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Unmaking Motorola's Q
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a breakdown of Motorola's Q Phone, looking at the cost of each of its components. From the article:
'It costs Motorola about $158 to build the phone. That includes components and assembly but excludes other expenses such as marketing, distribution, and licensing fees to Microsoft, which makes the phone's Windows Mobile operating system.' By comparaison, the BlackBerry 8700, only costs $123 according to the article. The difference between the two, the BlackBerry 'doesn't play video or music, and unlike the Q, it doesn't have a camera.'"
I think it's interesting with all of the power of the web that some news sites, generally seems to be the sites of more traditional media, neglect to furnish a basic image of the device or subject in question. I'm interested in a photo just because I've never heard of or seen this thing.
Google Image Link
Actually the driving force behind Blackberry features has traditionally been the government's need for security. The government has put strict requirements on the device to be sure it's secure. That's something I can appriciate.
There are server-side policies for EVERYTHING. A rep once told a group of us that if we could find any way to get data off a Blackberry that couldn't be stopped/restricted by a policy on the server he'd buy us lunch and get it fixed. In an enterprise environment the admin can restrict everything.
We can (and do) set password policies. Length, age, complexity, number of attempts can all be configured. There's even a distress feature so the device notifies an admin if the user is forced to unlock it (you change your password by one character). The admin could then send a wipe command to the device which completely wipes all data.
It even has AES encrypted storage. If you turn that on, even if you unsolder the memory chip you can't read the data (though you could theoretically proceed to brute-force it).
The lack of cameras on all Blackberries (is a God-send!) is due to the restrictions placed on cameras in senstive areas. If one Blackberry had a camera they may all be banned from those locations (rumor has it there may be one coming though, I hope not).
No MP3s because it's a business first device. I personally don't agree with this one. I wish it would play WAV file voicemail (promised, never delivered). It doesn't have removable storage or even enough for more than a couple songs, but this relates back to the security issue. They can't be used to copy documents from a computer and it's near impossible to remove sensitive data from the device.
It's not perfect, but at least it has a reason.
Digitac
Just to play Devil's Advocate, I have a Q and love it. It plays my episodes of Futurama without skipping and all of my various formats of music with the Core Pocket Media Player. It gets my email for me, streams internet radio stations, and has a very capable web browser (though I hope the minimo people get a compatible build out for the Q soon). I got a mini-SD card for it that holds 2GB of stuff for about $50.
I, personally, have no issue with battery life other than when I play movies and so forth all day. However, I expect that to drain the battery much faster than normal phone usage drains the average cell phone anyway.
I also don't know why you said the Q doesn't have push Email services. Mine pushes my gmail out to me just fine, and you can also set pocket outlook to poll your email accounts automatically every few minutes if you'd rather do it that way.
Also, I don't have a problem with my unit locking up at all. I often have pocket IE, Outlook, and the media player all going at once, and they seem to get along just fine.
As far as I'm concerned, I got phone with a 400kb internet connection, push email, web browsing, internet streaming, video and music playback, plus whatever other little software I want to install for the cost of a $200 handset and a $50 card. So far it's working out to be a prety good deal.
BTW, check out Qusers.comfor more people with Q's. They can tell you the good (and bad) of their experience.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
- The Enter key is where an Enter key is on a computer, and the "Backspace" button (a frequently used button) and the "Back" button. Seems sane to me. "Backspace" is an "accident" button, and it's in prime position to hit with the edge of your thumb when you make a mistake. The "Enter" key is one you know you're going to hit before you get to the end of the paragraph, and not that frequently used, so its location is also appropriate. I've tried a Treo 650 and found that to be OK, but I was accustomed to my Q already.
- Yeah, I don't like the scrollwheel. I can't get my hand in position to use it and find the D-pad and menu-letter shortcuts to be much faster and 1-hand-friendly.
- I've run it for 4 weeks. No stability issues or crashes. I sync with Exchange and POP frequently, use web search, calendar, make phone calls, etc... fairly normal usage.
- No AKU2, no problem. Every 15-minutes is plenty for me. There is an SMS-based solution to this anyway, supposedly, although I'm not what that requires on the server. It certainly requires free text messages.
- My battery lasts for 2-3 days with ~1 hour of talk time and 15-minute email syncing. I've heard MSN Messenger can run-away when you don't have a data connection... maybe that was it?
- Regarding charging off a computer... why?... you still need to pack a cable anyway. I simply don't use ActiveSync, because I can sync over the air, so I'm not plugging in for that either.
- Regarding build quality, I sort of agree, but it's mainly the battery cover that's at fault. I've read putting some sticky padding between it and the battery will solidify it.
- You never really mention how "most of these problems relate back to Smartphone edition." I switch to tasks in the background by hitting Home and clicking right once (for the most recent app) and clicking the "do it" button. That seems reasonable. I can probably do that faster than the time it takes to whip out the stylus. What do these other problems have to do with Smartphone vs. PocketPC?
+10
Hardware cost of the mobile phone is nothing compared to all the licensed buzz-words: GSM, UMTS, TDMA, CDMA, etc. That all stuff has to be coded and tested of course: in both hardware and software. Licensing costs for such hardware/software easily run into numbers with 6 (six) and more zeros at the end.
And embedded OSs they use - like Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm OS - all can easily run into $30-200 per phone. Or you think they started thinking of Linux just for fun?
P.S. Reminds me why GSM won over technically superior CDMA in USA. The only "problem" with CDMA was stupid licensing and patent regime established by Qualcomm and Co (bunch of old companies afraid to be left aside of market.) 3GPP learned the lesson and UMTS had won again over US crowd - mostly due to friendly licensing. More or less all 3G wireless networks deployed around the world are derivatives of european UMTS. Licensing is no simple question to ignore.
P.P.S. Long time ago, one chinese CE manufacterer speculated that to produce $200 Palm PDA they need only about $40. So the numbers in article aren't really surprising.
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