14 Jan
2011
14 Jan
'11
3:23 p.m.
Hi,
just to reflect my own thoughts on this topic:
On 14.01.2011 14:39, Scott Weisman wrote:
Now, given that the supported phone hardware is old
and not reliably
available, I was wondering if anyone knows if the Calypso and other
chips in these old phones are still available for new designs? How much
interest would there be, say, in an open, but VERY SIMPLE, actual phone?
Kind of like the Pandora project, but without the ambition to make the
most advanced portable game player possible.
This is more or the less the GSM Devel-Board idea [1] that Harald wanted
to pursue initially, with the difference that it would have used a
custom DSP and not the Calypso. But even if you don't take in account
the time and money it takes to do a proper pcb- and especially
RF-design, this is definitely something you don't want to do with the
Calypso (which is EOL and not available for new designs, although you
might get it still in the semiconductor grey-market).
But what would be the benefit of all this? The Compal-phones are still
available in huge quantities (see aliexpress.com for example, new
Motorola C118 for $19.79 including world-wide shipping). You surely
won't beat that price with your hardware.
And it still isn't really 'open', since you have e.g. the proprietary
DSP code.
It might make a bit more sense with MediaTek baseband chips (once
supported) if you want to do something out-of-spec with them, but even
there you have thousands of different phones readily available.
Just my 2 cents...
Regards,
Steve
[1] http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/GsmDevelBoard