The main way to do this involves hacking/cracking firmware. Go onto p2p and you'll find ready made images for a variety of phones. However, it is a painful process for each phone, and phone model type. You're basically working on many to get one, instead of working on one for many.
One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
#12Next funding round? So you plan on waiting until 2008 for someone to even start on it?
Re: One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
#13No post body was provided.
Re: One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
#14Wouldn't this (supposedly) be the iPhone?
The iPhone interface is certainly revolutionary but there's room for another player in the mobile GUI marketplace. I'm not sure how you could make money with this, but it's something useful that users want, so YC would say you can figure out how to make money with it later. Probably by licensing the interface to the major cell phone companies, they're going to want to catch up to the iPhone.
rms: how did you find out about this page?
Re: One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
The iPhone interface is certainly revolutionary but there's room for another player in the mobile GUI marketplace. I'm not sure how you could make money with this, but it's something useful that users want, so YC would say you can figure out how to make money with it later. Probably by licensing the interface to the major cell phone companies, they're going to want to catch up to the iPhone.
rms: how did you find out about this page?
It's on pg's index.
Re: One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
#16I was at CTIA a couple months back and got a demo of Openwave's "Adaptive Mobility" suite. The site doesn't show very much, but I remember it being a pretty slick, personalized UI for cell phones. I think they've opened it up to allow people to develop widgets for it too. The problem is that it's just a java program that runs on the cell phone OS, when really it should be the OS itself.
http://www.openwave.com/us/products/adaptive_mobility_suite/
Re: One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
#17The Danger team already accomplished what you want with the sidekick. Word on the street is that Danger 2.0 (android) was acquired by google a few years ago. Everyone I know who works at google (except the lame people) hate it. Maybe you can figure out how to poach all those people.
Getting anything interesting onto an existing carrier's phones is a nightmare. Not only will you need to make a better phone OS, you will have to start your own MVNO. Helio has made an attempt - their "ocean" device might be worth looking at.
Re: One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
#18Next funding round? So you plan on waiting until 2008 for someone to even start on it?
This page has been up since the application form for the first wfp was announced if my memory is correct. Very little progress has been done in mobile user experience in 5-7 years so a few more months wont harm anyone.
Re: One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
#19The Danger team already accomplished what you want with the sidekick. Word on the street is that Danger 2.0 (android) was acquired by google a few years ago. Everyone I know who works at google (except the lame people) hate it. Maybe you can figure out how to poach all those people. Getting anything interesting onto an existing carrier's phones is a nightmare. Not only will you need to make a better phone OS, you wil…
I used to work on Razor software. I knew it was junk, but where to start fixing it? There is a deep problem with the companies that create mobile phones- carriers are their customers, but not their end users. The only company that seems to be innovating at all is Apple, which has enough clout to ignore what the carriers tell them and just bring something to market that users might want. What can a startup do in this space? Sell their software platform to a phone company? Motorola is taking ten years to switch to Linux/Java platform. The only hope for mobile phones is that Wi-Fi or some other technology will become capable of competing with the carriers. Until then, most of the innovators will be holding their breath.
Re: One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
#20I think everything should be better than a RAZR. We use it as a worst-case target device at our company. But, more generally, the power of carriers is definitely a problem, and as I hear it's way worse in the US. Their biggest nightmare is voip in the mobile, obviously, so I guess they simply try to lock down any innovation in the usable mobile platform area.