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$20 Cellphones Possible with TI's New Chip
swimgeek writes "Texas Instrument's Indian branch has succeeded in developing a single chip which combines the functions usually performed by multiple chips in a GSM cellphone. By doing so, cellphone costs can be dramatically reduced, thus making cellphones more affordable in developing economies. Nokia has been contracted to make the initial sets, with market launch in as soon as 9 months. More coverage here and here."
Dupe...
/ 25/1735243&tid=215&tid=100
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01
Phone costs will drop, but generally since they are subsidized by your contract you'll never know.
Also it's worth noting that most of the world use 900 or 1800 mhz cellphones, whereas gsm phones in the US typically run on 1900 mhz - I doubt this chipset will be initially manufactered in US frequencies, although some latin american countries do use 1900.
Well... last month infineon introduced a mobile phone for under $20.n ewsticker/meldung/61656&words=Infineon%20Handy
(link in german)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/result.xhtml?url=/
I used to be in that camp, but now that i have a decent web-browser i'm starting to wonder how i lived without it.
Opera is remarkably usable on my nokia. I use it at the store to look up recipes, check if prices are competitive, pretend that i'm working when i'm out hiking etc....
Tri or Quad band seems like a must have for voice if you live in the USA since most of the rest of the world uses 1800mhz. Fortunately most new phones support that and it's a big reason to upgrade.
If this pans out well, it's good news for India. For a simple reason: India's market size is very price sensitive and highly underleveraged. The Nokia 1110 - the 'MAde in India model' (http://www.nokia.co.in/nokia/0,,45346,00.html) sells for around USD 60 and has around 25% of the GSM market. Also, since Indian call rates are one of the lowest in the world, ARPUs (avg rev per user) is low, so to the average consumer, the cost of the handset in proportion to her montly cellular oullay is small...
You're missing the point. I took "Just as a phone" to mean just that, not "play games, organize mp3z, walk my dog, write my thesis, predict stock prices and water my lawn." This definition EXCLUDES not leaving the house.
main(0)
I would just like to remind anyone about to go on a rant about TI outsourcing that TI is in the process of building a $3 billion chip plant, right here in Dallas (Richardson), TX. Shamelessly copied from Dallas Morning news (I would have provided a link if it was reg-free):
When it comes to sheer size, the research facility under construction at the University of Texas at Dallas might have an inferiority complex.
JUAN GARCIA/DMN
Electrical engineering professor Bruce Gnade (right) said small companies will be able to hire the center to conduct research. 'We would have millions of dollars' worth of equipment that small companies can't afford,' Dr. Gnade said. Tom Lund manages the UT System's office of facilities, planning and construction.
It's dwarfed by the $3 billion Texas Instruments chip plant being built on a 92-acre site a few blocks away its counterpart in a Richardson mega-project.
But experts say UTD's 192,000-square-foot Natural Science and Engineering Research Building will be an integral part of the area's growth as a high-tech development and employment center. The $85 million facility, which marked completion of its roof with a ceremony Friday, is scheduled to be finished in December 2006.
"UTD is finally coming into its own as a major research university with lots of ties to high-tech industry," said Bernard Weinstein, director of the Center for Economic Development and Research at the University of North Texas. "It's an asset for the entire region."
Waco economist Ray Perryman said the UTD center is a critical component for "leveraging the knowledge base" needed for research.
"The future of Dallas depends on being the leader in this next generation of technology. [UTD's research facility] is building the future," said Mr. Perryman, who predicted in a 2003 report that the two projects would create more than 76,000 Collin County jobs.
Bill Sproull, CEO of the Richardson Chamber of Commerce, believes that most of those jobs will come from the "new technologies, new spin-off companies and new trained scientific engineers" generated by the research center.
"It's not an investment in the building," Mr. Sproull said. "It's an investment in the program."
The UTD and TI projects were the offspring of Project Emmitt, the moniker given to a deal quietly conceived two years ago by state, corporate and academic officials.
Under the agreement, TI would build its chip plant in Texas if Gov. Rick Perry allocated funds from the Texas Enterprise Fund for UTD research.
The UTD building, equipment, salaries, associated costs and upgrading of other science facilities are being paid for with $300 million in public and private funds. The state has contributed $200 million, and the university has to raise $100 million.
Compared with the TI facility, which will be the size of 25 football fields and have 1,000 workers, the engineering building will be modest: Its four stories, plus a basement, will house about 400 employees mostly faculty and graduate students working as research assistants.
The exterior design of the building makes ample use of curves and angles, and anodized stainless steel panels will reflect hues of greens, blues and purples.
"It's one of the finest pieces of architecture in the state," said Tom Lund, the resident construction manager for the UT System. "It's not just a rectangle. It moves, flows, curves and slopes."
Plans for the interior space might seem unusual for a college campus.
"It won't have classrooms," said Dr. Bruce Gnade, an engineering professor who serves as the university's liaison to the building project.
Biology, physics, chemistry, engineering and other scientific disciplines will be housed at the center, where the interior space will be designed to foster cross-pollination of ideas.
Glass will be used abundantly. Modular walls will be movable so that researchers from different scientific areas can easily reconfigure their work space to collaborate on proj
bit trollent
It is pretty ironic. But what's more interesting is that TI was one of the first companies to jump on the outsourcing bandwagon, way before anybody could even say the word 'Bangalore'. TI and GE started outsourcing way back in the early 90s. In fact you can attribute most of today's outsourcing to the ground that they broke.
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Here in the Netherlands I got a phone for like 20 dollars about 4 years ago. I got some free minutes with it.
I still have it. I don't pay a monthly charge. Just pre-pay an amount of money (like 10 dollars) and I get a number of call minutes to use up. As long as I keep a positive balance others can call me without it costing a dime.
In all that time I have put maybe 50 dollars worth of calling minutes into it.
There is not even a time limit to use up the minutes, as long as you make at least one call a year.
(and they do that only to be able to release the number when the phone has somehow been lost or is defective)
You should vote with your feet and move to a GSM provider. Don't let them lock you in.
;)
But it's OK to be locked into GSM?
Seriously, CDMA is the most widely used mobile phone technology in North America. It's used by at least four major carriers I've heard of (Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, and Virgin Mobile), and probably a bunch of smaller ones I haven't. You can transfer phones between carriers in many cases - I'm not sure about the others, but Verizon doesn't lock the phones they sell or lock other carriers' phones from being activated on their network.
As far as international roaming goes, Samsung has a phone that can use CDMA in North America (on NA frequencies) and GSM elsewhere (on international frequencies). That's not much more complicated than the tri- or quad-band phones that are required to use GSM both here and abroad.
Do some CDMA providers also use GSM?
Not that I know of. CDMA is a much more efficient use of their radio spectrum, since neighboring towers can use the same frequencies. A carrier with spare spectrum would be foolish to dedicate it to GSM when they could expand their CDMA capacity instead.
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Hmm, you mean your phone companies doesn't already sponsor the phones, like in most of Europe - where we pay from $1 to $100 for the phones ?
They are right about cheap phones being good for developing countries. Mobiles are used in totally different ways there then they are in the 1st world. They are also responsible for some of the fastest commercial growth ever seen in those countries. Here is one article from the Economist about it -- they have several. Since I don't know if you have to pay for this or not, I'm STEALING it myself since I did pay for it and giving it to you.
Mobile phones and development: Less is more
Jul 7th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Mobile phones can boost development in poor countries--if governments let them
Africa
IMAGINE a magical device that could boost entrepreneurship and economic activity, provide an alternative to bad roads and unreliable postal services, widen farmers' access to markets, and allow swift and secure transfers of money. Now stop imagining: the device in question is the mobile phone. Not surprisingly, people in the developing world are clamouring for them, and subscriber growth is booming. The fastest growth rates are to be found in Africa, albeit from a low base. Already, 80% of the world's population lives within range of a mobile network; but only about 25% have a mobile phone.
The primary obstacle to wider adoption is the cost of handsets. In the rich world, these typically cost around $200 (though most pay less than this thanks to subsidies from network operators), or less than 1% of the average income per person. In the developing world, in contrast, a $50 handset would account for 14% of the annual income of someone earning $1 a day. So the first step in promoting the adoption of mobile phones, say operators in developing countries, is to reduce the cost of the handsets. Several such schemes are under way: in particular, several operators in developing countries have joined together to aggregate their buying power, and Motorola, the world's second-largest handset-maker, has agreed to supply up to 6m handsets for less than $40 each (see article). There is already talk of prices falling below $30 next year.
ndustry observers believe cheaper handsets could expand the market by as many as 150m new subscribers a year. As well as boosting economic development in poor countries, this will help to close the "digital divide" between the communications-rich and communications-poor. Governments, you would have thought, would be doing everything in their power to promote the spread of mobile phones.
But rather than treating mobile phones as an important tool for development, many governments see them instead as an opportunity to impose hefty taxes and milk a fast-growing industry for all it is worth. In both Turkey and Bangladesh, for example, anyone buying a new mobile phone must pay a $15 connection tax. Many countries slap large import duties on handsets and impose special taxes on subscribers and operators. In many cases, these taxes double the cost of acquiring a mobile phone. As handset prices fall, such taxes will become an ever more prominent obstacle to wider adoption.
Governments should reduce these taxes at once. Indeed, by doing so, they can both speed adoption and increase revenues. High import tariffs discourage legal imports of phones and encourage people to buy them on the black market instead. Reducing such tariffs would boost revenues as legal imports increased. Lower taxes on phone calls would encourage adoption and increase the tax base. It can be done: both Mauritius and India have recently reduced their taxes and tariffs.
Mobile phones have created more entrepreneurs in Africa in the past five years than anything else, says the boss of one pan-African operator. Promoting their spread requires no aid payments or charity handouts: handset-makers, acting in their own interest, are ready to produce low-cost phones for what they now regard as a promising new market. Mobile operators across the developing world would love to sign up millions of new customers. But if developing countries are to realise the full social and economic benefits of mobile phones, governments must ensure that their policies help, rather than hinder, the wider adoption of this miraculous technology.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Bully on India for new manufacturing techniques but we can already make cell phones which are as commodity appliances as alarm clocks.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Having sold said phones, this is easy: Give them someone else's address.
In Finland allmost all the operators have dropped their prices very much. Currently I have sim only contract from Saunalahti, paying 17,90e month for 500 minutes to any phonenumber at any time. 1000 minutes costs 35,80e, perfect for small businesses.
And for the poster before, the phones are comming more and more cheaper. Like in example I recently bought Siemens A65 with 79e. The price of connectivity is going down with fast pace, the only thing is that one has to make choices, ie. not getting that new Nokia/Samsung phone or getting the service from a virtual provider.
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the chip is not the main power consumer. the transmitter is. any power consumption decrease from the smaller/thinner chip should be insignificant compared to transmitter power consumption.
With fabs dropping feature size, incorporating low-k dielectric etc, this has become no big deal to fab in CMOS. Further, from this, the converters (ADC and DAC) can run faster - up to the broadband freqs so they can do 'direct conversion' and then demodulate etc using DSP. This pushes the burden over to software but makes it easier to have dual band or tri-band phones without lots of oscillator circuits in there. Other standards such as EDGE/GPRS can be done in software which is expensive to design but it's easier to re-program flash memory than to re-spin an IC. All this means more integration and lower unit cost.
Not true for TI. Our largest Fabrication plants are right here in N. Texas, and we're building an even larger one right down the highway from me. Our largest design center is also in Dallas. (BTW, TI Bangalore is a design center - they don't mfg the chips there.)
Also, today TI demonstrated a prototype phone using the chip to make an actual call; back in January, they just announced the chip.