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Mobile next battleground for Linux (ZDNet)
ZDNet
reports
on comments by Trolltech's Eirik
Chambe-Eng concerning Linux adoption by the mobile phone sector.
""Linux gives manufacturers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) complete control," said Chambe-Eng, who also claimed that Windows Mobile and Symbian--Linux's two great competitors in the mobile phone market--come with "agendas attached."
"Manufacturers are scared of Microsoft coming in and pushing margins away from the hardware. There are very thin margins in this business, and Symbian and Windows Mobile are typically expensive," he said."
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Mobile next battleground for Linux (ZDNet) Posted Jun 29, 2006 21:04 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Haha. Now that I think about it, screw the OLPC for first world nations. I want the Linux on the cell phone/handheld.
Specs should be similar, hardware wise.. Although it would probably be a ARM dual core processor vs Geode 486 stuff. The only major difference would be the small lcd.
But the benifits from sliming down the software to fit on the OLPC well would be directly applicable to these mobile devices, and I think that is wonderfull.
Of course I can see cell phone companies being less then excited about the whole grid wireless stuff. ;)
The only thing that makes me nervious is that typically cell phone vendors and such have realy realy realy bad attitudes towards their customers.
For example a friend of mine bought a fancy 'high end' telephone because he wanted to listen to mp3's on it and do other internet-ish things. He bought the high end model...
Within days he wanted to take it back. He couldn't customize it, He couldn't attatch any headphones that he owned, and if he splurged and spent 80 bucks on headphones that would work for his phone it would cost 80 bucks, wouldn't be in stereo, and wouldn't be able to play the music anyways. The 'play mp3' button didn't play the songs he had on it, instead it was a short cut to a online store the cell company had setup and would charge him for playing songs and he couldn't change that. The memory space on the device was small, etc etc.
Just every little 'feature' built into the very fancy cell phone was designed specificly to make him part with his money.
If these companies take Linux and try to turn it into something like that then it's almost garrenteed to fail. Fail horribly.
Mobile next battleground for Linux (ZDNet) Posted Jun 29, 2006 22:45 UTC (Thu) by foo-bar (guest, #22971) [Link] He couldn't attatch any headphones that he owned, and if he splurged and spent 80 bucks on headphones that would work for his phone it would cost 80 bucks, wouldn't be in stereo, and wouldn't be able to play the music anyways.Which brand was this ??? Was it a standard GSM phone or some <censored> thing like e.g. CDMA ? he 'play mp3' button didn't play the songs he had on it, instead it was a short cut to a online store the cell company had setup and would charge him for playing songs and he couldn't change that.Oh, here you confuse hardware manufacturers and cell network operators. It's the latter that are evil. Not only they sell network-locked phones subsidising them to avoid competition, in addition they "customize" them: typically this is about removing some features and menu items that THEY think customers should not use + forcing customers to use their pay-services like in your friend's case. In fact the way to solve the problem is to prohibit cell operators from selling handsets or at least to prohibit subsidising them. Unfortunately there are few countries that do this, one good example is Finland (homeland of Nokia :-)). A different example is the neighboring Russia: although there are no govermental regulations about cellphones there, it's market-regulated: any cellphone-repair shop would unblock and/or remove "customization" from your phone, hence it makes no sense for network operators to cheat you, people would get around anyway.
Mobile next battleground for Linux (ZDNet) Posted Jun 30, 2006 5:30 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I don't know what brand. It's in the USA, so I suppose it's CMDA? I don't know what we use here.
Don't know much about cell phone technology.. And I realy have no desire to own a cell phone right now. If it was cool were I could use it as a little computer and do VoIP and stuff like that when wifi was aviable, then I would probably get one.
But right now I don't see the point. I don't work on-call and all the phone would be would be a way for people to find me and annoy me at a moments notice. If it's important then they can leave a message on my answering machine, otherwise it's probably not worth bothering me about. :)
AS far as hardware manufacturers vs cell network operators, ya sure I understand the difference.. But it doesn't realy matter, if it's shit when the customer gets it, then it's shit and they aren't going to want to pay for it irregardless of how it got that way. Those customers are the ones that are going to decide weither or not 'linux on feature phones' is going to be a success or not.
Mobile next battleground for Linux (ZDNet) Posted Jul 1, 2006 21:27 UTC (Sat) by foo-bar (guest, #22971) [Link] I don't know what brand.If a handset is made by a respected manufacturer the brand name is usually quite visible on the handset :-) It's in the USA, so I suppose it's CMDA? I don't know what we use here.Cingular and T-mobile are GSM, Verizon and Sprint are CDMA.
Mobile next battleground for Linux (ZDNet) Posted Jul 2, 2006 4:17 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] It's not my handset, it's my friends. I only saw it long enough for him to take it out and tell me how much it sucked. :P Otherwise I'd be happy to tell you so that and the carrier so you can avoid more easily it. And I won't see him for at least another week.
I certainly beleive that if you have bad experiances with a cell phone company (or any other company) you should be very happy to tell the world.
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