How far away are we from building our own smartphones and tablets?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2491660

by spontaneus • 15 years ago

6 2 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I started thinking about this today and I curious to see if there will ever be a market for building our own phone/tablets. Imagine being able to select from different cases, motherboards, CPUs and slap on an OS (android, ios, etc) and be ready to go. Will we ever have this freedom like we do with our PCs?

jcr• 15 years ago

iOS won't fly, at least not legally, but a hackintosh type version might be feasible.

Android will be doable, and has been done, but it means google still owns your ass.

At present, a lot of hardware documentation is proprietary and only available through large contracts and NDA's, so a truly open source operating system is not possible. Read up on the PowerVR graphics and the Qualcomm chipsets for more info. Some will undoubtedly argue that android is "open source" but without the hardware docs, all you really have is unmaintainable rotting mystery meat.

One of the larger problems is the FCC and similar rules for spectrum use various countries. Many cell chipsets can do a lot more than what is legally allowed in particular places, and hence, not doing it "correctly" results in a lot of headaches. Similar legal issues are also true for some "WiFi" (802.*) spectrum usage.

Of course, the carriers will fight it. The last thing that they want is to become a "dumb pipe" and have their profits diminished.

The last major problem is integration. If you haven't disassembled any modern mobile phones, I'd encourage you to do so. The complexity and compactness required by a handset results in very tight spacing and integration of components. Doing this sort of thing al-a-carte would be difficult, and the vast majority of the population would never know how to put it together (i.e. very limited market). On the flip side, I do remember a company that was doing something like this, but they gave you a list of possible features (hardware) and you ordered it from them assembled. Sadly, I can't remember their name.

curt• 15 years ago

We could do it now but they will be substandard (larger and require more power) than fully designed packages. Integrated systems like a phone require a lot of optimization and part matching to optimize the size and power usage. To allow multiple part they would be larger and much more inefficient. The opposite of the selling point of most consumer electronic products. I actually looked into this a few years ago, phones no, but think game console might go this route if Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo and smart. Anywhere where power consumption and size don't matter this can and should happen.

How far away are we from building our own smartphones and tablets?

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