Why Open Source Phones Still Fail 322
adeelarshad82 writes "Truly open-development, open-source phones like the Nokia N900 will never hit the mainstream in the US because wireless carriers in the country hate the unexpected, writes PCMag's Sascha Segan. The open-source philosophy is all about unexpected, disruptive ideas bubbling upwards, and that drives network planners nuts. So, you get unsatisfactory hybrids like Google Android, which uses some open-source components but locks third-party developers into a crippled Java sandbox. The bottom line is that while Linux the OS, the kernel, and the memory manager are attractive to phone manufacturers, Linux the philosophy — and users banding together ad hoc to create new things — is anathema to wireless carriers."
It's called "Proper Planning" (Score:4, Interesting)
because wireless carriers in the country hate the unexpected
So does any network admin worth his salt. This isn't a failing of wireless carriers, it's not even a negative. I want them to be like this, this attitude makes me a happy customer. Think about the alternatives; a completely open platform which would allow a wireless consumer to do ANYTHING on the network, possibly disrupting other customers. Namely, disrupting ME.
So no. Allow them to be cautious with their network, as long as they continue to provide decent service ( verizon, excellent network where I am ). I could stand lower costs, but that's not what this article is about.
The N900 is a computer milestone (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether or not the N900 reaches iPhone numbers is irrelevant to the fact that it will stand in computer history along with the Kaypro II, PDP-11, SORD IS-11, Altair 8080;
I don't care if AT&T likes it or not.
If you actually get your hands on one, you will understand that it feels good to actually own something, and not pay to carry the wireless equivalent of a cable box.
If people in America were "customers" and actually were allowed to decided what they wanted, and not "consumers" to be culled by the wireless carriers, then the N900 would on it's merits be the best selling mobile computer of all times.
Does anyone really like the fact that all you can get from the big wireless carriers is what they want you to have, and not what you want?
Those that go out and buy an N900 will understand.
Re:Not really (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh for.... (Score:5, Interesting)
As always, follow the money.
However, there's more to it than that. You should have said American wireless carriers. European wireless carriers don't get to play that game, nor do South American carriers, nor Asian carriers. So really the PCMag columnist is pretty myopic. The utterly bizarre wireless market that exists in the United States is nearly unique in the world, and the majority of the world's population lives somewhere else. Open source phones will do just fine because there are great big markets for them on every continent except North America. And since it's not like the Nokia N900 or any of its components are manufactured in the United States, the greedy graspy control freak US carriers can't affect it in the slightest.
Re:Open their blinders with amazing apps (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't. You can write native code for Android phones. You just need a small java wrapper nothing more.
Re:Oh for.... (Score:1, Interesting)
I am interested in your views and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. You speak of the US version of 'cellphone' as if it is different to the rest of the world's idea of 'cellphone', and as someone who resides in the rest of the world, I want to know these differences you speak of. What's so different about using a cellphone in the US? This is a genuine question.
Re:Open their blinders with amazing apps (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Too costly (Score:5, Interesting)
Here you go. A port-o-rotary [sparkfun.com] for $200. They provide full source and schematics. You can even buy a 6000mAh battery to run the thing for weeks and you don't have to deal with any PDA functionality. Any more complaints?
Radios are expensive. The only reason phones are cheap is because they're heavily subsidized or because they're a simple little phone produced a million at a time from a small handful of highly-integrated mixed analog/digital ASICs. "Open-source" devices are small-run devices with hopelessly obsolete radio hardware because it's all they can get documentation for and manufacturers aren't looking to release their secret sauce to just anybody.
And on top of all of this, most of the open-source types are desktop or server programmers. On the desktop, you don't have to think about low-power code. Everything changes when you're running off a battery. There just isn't the expertise there (yet). Having said all this, I love my rooted T-mobile G1. I built a scratchbox environment for it and ported a few important CLI tools and it's now perfectly capable of being all the pocket Linux machine I need and it's not very difficult getting Debian running on top of the Android environment.
Re:It's called "Proper Planning" (Score:4, Interesting)
Wireless bandwidth is extremely limited compared to a wired infrastructure.
Not just a little bit, but many orders of magnitude more limited.
Companies know exactly how much bandwidth will serve all of their users. If you'd like to read about the math behind it, it's here. [wikipedia.org] The problem is that at peak times, network usage nears 100%, by design. The companies would be losing money if this weren't true.
Re:Open their blinders with amazing apps (Score:5, Interesting)
>
Get any sort of decent battery life out of a mesh network with no towers while still maintaining access to the PSTN and emergency services.
If it isn't a "public" phone system but was more like a large voip network they might be able to find loopholes.
Re:So true (Score:3, Interesting)
On the Mac, the bumpers are removable, so the kids can eventually learn to play like the big boys at their leisure. The iPhone has them welded in place, requiring no small amount of effort to pry them loose.
Re:Open their blinders with amazing apps (Score:3, Interesting)
4G LTE Networks To The Rescue (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the stipulations that Google managed to have placed in the FCC license for commercial 4G LTE spectrum is open device access, which is absent in current wireless spectrum licenses. They did this by getting approval for a clause that if a certain minimum bid for the spectrum was met, that that open device access rule would go into effect, then they bid that amount, and then proceeded to let Verizon outbid them, ensuring that clause would go into effect. Carriers may have been able to get away with this type of draconian control over their networks in the past, but it seems that's coming to an end with the shift to 4G LTE already underway. With this open device access regulation, actual user-accessible open source handsets may finally be able to see widespread use.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They don't fail (Score:3, Interesting)
What we should expect is that every happy geek realizes their responsibility (woa) in making software/proving that the n900 platform is better than any other.
The n900/Maemo is the chance cool people (e.g. geeks) have to prove their point with support from a major player in the cell phone market. In some way (since it is all this "open"/"free"), if the n900 fails, the open source community/cool people/geeks are also failing.
The article is right about it's historical background and all but lacks some optimism... hehe
Re:Open their blinders with amazing apps (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh for.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh for.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am an American who has lived in Asia and who has used GSM phones exclusively since my first mobile phone in the USA in 1997. While I did use several contract-subsidized phones, I made sure they were world-band phones and I got them "unlocked" by the carrier so I could use them overseas with different SIMs.
Years before I left the USA, I started buying my "unlocked" phones over the Internet and just sticking my existing subscription SIM into them, just as you can in other countries. When I visited the USA, I bought a prepaid SIM for about $15, which included $10 of credits, and then put it in my phone which I had brought back from Asia. When I relocated, I did this again, to get a new local phone number in a different region (Los Angeles versus Chicago). I added cash value at the register in the telecom's stores, just like I did in malls in Asia, except when I bought scratch-off prepaid value cards in other discount stores, just like I could in Asia.
I think some people confuse Verizon (CDMA) in the USA with the entire phone market, not realizing that consumers do have a choice of going with much the same mixture of GSM options you get in the rest of the world (except different radio frequencies). I've never had to pay the telecom provider to use features of my phone like bluetooth, or ringtones installed by USB cable, or even GPRS tethering (except of course data services I consume such as GPRS Internet access).
The only thing I wish would happen is that the market demand fair pricing, so we can see reasonable network service charges like I saw in Asia: unlimited Internet, whether mobile browsing or tethered access, should cost about $30/month and be available unbundled from contracts. I could use a prepaid SIM to do this in Asia, simply deducting one day's, one week's, or one month's service fee from my balance to enable EDGE Internet service for that period of time.
Re:Open their blinders with amazing apps (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, its not as simple as it sounds. It takes a team of engineers to monitor and place towers is a geographic region for a carrier. Adding one can actually make reception WORSE in some areas if you don't know what you are doing. So again, if we have crappy cell networks using engineered structured networks that cost billions of dollars to run just imagine what you'd get out of a peer to peer long range communications scheme.(hint, crap)
Re:Open their blinders with amazing apps (Score:4, Interesting)
The government set rules that laid out the only legal channels (40 of them) and no shop was allowed to sell rigs that could receive/transmit on other channels.
These 40 shitty channels were chosen to not fit with CBs sold anywhere else in the world.
My first CB (20 years ago?) had 200 channels. Only 40 of them were legal, 40 more of them are now legal (the mid-band 40 that other countries use was added to the legal 40 giving 80 legal channels).
So many people in my City alone had illegal rigs that the law was never enforced. I knew (and know) of nobody who was ever prosecuted for not having the £££ Ham Radio licence that permitted broadcast on those frequencies.
I still have about 5 highly illegal rigs although I haven't used a CB in many years.
If someone were to start the fire and Skype/FreeGSM/Mesh internet handsets were to be available to you and me, then someone somewhere (China? Russia?) would see it as profitable to make them available for £50. People I know are buying '3' handsets because the data plan is compatible with an always on Skype connection. £70 and they get a shit phone but free Skype. It doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to see that people would pay for something even if it wasn't legal and then to see that there would be so many people at it that the government would have to make it legal or hire more police.
Re:Open their blinders with amazing apps (Score:4, Interesting)
You've just demonstrated the precise problem: the Linux kernel developers would rather maintain a set of ideals with which the vast majority of their users do not agree than provide a standard driver interface for Linux drivers that would leave them source-compatible or binary-compatible between different versions of the Linux kernel. They'd rather release kernel updates that break every third-party driver every so often to encourage driver and hardware developers to open-source their work in exchange for integration into the mainline kernel tree.
Three separate attempts to create a portable standard for device drivers have already come and gone: the Uniform Driver Interface [rootdirectory.de] that started from the mainstream commercial Unix world, guaranteed source and binary compatibility of UDI drivers between OSs on one architecture, and died from pure politics; the Extensible Driver Interface [osdev.org] (disclaimer: by me) that pandered to free software ideals by guaranteeing mere source compatibility but failed to gain a following in its tiny home community; and the Common Device Interface [84.201.3.60] that has gained some currency in the German hobbyist OS-development community but has very little material available in English. If the Linux kernel developers went through these and picked any one of them to implement, it could not only increase the market share of Linux operating systems out in "the world" but serve the ideals of free, open software by giving to the OS research and hobbyist world a real, usable way to avoid the tedious drag of reimplementing device drivers for even the most primitive functionality on every single new OS.
Re:what do you call "truly open" there?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Take it from someone who owned one: the OpenMoko was a terrible phone and a terrible handheld computer. It was nearly useless when not hooked up to a computer via SSH over USB. OpenMoko earned an A for vision in getting a fully open and documented hardware interface, although the results were dubious (crappy GPRS GSM modem in an era when 3G was just becoming popular, crappy non-accelerated drivers for the video chipset). However, OpenMoko's worst failing was the total inability of the company to push a singular stable and complete platform for development; there were about 20 different incompatible distributions in various states of disarray, and you cannot have a platform for end-user app development in that sort of environment. (Imagine how unsuccessful Apple's app store or Android's marketplace would be if developers and users had to choose between 20 different incompatible distributions, all in permanent alpha status...) I think I can live with a few proprietary blobs if it means having a useful device. All of the open technology in the world means nothing if the platform dies on the vine before ever taking off. OpenMoko's ideal of a fully open phone platform proved unsustainable, as the company canceled their "next-gen" (translation: 2.5G in an era of 3G) phone and switched to producing a ridiculous "WikiReader" device which contains no pesky radio or accelerated video modules.
After more than a year of trying to use it, I finally was overjoyed to get rid of my crappy Freerunner. On the other hand, even though my N800 does not have a cell radio, I still like to use it, and am strongly considering buying an N900. I think the OpenMoko was for people who love putting together distributions and blogging about how much freer their device is compared to everyone elses'. A platform like the N800/900 is for people who like programming mobile computers to accomplish useful tasks and then distributing those programs to non-programmers.
Re:The N900 is a computer milestone (Score:1, Interesting)
Whether or not the N900 reaches iPhone numbers is irrelevant to the fact that it will stand in computer history along with the Kaypro II, PDP-11, SORD IS-11, Altair 8080;
I don't care if AT&T likes it or not.
If you actually get your hands on one, you will understand that it feels good to actually own something, and not pay to carry the wireless equivalent of a cable box.
If people in America were "customers" and actually were allowed to decided what they wanted, and not "consumers" to be culled by the wireless carriers, then the N900 would on it's merits be the best selling mobile computer of all times.
Does anyone really like the fact that all you can get from the big wireless carriers is what they want you to have, and not what you want?
Those that go out and buy an N900 will understand.
Not really the first mobile computer with 3G that is completely open, technically:
http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/05/viliv-s5-premium-umpc-full-review/
(There are tons of other MIDs out there, and much better ones on the horizon that are proper smart phones, but the S5 is the most popular one atm.)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)