when I search for handheld and smartphone, I usually find info for things like iPhone and Blackberry. These are very nice miniature computers, but AFAIU they are heavily restricted by their manufactures and priced exorbitantly relative to the actual cost of manufacture of the device.
So is there on the market something that would look pretty much like Blackberry (i.e. a decent screen and a decent keyboard), be able to connect to WiFi, run an unrestricted operating system and sell for $50-100 or so? Being able to connect to a cellphone network and serve as a phone of course a big plus, but then I am not certain if there are cellphone providers that provide service to devices that they don’t sell themselves (I guess this is a separate, interesting question by itself)
No way. A blackberry itself is hundreds of dollars off contract.
Thats not true. Even in mass production the sell price is pretty competitive. The bullshit teardowns you read about on the internet dont reflect all costs (marketing, management, r&d, software development, testing, QA, retailers, returns, etc, etc ,etc).
You do have some choices, if youre willing to go on contract. The N900 is by far the most open phone on the market.Its essentially a linux computer coupled with a cell radio. After that I’d consider an Android phone thats been rooted or even a Windows mobile phone, which is fairly open too. You can write apps for any of those platforms without paying the man or passing some morality check like you do with Apple.
I am very heartened by all the money earned by the marketing and management folks in big American corporations whose employers recoup the losses by selling the gadgets at far above the manufacturing price. Nevertheless, I think that a low key Chinese company could make these commoditized gadgets and sell them for close to the actual marginal cost to make a single gadget. You know, like they sell commoditized PCs, commoditized laptops and commoditized refrigerators.
FYI, iSuppli (a market intelligence company) estimates that the parts and assembly cost for a Blackberry Storm is about $203 and for an Apple iPhone 3Gs, it’s about $179. So I think your suggestion that it should be possible to sell a commodity smartphone for $50-100 is wrong.
Right, you get a big discount when they steal IP and designs and sell knock-offs. Engadget has a whole section devoted to knockoffs. If you want one you can get one.
Thats a different case as a PC is nothing more than chipset soldered together. Nor is it a radio device which mean a strict level of regulation and approval by government organizations like the FCC. While I also dislike that phones arent as open as PCs (and there are big historical reasons why we can do this with a PC) but I’m not going to buy the corporate conspiracy angle. Like I wrote above, these things are priced competitively and they’re pretty much little marvels of engineering.
I guess you can wait for the industry to change or just buy the N900 for its asking price.
EnGadget.com website sounds interesting, but unfortunately it is unclear which companies make these knock-offs, where to buy them, what operating system they use and so forth.
I did not read your links, so I don’t know if they mention R&D or fab costs that have to be amortized as well, but they’re definitely worth mentioning in addition to the parts & labor to build those puppies.
The closest device I can think of to what you want is the Pandora - developed for gaming, but includes Wifi and a full keyboard in a clamshell package just a bit bigger than a DS. It runs Linux. The only thing it does not have is a cellular modem. However, the device is designed by enthusiasts and currently manufacturing runs are limited. I still want one, and if the first run is a success I may get one.
The GP2X is a more commercial Linux handheld gaming device, but does not have Wifi, which really limits it for me.
The OpenMoko was a linux based cellular phone, but they have given up on actual hardware (but you could find an OpenMoko). They may decide to produce firmware for other phones (maybe Android hardware). Also, people keep hacking some older PDA style devices - there may be a WinCE device with a linux install out there somewhere.
Unless your objection to the iPhone or the Blackberry are moral or philosophical, in either of them the wall is so darned far that you cannot see it from where you will be standing. Ditto for all the alternatives. They are all walled gardens, no matter how they are presented. They are all proprietary technology sold by sharky carriers.
Figure out what you want your device to do and find a phone that will do it for the best price. You can always hang stuff on that wall if you don’t want to see it. Choose the apps, find the phone that runs them. Not the other way around.
If having a phone is not necessary for you (and you only think it isn’t. Once you have it you will want it to make phone calls so you have one less thing in your pocket), then the iPod Touch has all the apps on the iPhone without the troubles of a data plan or a cell phone. With well over a 100K apps, the idea of a wall around that garden is simply meaningless. All the others might not have a wall but are a lot smaller. An edge of the world is not better than a wall.
Android is a close second. They might be an order of magnitude under the iPhone in number of apps available, but how many fart apps do you really need? All the essentials are there, unless your thing is endlessly browsing for disposable entertainment apps (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Don’t be fooled, though. Also walled.
Behind those two, there is nothing. My apologies to their fans. Windows is dead in the water and the others are all niche with barely dozens or maybe hundreds of apps available. Although again, maybe what you want is already there and you are in luck. You don’t need thousands of apps you won’t use. You need the dozen you will use.
The take home line? Forget who owns the technology. Someone always does and nobody looks pretty if you stand close enough. Find the apps you need and find a device that runs them.
Also check out the Pre. Still walled by default, but Palm’s Pre has been cracked quite a bit. Very active homebrew community. It runs Linux and much of the UI is built on Javascript/HTML/CSS so you can tweak/patch things. You can ssh into it get a command line root prompt and play with it to your hearts content.
What about phone’s running android (google’s phone OS?) They are a fairly open platform, no? Still cost an arm and a leg off-contract, but so does every smartphone.