally get my phone implanted into the side of my head! HURRAH!
Wasn't there supposed to be a manufacturer making cardboard cell-phones with circuit boards printerd by a special inkjet? Whatever happened to them?
-mkb
But how will I play games/take pictures/text my friends/browse the Internet/watch TV/cook a burrito/wash my laundry! This thing will never sell.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
But you don't need to sign up for a service plan to wear a watch...
I don't want to take pictures with my phone.
I don't want to play MP3s with my phone.
I don't want to check my e-mail with my phone.
I don't want to browse the web with my phone.
I don't want to play games with my phone.
I just want to make phone calls with my phone. Want to lower the average price of a cell-phone? Start with taking all of that crap out of it.
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Let's say hypotehtically that the chip was completely free. Could you even make the case, keypad, display, arial, and battery for $25? Sounds unlikely to me.
Bringing phone prices dows is a good thing, and cutting down on components is too. But I think the disposable cell phone sounds like it's further than 2-3 years away...
Its nice to see it cheaper... but how much cheaper was it from before? And it will help pay as you go services, but at 25$ a pop i still think its a bit away from disposable or giveaways.
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
The problem isn't the cost of the phone. It's the cost of the service that keeps me out of the market.
Sweet...one step closer to Zoolander phones!
/me giggling quietly as typing this
:)
Americans, eh?
"or a reasonable loss leader for getting people started on pay-as-you go mobile offerings."
Don't you mean "Pay-go". Mwahahahahaha!!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Yeah, the cell phone providers will let that happen. The whole reason they can have you by the balls (service contract) is that you're getting a discount on the phone, tske that away and their left with actually having to provide decent service and features instead of pushing to sign new customers into a 2 year agreement.
Why would you sign up for a service plan for a mobile phone? Just make them pay-as-you-go.
I think there's a growing population who just wants a plain cell phone now.
You know, for talking on - instead of having bluetooth, a built in camera, FM-Tuner, an internet service that costs $10/1 megabyte, pager and orchestrated ringtones.
If I could buy a new (possibly smaller, lighter, more battery-efficent) cell phone I would - but stores don't carry anything that basic. You have to spend at least $100 (CDN) for anything wihout a plan, and I'm sure the lion's share of that is going towards a colour screen and features I don't want.
Almost makes me yearn for an Apple iPhone. Does what it should, elgantly and without any extra "fluff".
Anybody know how these relate to possible data uses? It would be nice to see comm chips for cell/wi-fi built inot laptops.
You can get a non-contract mobile for 19.99 (that's 35$ approx)
0 8/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002K78
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Putting a "cellphone" on a chip for $10 is not just good news for cheap "cellphones". It's great news for putting everything on the Internet, along with the simple human interface that is the 12-key pad and voice. Back through the early 20th Century, motors were big, complex, inefficient and expensive enough that motors were a separate industry. Factories used to have a single motor, like a mill or animal-driven cogwheel, its power distributed through the enterprise over pulleys, ropes and chains. Once motors became cheap commodities, simple to integrate, motors became commonplace enough to become invisible, and the motor industry was subsumed into the larger electronics and transportation industries they enable. Now that cellphones are becoming similarly mundane components, we can start to forget about them, and the era when immediate communication among people and devices required a second thought.
--
make install -not war
AFAIK, in China, an entry-level mobile phone would have a colour screen, advanced midi rings, and a camera (in 2005 it would be a standard part in chinese market). I cannot see where such a chip mobile phone can stand in the market, although I think it is good as an component embeded in some equipments.
Baewulf cluster of these things ;)
seriously, though -- what about adding this (and an antenna) to a MoBo chipset (like the integrated modems, &c.)? no more hardline required for network connectivity...
Thank you.
forget it.
Here, TI is setting a low price point for the chip/chipset and cramming as much functionality as TI's engineers can force into the chip/chipset. Over time, such efforts become easier because the feature size of integrated circuits becomes smaller, and you can simply put more "stuff" into a fixed area of chip. Further, the area of the chip determines its price to a first-order approximation.
I wish that someone would do another VIC-20. For $200.00, I bet that we could get an awesome computer, but I doubt that any of the traditional companies like HP, IBM, and Sony would be interested. The profit margin would be minimal. So, these companies continue to set a high price point, say, $2000.00, and sell a system with commensurate functionality -- a lot of functionality that I simply do not need for reading e-mail and posting articles to SlashDot.
So why can't I get a pay as you go plan where the unused minutes don't disappear in 30 or 60 days? Forget the $25 mobile phone. Just let me keep the minutes that I paid for. I'll buy a $250 phone if you stop expiring paid for minutes 6 to 12 times a year.
I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the world, but here in the UK I've long suspected that the whole mobile telecoms industry is "bent as a nine-bob note" (to use a local colloquialism!)
For example, looking at the phone I'd like to buy - it costs around £300 without a contract, but can be had for free on a 12 month contract costing approximately £20 to £25 per month plus calls. This suggests that a substantial portion of the contract price is subsidy for the phone. One would assume, therefore, that if I were to buy the phone outright that the airtime contract would be significantly cheaper? Well - it doesn't work like that. I'd still end up paying about the same for airtime and calls. What I feel we need far more than a cheap chip is an honest pricing policy. The whole business of subsidised handsets, IMHO stinks.
or a reasonable loss leader for getting people started on pay-as-you go mobile offerings.
Almost every cell provider does this already, and not just for pay-as-you go type offerings. Cingular has three phones that are free instantly, with no mail in rebates involved.
Pre-paid phones usually rely on mail in rebates, but there are still prepaid phones available that would net to free after (if?) the rebate check arrives.
The landfill industry
I don't see where these comclusions came from. Single-sourced chips from TI are likely to be MORE expensive than more generic chips. The cost of the chips is dwarfed by the costs of marketing the phones. None of this is likely to lead to a $25 phone.
This was posted on several sites a few days ago. Why is /. always so slow? I saw it on google news and on Drudge report....
I was an early adopter of cellphones, my first was the old flip phone. (I worked at Motorola at the time) Then I got the first generation StarTac. But I just didn't use it that much. I grew to hate cellphones the more I saw them. I got rid of it around 1997 and was never happier. I REALLY didn't want to get one, but thought it would be best to have one for our move (we are driving out there). So now I am stuck in a 2-year contract, and we did just get the basic phones.
But to your point, you can get basic phones. I just wish that the service was reliable. After comparing I chose Verizon, but I can't even get a decent signal in my house. I have heard of people getting rid of their landline phone and just using cellphones, but I don't see how this is possible (in the US) with our terrible service.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
When will Republicians and Democrats understand that wasteful spending doesn't help anything? Does our nation need to call one of those dbt consolidation firms?
sell it with a plastic bag and you've locked down the 18-65 Women's market.
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
I don't want to carry around my camera.
Cell Phone Camera's suck.
I don't want a bulky portable music player.
Then try one of the billions of tiny ones.
I don't want to have to stay in my office to stay in touch.
Let's be realistic, OWA through a cell phone browser would be pretty much worthless.
I don't want to have to call a recording service to check movie times.
This one is just weird. Check em on the internet before you leave the office. Browsing the web on a cell phone is one of the most painful pointless experiences I have ever engaged in.
I don't want to have to buy cargo pants and add pockets.
Yeah, I don't have anything contradictory to say to that.
Offtopic? Not that I care about my karma, but where the hell did you people go to moderation school?
How does this $25 chip help consumers when cell companies already pay them huge amounts of cash to take the things off their hands? Amazon sometimes offers a T-Mobil camera phone with bluetooth and other bells and whistles for -$275, all said and done. Yes, even after the cost of the phone, you're up by $275. The contract is only one year, rather than the typical two. With the rebates, the contract is already half paid for.
In fact that machine is an example of consolidation of function, creating a lower price; it has integrated Ethernet, graphics, and audio. What we now think of as the processor used to be several chips with individual function.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Is a cellsite on a chip and free airwaves. Like they used to be.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Hasn't anyone else gathered that by integrating everything into a single chip architecture, the amount of waste on the front end should be far less.
Umm, am I the only person who thinks that it is f*n crazy for us to believe that a company spends over $25 on a phone? I only paid about $25 for my last phone brand new, so is this even relevant? Just seems like people surrounding themselves with buzzwords, hey everyone "cell-phone" "new chip"
want some candy?
Don't they already give away phones, and have pay as you go services? We don't need a $25 chip for that.
Not that cell phone capabilities on inexpensive chips isn't welcomed, but your pitch seems a little skewed. I'm not very excited about new technologies that will let me do what has already been going on for years (which is why the Media PC is such a non-event). Dream a little about the possibilities of new technology! How about Spooner's phone from I, Robot? "Hey, cool bluetooth earpiece!", "No, that's my whole phone!" Or maybe Steve Jobs will decide to add this into the next iPod version. Now that's a little more exciting.
Retardland, surely. The first thing I considered was how much cheaper this would make cash prepaid cellphones for illicit enterprirses that require such communication.
I just got a TracFone here in the U.S. (pre-pay cards, up to a year in advance), and the handset is a Nokia 1100b. Small, slim, lightweight, plain B&W display, and runs for a week on a charge (unless you chat quite a lot, at which point a monthly service might be better for you anyway).
No camera, no battery-eating color display, no Java, no mini web browser, no bluetooth (no exploits!). In a nutshell, NO CRAP. My perfect phone, maybe could be yours as well.
{ - Generic Guy - }
Could have been phrased better, but it's a good point: would super-cheap phones encourage crooks to use disposable phones, making it harder for the phone to be tracked and conversations recorded? It's certainly much more convenient. Are there any other advantages for criminals, and how could cops counter this?
They should still be able to use a regular mobile service but keep a little record of numbers which are "direct-callable". Once a phone recognizes another as direct-callable, it would request whatever info it would need to establish point-to-point communications and then see whether it could reach the other. If not but other such phones were in the area, it might even ask them if they could relay the call!
Might as well add in a drop-in charging base station so that it could function as a cordless handset when in range of your home phone line, as long as I'm dreaming.
How much would you pay for a phone that knew how to "cheat" the phone company by leaving their billing system out of some calls whenever it could find a more direct route?
Every public place would become a network hub, every road a backbone...
School? Nah! we just sit around smoking crack and laugh about the n00bz we whack in the super-secret slashdot-mods-club. (It's a bit like the freemasons, only more sinister)
Hold on a sec,
Obviously, other parts are needed to make a cellphone, and they're not cheap.
But, even if you narrow the discussion to radio modems to be "embedded in everything", you have a problem with patent royalties.
It varies between network technologies (GSM, CDMA, etc.) but it's usually in the $30 to $50 range.
You mean we can actually call somebody from a mobile phone?! Damn, I think I overlooked that feature on my hand set.
This is how we keep all the beaurocrats off welfare.
Next thing you'll suggest that we ship off all of the public telephone sanitizers on ship "B".
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
I can't believe I haven't seen the response:
This could mean cheaper more ubiquitous locating devices for everyone and everything.....
Track everyone cheaper.
Where are the paranoids?
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
No cellphone will cost $25. They will be free or $1 with 1-2 year contract, and $199+ without a contract, just as today's shitty phones.
What I'd like is honest cell phone and services market without fucking lock-in, simlocks and phones sold exclusivelly via GSM operators with artificially inflated "official" end user prices and operators "sponsoring" said phones.
You know, like in market economy.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
The ability to mold nano-scale features can benefit many fields, from semiconductor device manufacturing to emerging areas of biotechnology. For example, polymer nanoimprint lithography could help the electronics industry achieve the resolution requirements needed for next-generation devices. By structuring materials with dimensions smaller than the wavelength of light, the technique also could create photonic devices whose optical properties are defined by the geometry of the relief structures embossed on them.
seems obvious where eveyone is heading... plastic or optic transistors, imprinted at the nano-level for mold-making, to make disposable, tiny, (implantable) devices...
I would think that the biggest use of cheaper phone electronics will be for devices that need to transmit information. Drink machines that call in when they need refilling, smoke alarms that politely tell you that your house is burning down, sound-activated eavesdropping devices, etc.
Remember those super-low cost DISPOSABLE cell phones that were just around the corner in early 2001? Was that just a dot com bubble wet dream or what?
They sure fell off the radar.
Insert witty sig here.
"Cell Phone on a Chip"
I think Maxwell Smart was ahead of everyone else.
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
I can't believe it took this long in the thread for the "Beowulf cluster of [x]" to appear. This must be a new record!
I had no idea that killing Muslims was so expensive.
is that you need really really tiny fingers to dial..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Bring it on you toolboxes.
I've got karma to burn
In reality the cost of manufacturing a cellphone is not much more than that.
The main (and glossed over) here is being able to put the RF section (modulation & amp) as part of the main (baseband etc) IC. Historically the RF has been discreet since the carrier is in the 0.9-1.9GHz range, and has been fabricated using SiGe or GaAs
That they've managed to implement this in CMOS (and using the same design rules as the baseband processor) is the achievement. Hence it's one less device to source, package, test, and solder to the PCB. In terms of reducing the cost of the cellphone, it probably saves a couple of bucks.
Nokia being an "earlier adopter" is not a big deal either - they've been using TI for their baseband ICs for a (relatively) long time.
The big deal is that some marketing person has decreed that $25 is a pricepoint that consumers go for. Keeps them (the marketing types) employed, I guess.
...what? We're not allowed to have any tech unless YOU want to use it? Take yer tantrums elsewhere.
I hate it when my dealer changes her number
No longer will they have to keep their 10 sim cards on a keychain and swap them into their phone. Now they can just have 10 phones [...]
Note that this is how much of the middle-east terrorist networks were mapped. Some of the players had separate SIM cards for each contact - but made the mistake of using them in the same phone.
Since the phone's serial number and the SIM's serial number were both sent to the network, and the spy satellites snooped the network transmissions, the US intelligence community was able to map who was talking to whom, and when, and build a very accurate map of the command structure.
Eventually the terrorists figured out that the NSA was listening and that the physical phone (and its location) could be tracked. So they started using separate phones, and moving between calls when relaying messages, or avoiding cellphones altogether. After which the US was able to talk about what it had been doing without worrying about breaking it by revealing it (since it had already been broken by the terrorists' behavior change).
Of course that puts ordinary crooks on notice that this capability is available, encouraging them to use separate phones.
Sure, cheaper phones will make it easier for crooks. But they make it easier for ALL communication. (Including people REPORTING crooks - cheaper cellphones means more people have them when they need them.) IMHO the benefits to the general population far outweigh any slight easing of criminal communication.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Zinc isn't nearly as dangerous as the others, in fact it's an essential mineral for life. All the others in that list are quite poisonous but present in small, fairly inert quantities.
My favourite solution is to store these things temporarily in well-sealed landfill sites until, in 20 or 100 years, the technology and economics makes it viable to mine the landfills...
Could have been phrased better, but it's a good point: would super-cheap phones encourage crooks to use disposable phones, making it harder for the phone to be tracked and conversations recorded? It's certainly much more convenient. Are there any other advantages for criminals, and how could cops counter this?
You can already buy pay as you go phones. The pricerange seems to be between $50 and $100 plus airtime which usually is 25 to 50cents/min. They often come with bonus time if you give them your address but I imagine a criminal wouldn't need to do this.
But better still you can just buy the pay as you go sim cards at least from t-mobile. Get a junk phone from a 2nd hand store for the $20 range or so and a sim card from where ever and boom. GSM phones are not at all uncommon as people on contracts can often get a free for cheap phone yearly which might save them money on batteries.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
That was their whole point. This may usher in an era in which month-to-month providers can *also* give away phones. That would kill the "sell your soul" market pretty fast.
Is a phone in a watch with a bluetooth button that goes in my ear. Voice enabled dialing and we're there! As the technology progresses, we can even add a little vid screen and camera to the watch.
There you have it! Dick Tracy would be so proud!
Heh. I had this sudden vision of the whole "war on terror" thing being a conspiracy among phone manufacturers to sell more phones... :)
Nokia to develop phones based on the one chip
Seriously, on [mother]board triband gsm/GRRS/EDGE would PWN!!!!!!
nuff said
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
It is a 'pute chip that does lots of things mobiles need. Not the mobile bit though.
:-)
*switches hat*
Can it run linux?
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com