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Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

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Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#151

Post by tenfingers »

Pxtl wrote: post #89
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.

Yes, but those are smaller markets. As much as we're loathe to admit it, the USA represents the largest single market of wealthy (in global terms) customers. That means the USA is the place high-end consumer tech lives or dies. Other markets are more fragmented (so they're more expensive to sell in) or less affluent. There's lots of exciting things happening in Brazil and India, but those are lower-end spin-offs. I'm…

I wouldn't say so. Without carrier restrictions, EU is much easier to sell to. In fact, in EU, the carrier is totally worthless, and the phones they usually bundle with contract plans are in general the lowest-end phones you can have. Even the iPhone deals are usually meaningless, since you can have the phone for less then a 10% difference, with the added choice of getting a better data plan at any time you wish.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#152

Post by Pxtl »

salient wrote: post #86
Pxtl wrote: post #11

> Challenge: you are now competing with the iPod Touch. It disappoints me that nobody does this. Every attempted "competitor" I've seen that stands against the iPod Touch either costs more than the touch or is reviewed as unusable garbage.

Moto G 2/3 of the price? Nexus 5 for $50 more? It doesn't have to be a "music player" of sorts, when the iPod touch is an iPhone without the phone part. So as long as there are decent Android phones out there with the same specs, that's the alternative. You could buy a Moto G and never use it as a phone if you don't want to.

Yes, but the Moto G isn't being marketed for that - consumers don't even know that usage is possible. Unadvertised features don't exist.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#153

Post by mcv »

downer93 wrote: post #83
willvarfar wrote: post #15

I was at UIQ back when the iPhone "happened". It really was as pivotal for the industry as he says. I quipped that the iPhone made us irrelevant and Android made us redundant. I was surrounded by people with strong ambition and vision, at UIQ, Symbian, at our owners Motorola and Sony Ericsson, who wanted to build the iPhone and knew how to build the iPhone long before the iPhone was announced and before they knew any…

design ascetic The words are supposed to be "design aesthetic".

Maybe they're going for something extremely minimalistic.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#154

Post by wingerlang »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #135

From the article: > Small to medium businesses will use apps on standard devices like iPads I used to get lunch at a Specialty's sandwich place in SF. You could place your order at the counter (to a human, who would mess it up) or use their iPad app at the self-service counter (this got the order right every time). The iPad app worked well, but it was a source of bemusement to me that the self-service counter was jus…

A sushi place* I went to had an iPad on each table with an app that let you order stuff to the table, very handy I must say.

*Sakae sushi in Beraya Times Square, Kuala Lumpur.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#155

Post by pyre »

antimagic wrote: post #149
jon-wood wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To this day the level of denial around Samsung blatant imitation of the iPhone is staggering. The problem is that I can't think of any other design that a modern smartphone would have other than "piece of glass encased in plastic/metal, with maybe a button underneath". As far as I can see the screen is the phone, and given that constraint there isn't really anywhere else to go.

The thing is that people had been building smartphones since before the iPhone, and none of them looked anything like that. Buttons. Everywhere. The fact that the iPhone form factor is now considered self-evident is a demonstration of Apple's design strength, not of how obvious the form factor is. Don't forget that to make that form factor work, you need a whole software stack that is able to replace the physical but…

> It took Google, with a large chunk of the smartest engineers on the planet, about 4 years

Google didn't take people off of other projects, and turn every engineer that they had at the problem of "making Android competitive," so this statement is a bit of an exaggeration.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#156

Post by mcv »

tenfingers wrote: post #151
Pxtl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but those are smaller markets. As much as we're loathe to admit it, the USA represents the largest single market of wealthy (in global terms) customers. That means the USA is the place high-end consumer tech lives or dies. Other markets are more fragmented (so they're more expensive to sell in) or less affluent. There's lots of exciting things happening in Brazil and India, but those are lower-end spin-offs. I'm…

I wouldn't say so. Without carrier restrictions, EU is much easier to sell to. In fact, in EU, the carrier is totally worthless, and the phones they usually bundle with contract plans are in general the lowest-end phones you can have. Even the iPhone deals are usually meaningless, since you can have the phone for less then a 10% difference, with the added choice of getting a better data plan at any time you wish.

Lowest end? The Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One aren't exactly low-end, and those are the two phones everybody is offering now. The ones you get for free with low-end contracts are low-end, but you can get some pretty nice discounts on high-end phones too.

At least apparent discounts. You pay for them through your contract, and if the difference with a sim-only contract is small, that's because sim-only contracts are way too expensive.

Carriers are big, but it is possible to get around them. Most people get a phone with contract, but a lot of people really do go sim-only.

Fairphone is a nice example of a small Dutch organization that makes a revolutionary new phone (not available in the US). It's very successful so far, but also because they're not inventing their own platform; it's still Android. But the hardware is indie, so that at least can be done. (And a major carrier ordered a 1000 of them.)

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#157

Post by pjc50 »

Jack000 wrote: post #68
ctdonath wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

another idea: a credit card sized e-paper device that can only do sms. It could be efficient enough to be powered by a peltier chip, so no need to charge it ever. Seems perfect for the text generation

Not enough power for the RF transmission; even if you go off-network while not in use (so you can't recieve SMS), then you still end up needing to do quite a few 2W burst transmissions to get back on and send the SMS.

Also, peltier requires a temperature difference; keeping it warm in your pocket is not enough.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#158

Post by qznc »

zmmmmm wrote: post #115

Seems to me it's easier than ever before to build a "smartphone": Android has everything you need and is open to everyone. What's hard is to build a smart phone operating system . And in some ways (not all!) that's a good thing - you need a pretty big justification to reinvent a giant wheel. If you have one, great. If not, do your innovation on top of Android.

Agreed.

I am still waiting for the Facebook Phone. They already have a fully customized Android Home Screen. The biggest problem is probably that Facebook has no experience in selling physical products.

Anybody could slap together an Android customization. On the other hand, what is the point? If you do not profit from selling the hardware (like Samsung) or the software (like Google), then why sell a smartphone? Maybe Salesforce could sell enterprise smartphones bundled with their software.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#159

Post by pjc50 »

gwu78 wrote: post #93

I don't want a "smartphone". I want a handheld computer, the size of a "smartphone", with a cool form factor like a "smartphone". But, it needs to have Ethernet ports, USB ports, SD card slots, CF card slot, etc. An RS232 serial port would be nice too. I want versatility: inputs and outputs. I do not need to connect to any cellular networks. I do not want a closed source baseband operating system, SIM cards, etc. I w…

Ethernet port on its own is thicker than most smartphones. Having said that, I had almost all of those things you mention on my Toshiba Libretto back in 1998. Wouldn't fit in a trouser pocket but would fit in my coat's inside pocket.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#160

Post by mcv »

namenotrequired wrote: post #119
benjamincburns wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comparison is just silly. Look (guess) at Apple's development budget for the iPhone. Look at Fairphone's (or again, just guess). Look at the size of Apple. Look at the size of the Fairphone team at the Waag Society. I don't think I need to say anything else. This is majorly impressive.

Of course, you're both right - it's very little compared to the market leaders, but for a new player it's definitely impressive. Especially considering they were all sold before they were even made.

The power of crowdfunding! That is really the major game changer that hasn't been taken into account yet.
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