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Cell Phone On A Chip

Posted by michael on from the beam-me-up dept.

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."

3 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Pointless policy at work? by sanityspeech · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  2. Maximum Functionality at Minimal Price Point by reporter · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The marketing idea that Texas Instruments (TI) has developed is a rehash of an old idea: set a low price point and maximize the amount of functionality that can be sold at that point. One of the earliest examples is the VIC-20 computer from Commodore. It set the price of the contraption at (I think) $199.95, and then the engineers put as much functionality as they could into the product at the price point. The VIC was a smashing success even though William Shatner (ouch!) served as the spokesmodel.

    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.

  3. Re:Start with just making PHONES by blackmonday · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't get it. You can already buy many, many phones that do nothing but make phone calls. Look at any provider's web page, and they're gonna have starter phones that don't have the new in-demand fancy features. (and that's why they sell them, because people want to buy them)

    Hey, buy a used Motorola V66. It's a great phone, makes good calls and is inexpensive. You can still get all the accessories and batteries. Its small and has a metal casing, and it looks cool.

    It amuses me that the web site with the most tech-savvy members continually finds new technologies "crap" and this attitude is modded up as insightful. Don't we want phones that do *more* things, that cost the same as our old shittier, bulkier phones?