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Why You Can't Build Your Own Smartphone: Patents
jfruh writes "In the mid-00s, more and more people started learning about Android, a Linux-based smartphone OS. Open source advocates in particular thought they could be seeing the mobile equivalent of Linux — something you could download, tinker with, and sell. Today, though, the Android market is dominated by Google and the usual suspects in the handset business. The reason nobody's been able to launch an Android empire from the garage is fairly straightforward: the average smartphone is covered by over 250,000 patents."
couldn't give a single f*ck.
The reason nobody's been able to launch an Android empire from the garage is fairly straightforward: the average smartphone is covered by over 250,000 patents."
And it's hard. And it costs a lot of money. And the market is full of very good competitors. Otherwise there's nothing stopping you.
Patents won't touch you if you make 1-10 units.
Other manufacturers won't consider you as worthwhile to legislate against since you most likely won't make any profit from those devices sold.
From US point of view, good luck getting your device FCC approved, that'll be cheap and fun process!
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
My only reply to these statistics is: Today more trivial patents are filled for then ever before.
How many patents cover assembling a PC from parts, installing your own OS on it, and selling those? Anybody have a list or something? Genuinely curious.
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On a separate, possibly unrelated note, yet another of my silly dreams: right to access and tinker with the BIOS (or whatever the technical term is).
I understand you might part with that right if you have the item subsidised, but after the contract ends, the root rights must flow back to you.
Oh, and root rights should always be available on an unsubsidised device; the whole "warranty will be void" shtick doesn't fly with me. I mean on my PC, it would be void if I over-clocked it or whatever, not because I installed Linux instead of windows; similarly, warranty should not be voided simply because you change a ROM, only if you use an over-clocking app.
(Do correct me if I am wrong in my rant)
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
What's stopping you?
In the mid-00s, more and more people started learning about Android...
Android was announced in 2007 and the first Android phone wasn't sold until late 2008. Even the Neo1970 was from 2007/08, so I don't know what the submitter is referring to.
Apple wants $200 in royalties. Per corner.
This is totally ignoring the software and patent problems.
To elaborate on why open-source hardware is hard, and why making a single phone will cost you over $10K.
Why open-source software works is:
Widely available repository of code.
Many people able to review it, or sections of it, and understand it.
Ease of submitting tested patches.
Hardware has problems that don't really fit well with this.
The open schematic is the trivially easy part, and not really a problem.
(though in practice, you need a schematic with copious links to design documents, which isn't well solved by open tools).
The number of people who can review it is rather smaller - as you can't open up a c file, and see a clear error or awkwardness in code that can be edited.
For all but the most basic errors, you are going to have to sit down and read several hundred pages of hardware documentation about how the chips in question work, in addition to having in-depth knowledge about the circuit design, and costings of likely changes.
Now, you've done this, and generated a patch that you think (for example) lowers the supply current by 1%.
Compile - test.
On a PC, this takes a couple of minutes.
For something of a smartphone class, a one-off PCB may cost several hundred dollars. Then the parts will cost another several hundred dollars in small quantities, as well as being difficult to obtain.
Now, you have to solder the parts onto the board, which is a decidedly nontrivial thing - and if you decide you want someone else to do this, it's probably another several hundred dollars.
So, you're at the thick end of a thousand dollars for a 'compile'.
Now, you boot the device, and it exhibits random hangs.
Neglecting the fact that you are going to need several hundred to several thousand dollars of test equipment, you now have to find
the bug.
Is it:
A) The fact that unlabled 0.5*1mm component C38 is in fact 20% over the designed value, as the assembly company put the wrong one in.
B) C38 has a tiny bridge of solder underneath it that is making intermittent contact.
C) The chipmaker for the main chip hasn't noticed that their chip doesn't quite do what they say it will do, and the datasheet is wrong.
D) You missed a tangential reference on page 384 of the datasheet to proper setup of the RAM chip, and it is pure coincidence that all models up till now have booted.
E) Because you're ordering small quantities, you had to resort to getting the chips from a distributor who diddn't watch their supply chain really carefully, and your main chip has in fact been desoldered from a broken cellphone.
F) Though the design of the circuit is correct, and the board you made matches that design, and all the parts are correct and work properly, the inherent undesired elements introduced by real life physics means it doesn't work.
G) A completely random failure of a part that could occur with even the best design, and best manufacture.
G - may mean that it's worthwhile making two or more of each revision - which of course boosts costs.
Hardware is nasty.
This gets a lot less painful of course for lower end hardware. For very limited circuits, which can be done on simple inexpensive PCBs, and be easily soldered at home - costs of a 'compile' can be in the tens of dollars, or even lower.
Patents won't stop you from building a couple of devices in your garage; but, they'll be as useful as bricks. You have to get the radios FCC certified and then run the gauntlet of certification hoops to convince the cell provider to allow you to connect your garage built device to their network. There are radio modules available that would speed up the process -- basically pre-certified modules that handle the entire cell phone function. You might be able to do it using these... But they're huge, relatively speaking. You won't be building a sexy device like a Galaxy S, iPhone, or Droid with them.
We've done it on equipment we're designing for deployment; but, I have the advantage of being able to call Verizon and say, "I'm Confused, an electrical and software engineer with Big-Company. I am using a cell radio module from A_well_known_manufacturer. I need to activate it on our account for testing..." And, by the way, we won't do that until we're pretty damn sure the thing will work right.
As an engineer, I thought I would point out there are two ways we deal with patents:
Method 1: Once you have an idea, do a thorough patent search and verify your idea does not appear to violate any patents. If it does, re-design the widget so it avoids the patent.
Method 2: Ignorance is bliss. Design and build it.
I can tell you, if you use method 1 you will need an enormous staff and risk never getting anything done. Despite it all, you still won't be safe because someone will come along with patent claims anyway, even though you did a most thorough due diligence search. I'm not saying you ignore patents, that would be unethical. Company I work for has a record of the patents related to our products that we have been made aware of. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to go looking for trouble.
So Apple has cornered the market?
GeeksPhone are doing pretty much what TFA claims is impossible. Why haven't they been sued? Too small to be worth the trouble? Jolla (50 employees) aren't exactly a behemoth either. OK, so Jolla haven't released anything yet and thus can't be sued, but the fact that the company was formed implies that they don't consider the 250,000 patents a problem. (Yeah, I know, not Android, but the same principles apply.)
Most sensible countries still don't allow software patents.
Software-defined radio is not some magic wand you wave and poof! wireless telecom. It eventually gets down to physical RF hardware. And when that hardware operates in the gigahertz band (which it will have to do unless you want the FCC on your ass), you need high-tech RF transceiver hardware like SAW filters and gigahertz amplifiers, which are patented *in their own right* as electronic components, whether they're in a phone or not.
Too many computer programmers are used to accomplishing miracles in software, and they forget that somewhere in the background, there's an electrical engineer that made their miracle possible.
Oh, come on. The "patent system is screwed up" argument started with software and algorithms, and continued with patents on DNA and organisms. And yeah, in those cases it was pretty clear the patent system wasn't working as intended. I'm with you on that one. But now here at Slashdot we're upset that ingenious physical devices, devices that took years of work to design and whose operation is by no means obvious, should not be patented.
There can be no question that something like a SAW filter is a new, non-obvious, useful device. So at this point, you're arguing that patents should not exist at all. And I won't follow you there.
You really have no idea how much brainpower went into designing the individual components within a cell phone. An iPhone is a miracle the first time you see one, then it's a handy tool, and then your familiarity makes it seem blindingly obvious. But tens of thousands of people spent billions of person-hours figuring out how to build the thousands of unique devices inside. And I think those people should receive some reward for their efforts.
I once thought about creating a matlab implementation for a specific domain and use case. After looking at the patents which Mathworks holds, i stopped that. Many of these are for sure trivial, but if you would place somthing which they consider competition, you will not survive the lawsuit.
"We are actually witnessing fewer patent suits per patent issued today than the historical average"
So if there are, say, only 0.1 suits per patent, a startup trying to market their own smartphone will only have to win 25,000 court cases, and they'll then be free to sell it on the "Open Market".
It may not be immediately obvious to all readers how this qualifies as promoting the "Progress of Science and useful Arts", as the phrase goes.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Over 250,000 patents? That's probably more security than a medieval fortress with a thick, heavy steel fence and barbed wire, a surrounding moat and drawbridge, snipers, and dozens of guards operating turret guns and cannons. I'm sorry, but that's just uncalled for for something as simple as a god damn phone. If that's not stifling the fuck out of innovation, then I don't know what is. How the hell has this come to be without the government seeming to even give a fuck, even with the heavy lobbying of companies with their own interests? Corruption at its finest.