On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 03:59:42PM +1000, Amos Shapira wrote: > GSM > > * Quad-band (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) > > So I wonder why OpenMoko couldn't do this. Cost?
Actually the phone is really just 2 band, the 800/900 and 1800/1900 mHz bands are close enough for modern technology to be the same. In fact the 1800 mHz band overlaps the bottom of the 1900mHz band. The issues is marketing and regulatory approval. Radio transmitters have to be certified to fit within limits of out of band radiation (signals that should not be there, but are leaked), signal purity, etc. Cell phones are rare in the fact that they are not supposed to transmit on their own. If they do not find a suitable cell to connect to, they won't transmit. The 850 and 1900 mHz bands require FCC (the U.S. equivalent of the MOC) approval, and it is not easy to get. For some reason I have never researched, 800 (850) mHz approval is much harder to get than 1900mHz. I think it has to do with the fact that 800mHz cell phones were developed, and the standards set around 10 years earlier. >From what I remember the FCC requires documentation from the manufacturer, testing by an independent laboratory (cerifited by the FCC) and then does their own testing. CE testing, which is used outside of the U.S. is more of a "self test". The manufacturer submits a report based upon their own testing and government verification is not done. So it is much cheaper and easier to produce a 900 mHz cell phone and limit it in firmware to 900mHz, than produce an 850/900 cell phone and be allowed to sell it. Apple, being a U.S. company could have made the iPhone 850/1900 dual band or since it is locked to one carrier, single band on the one they use, without too much difference in sales. In this case the 900/1800 band certification was the cheap add on, which obviously the 850 is not. Bear in mind that the OpenMoko is a specialty item and probably will not sell as many in its entire production as Apple sells iPhones in a day. What may seem like a trivial cost to Apple may simply not be worth it. My expectation is that most of the OpenMoko users will install a third party application that exists only because the phone is "open source" and a significant number of users will develop programs for it. The iPhone is exactly the opposite, even if it were open source, almost all of the owners of it will never install anything extra on it, and the number of developers, even if it were open source, would be statisticly insignificant. IMHO the quad band capability will sell a lot more iPhones than the open source of the OpenMoko, so it makes sense for Apple to concentrate on that, and the makers of the OpenMoko not to. An interesting (to me) discussion, probably not for this list, would be exactly how open a cell phone could be and still get regulatory approval. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
