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Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

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Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#121

Post by e12e »

_Simon wrote: post #117
e12e wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most things"? Haven't we just learned that if you make a smart phone that looks like a smart phone (rounded rectangle, button below screen) you can (and will) be sued? I suppose the fact that stuff like that is the area where big legal battles are fought, does imply that a lot of the "hard" patents (radio spectrum/coding, noise cancellation, audio encoding etc) are indeed covered by FRAND patents, though. It still s…

No. The argument re "rounded rectangles" (actually a meme invented by people like yourself) is about trade dress, which in the US is covered by a design "patent", which is not the same thing as a technical patent. This is not difficult to understand. To this day the level of denial around Samsung blatant imitation of the iPhone is staggering.

I'm not sure what (who?) "people like myself" are referring to, but you are indeed right -- while Apple tried to sue on the basis of what I believe is fair to sum up as "something looking like a smart phone (granted the natural technical progression to larger and better touch screens)" -- they only won an injunction for "something that looks confusingly like an iPhone".

I still think that's a rather silly ruling -- and my point was that you could be sued, not that you'd loose (if you had a few million to spare on defending yourself) -- on the basis on a lot of different patent than just the type that are covered by FRAND agreement(s).

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#122

Post by sharpneli »

contingencies wrote: post #10

This guy is so ex-Nokia, it's sad. He rates the latest Maemo/whatever as a higher chance of market presence than Firefox OS. OK, Nordsman... we understand you are grieving for your lost mobile device business... but you can do it in private. Linux, via Android, commodified smartphone platforms by giving away the OS and thus commodifying the position of mobile device hardware manufacturers. This was coming anyway, but…

The approach by Jolla and FirefoxOS guys is actually quite brilliant. How to get into markets where it's relatively cheap to make a new android phone but anything else requires very expensive contracts with the manufacturers?

Solution: Just use the android drivers directly. In my Jolla phone there is the good 'ol android /system/lib/. As an example the libGLESv2.so (the OpenGL ES 2.0 library) in /usr/lib/ simply opens the counterpart in /system/lib with android_dlsym and calls the equivalent functions (and in case of floating point arguments moves them to int registers). And what's the overhead of this? 9 instructions and 2 loads (for the function pointer). So it's essentially completely free.

Same approach applies to rest of the system. They just take the core of the android and run on top of that with just the bionic -> glibc layer on top. Brilliant.

The actual lib can be found at: https://github.com/libhybris/libhybris

That means they can basically just walk to some SOC vendor (like they did to Qualcomm) and say "I want to buy a mid range Android SOC" and they have everything ready.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#123

Post by dagw »

pgreenwood wrote: post #82
matthewmacleod wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really believe this market exists. And even if it does, I expect it's tiny - otherwise, manufacturers would be targeting it.

Last night I had dinner with my parents. They lamented that they could not find a phone for my elderly grandmother. They just need something that just makes and receives calls, is dead simple, has (very) large buttons, and is loud. Where is this phone? We have an ageing population.

They lamented that they could not find a phone for my elderly grandmother

Check out Doro (www.doro.com/). Quoting from the top of their website:

"Doro is a Swedish company developing telecom products specially adapted to the growing worldwide population of seniors."

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#124

Post by dagw »

ctdonath wrote: post #56
TheLegace wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly rather than focusing why a smartphone can't succeed, I'd like to see how and why a phone can succeed. If anyone thinks that the mess in the Play Store and the development environment of Android doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth they should really re-consider thinking that Android is going to be around forever. I would like to ditch this platform the first moment I get. There are a lot niches that are no…

I'd like to see how and why a phone can succeed. There is an enormous market for a good dumb phone. Or, well, idiot savant phone: makes calls, makes calls well, and does nothing but makes calls. Between those who just don't want a smartphone, and those who carry enough computing power to not want yet another Cray 2 in a pocket, there's a large niche for a phone that is just a phone, syncs contacts effortlessly, elimi…

There is an enormous market for a good dumb phone

I just ordered an Nokia 515 off ebay. Hopefully it will be what I'm looking for.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#125

Post by nekopa »

fembot__ wrote: post #20
gbvb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I read this article, It is less about building new smartphone but more about the next technology shift that is going to change the direction. Basically, as oft repeated Ford statement goes, 'if you asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horse'. So, at this point, smartphone business is settling into a faster horse business. So, I would really expect the next big thing to be not a be an iPh…

I think you've got the tone right. Also... I hope you're right about Neural implants! I've wanted one ever since I read that MT Anderson book in JR high school (minus the dystopian homogeneity and fields of filet mignon). Maybe Amazon will debut them on 60 Minutes prior to cyber monday 2014!

I'm sorry, but fields of filet mignon sounds great. Make it fields of bacon-wrapped filets and I would call it my own personal utopia (for as long as my heart held out)

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#126

Post by hoi »

Aqwis wrote: post #16

This guy is missing the fact that in a lot of European countries, and elsewhere in the world, carriers mean squat . The carrier is often simply the provider of the SIM card you put in the phone, so carrier support is in no way needed for a phone to succeed. You don't need to be successful in the US to be successful.

Carriers don't mean squat. They are the king makers.

They control a section of the market that every smartphone mnnufacturer relied on. The Radio frequencies. This gives them power via their marketing subsidies, and it was this power they leveraged before they screwed up and ceded control to the platform. It used to be the case that the carriers controlled your wallet. Every single thing you did on the phone, the money went to the carrier, they held your credit details. AT&T screwed up and gave up consumer power.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#127

Post by CmonDev »

seiji wrote: post #60
mortenjorck wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is not an uncommon sentiment, but it’s not really a fair picture: Observers often see the Apple of the past decade as releasing a category-definer every few years (iPod, iPhone, iPad), and awaiting the next one (iWatch! iScreen!). Really, though, Apple's blockbusters of the 2000s are best seen as one continuous thing: the iPod paved the way for well-designed, vertically-integrated mobile devices (that it was a…

Huh whatnow? The original iPod (and modern iPods minus the Touch) don't run iOS at all. The iPod gave Apple the time to stall until they could build what Steve wanted to make in 1999, but the world didn't have the capacity to create yet. These days, Apple is the forefront of both industrial design and fabrication capacity. They aren't in the past—they are in the present and they are moving the world along with them,…

"they are moving the world along with them"

You tried iOS 7, didn't you? I sure hope they are not using "Apple Maps" to move themselves and the world.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#128

Post by CmonDev »

fingerprinter wrote: post #45
joshmarinacci wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu is doing it well? How many phones have they sold? What is their installed base? What % of marketshare?

It's this type of comment that really disappoints me about HN these days. Ubuntu just released V1 of their phone in October. Anyone who knows phone manufacturers and carriers knows how long they soak something in their labs. Ubuntu has all the pieces in place to be an awesome option. Plus, they have their carrier advisory group with some great names showing their is some carrier interest. Ubuntu has a company behind…

Will they magically conjure up an app store full of apps? Unless the plan is to leech off existing Android apps somehow.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#129

Post by dharma1 »

jahagirdar wrote: post #116

I disagree with the article. I am still waiting for the device which can be a complete replacement for my laptop. That means * Ability to "dock" to get a keyboard+mouse+monitor Interface. * True multi-tasking (The music should not stop just because I switched apps) * A full fledged command line terminal (xterm). * support for ssh, Perl, python, ruby, C/C++ etc. This device may not start out as a phone, May be it will…

check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Install

The docking functionality is still in the works, will land in a future release of Ubuntu. Eventually the desktop OS and the touch OS will become the same Ubuntu.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#130

Post by hrrsn »

CmonDev wrote: post #127
seiji wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh whatnow? The original iPod (and modern iPods minus the Touch) don't run iOS at all. The iPod gave Apple the time to stall until they could build what Steve wanted to make in 1999, but the world didn't have the capacity to create yet. These days, Apple is the forefront of both industrial design and fabrication capacity. They aren't in the past—they are in the present and they are moving the world along with them,…

"they are moving the world along with them" You tried iOS 7, didn't you? I sure hope they are not using "Apple Maps" to move themselves and the world.

Apple Maps has come a long way since the iOS 6 launch. Google Maps is still undoubtedly better, but Apple have been working hard on it.

iOS 7 is not bad. People are still afraid of change (look at what they said about the original iPhone, now look where we are) but ultimately it was in need of a refresh.

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