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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."
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that this grand invention for Texas Instruments was done in India.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Developing countries? Heck I'll take at $20 phone here in the good ol' US of A!
Dupe...
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http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01
The article mentioned "India and other developing markets" but unless I move to Bangalore looking for work, am I going to see a cost reduction in my next phone? And if not, why not?
What about those of us who use a CDMA/TDMA only provider?
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
In dual-chip architectures, there are two chips: the (C)ommunications CPU and the (A)pplications CPU. C-CPU and A-CPU respectively. They typically communicate over a bus to pass data back and forth between the two chips, so there is a standard interface between the two.
It is pretty straightforward to program for this type of setup because you don't have to worry about what the other chip is doing. It's over there doing its thing while my program is over here doing its thing. The two don't talk so often. Typically, you'll even have two separate operating systems running on the separate chips, that's how far apart they are.
But what will it be like with only one chip, and presumably one memory block? Will the single OS running the chip have to handle all events and interrupts? How much more difficult will it be to write a multitasking phone operating system when such disparate things as mail applications and radio transmissions are handled on the same chip?
I'd love for cell phone prices to come down a little bit. Hopefully this brings the prices down, but if software gets more expensive, it may be a wash.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
A typical cell phone costs, what, $70-$100 and can do just about anything and has more processing power than most computers 10 years ago. If you strip out all the useless stuff out of a cell phone (you know, to make it, gasp, act just like a phone) I don't see how it can be that much of a challenge to bring it down to the $20 range.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
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.
Cellular phone calls have to go down in price. Regular land phones are cheap but not everyone on the planet has them, because land lines are expensive. Cheaper cell phones are great what about the price of the phone calls ? And don't believe that crap on digital divide, its called the RICH AND THE POOR divide been there for a long time just labelling it won't change it.
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=/
Ok Osama, I'll get right on to the marketing department to see what we can do.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Let me know when service won't cost just as much.
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...
I know it's not the theme of the article, but it's just as obvious...
One chip means smaller and lower power consumption possibilities as well. It goes hand in hand with cheaper.
It will help lead to phones in watches as well as integration into other devices (eg, directly into mobile PC's as a standard chipset for GPRS integration. )
Cheap is nice too, but it's just part of the overall advantage.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
When I went to India a few years ago to visit relatives, I was surprised to see that they were all toting cell phones (and better ones than my lame Noka 2260 at the time!) and when I asked about their plans I was surprised to know that they had plans with UNLIMITED minutes for very low prices.
I am glad to see that we have innovation that will help connect the rest of the world, but I have to wonder, why the hell can't phones be made here at ultra-low costs? And what of the plans??!?! Everytime I want a deal on a cell phone I have to sign a contract (and these days you get the special deal only on 2 year contracts - read more at end of this post) and am locked into a shitty phone and a shitty plan. BTW if you have seen the list prices of phones (w/out service plan deal, you will notice how ridiculously pricey they are).
Note about 2-year contracts:
The exception I've seen (at amazon.com's cell phone site at least) regarding cell phone contracts is T-Mobile, which requires only a 1 year contract for all their deals. After hearing many horror stories about them I took a chance with them last year and was surprised to have absolutely no problems with reception or dropped calls or whatever here in CA (it seems like those problems were unique to an earlier range of phone models only). I once made a call to change the plan to a family plan and was also impressed by their AWESOME tech support, which doesn't go to some cheap call-center overseas like ATT.
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)
It's also great for those of us who dig super fancy cell phones... I just bought a treo, and I'm loving it... but when I go to the beach or other electronic unfriendly places, I pop out the SIM card and put it in my old motorolla... I'm fortunate to have the old motorolla, but if I didn't, I would love to pick up some sub $20 phone to put the SIM card in.
Because you can't turn a land line off as easily. While I personally despise cell phones, their greatest "feature" is the easily-accessible "off" switch. It takes a good deal of unplugging to get the same effect on a land line.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
"thus making cellphones more affordable in developing economies"
should read:
"thus reducing the cost to manufacture cell phones"
The term "affordable" is objective, not subjective.
Theoretically, this should allow reduction in price in ALL markets.
So they can make tiny cellphones that connect opposite ends of the earth for $20, yet a VHS-sized scientific calculator with a funky green screen costs $100? Hm...
> At what point will technology become so cheap and simple to use, that it will make terrorism that much more effective and efficient.
About 40 years ago.
Any terrorist that needs to wait for a big company to release sub $20 mobile phones before he can make a cheap remote detonator isn't trying.
A 7 year old could make a cheap remote detonator from parts bought at Radio Shack with his or her pocket money.
Advanced users are users too!
You're an idiot. This has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. If you're going to kill people, you're not going to be stopped by having to pay an extra 30 bucks for a phone, and a remote detonator can be rigged up for the cost of a remote control car and a screwdriver already.
But even if that weren't the case, stop making every fucking thing about terrorism. You're making us all dumber.
Why unplug? Just turn off the ringer. There should be a little switch on the side/botttom of every phone manufactured lately (last 30 years or so).
":) this will be good for some of us who just use cell phones as phones nothing else."
Why not use a land line, then?
Because in most parts of the world there aren't any landlines (at least, not enough).
One reason why GSM is adopted at such a rate is that in some countries there wasn't a working telephone system before.
And a GSM net is cheaper than putting a wired telephone system in place.
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.
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.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
There should be a little switch on the side/botttom of every phone manufactured lately (last 30 years or so).
I think that's the grandparent's point -- every phone. In many (most?) households, that may be two, three, four phones in a single house in any number of places: Kitchen area, a family/rec room/, basement, bedrooms...
Much easier to turn one off than four.
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.