Hardware

[koen]

yep thats another "compleate cell phone on a chip" with the DSP and the user stuff done on the same cpu, in fact you all you need to do is wire up a keypad, perhaps an sd card, anntenna and a battery and you have yourself a cell phone

pearsonnly i would love to see a phone that small without a screen that does audio over bluetooth only

that screen link is handy, it looks like they deal in surpluss as wel (i hope thats not thier primary source, think of the 6000's)
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deep in my memory I remember there was an NEC phone that had no keyboard, microphone or speaker and was pretty small. hmmm, looks like it took a long time to come to market... here's the blurb:
[a href=\"http://www.mobile-weblog.com/50226711/credit_card_sized_handset_pops_up.php]http://www.mobile-weblog.com/50226711/cred...set_pops_up.php[/url]
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I see a microphone and speaker in that picture. A phone would be pretty useless without those IMO

[Ferret-Simpson]

Yeah, the GPS got dropped. Just as a note, we still need the External Aerial outputs. . .

[speculatrix]

deep in my memory I remember there was an NEC phone that had no keyboard, microphone or speaker and was pretty small. hmmm, looks like it took a long time to come to market... here's the blurb:
http://www.mobile-weblog.com/50226711/cred...set_pops_up.php
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I see a microphone and speaker in that picture. A phone would be pretty useless without those IMO
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yeah, like I said, it was a LONG time ago when I first heard of the NEC concept - it was going to be totally reliant on a headset (I found a link but it's not relevant any more). They clearly changed their mind, going for a soft keyboard.

anyway, this is off topic. I know you guys want 3G, but would 2.5G be OK? In which case the Wavecom modules GS64 or GR64 might be suitable?
[a href=\"http://www.wavecom.com/modules/movie/scenes/support/index.php?fuseAction=page&rubric=WMspecificationsSheets&article=WMspecificationsSheets]http://www.wavecom.com/modules/movie/scene...ficationsSheets[/url]

[speculatrix]

well, what do you know, the 3G data problem seems to have been resolved by the arrival of a USB dongle:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/08/01/vo...hsdpa_3g_modem/

[Ferret-Simpson]

Vodafone only. Which means UK and Japan. . .

I still think that the integrated 3G modem is the best way to go. EVEN if we have to license a stack. This way we can do alot of stuff that we wouldn't be able to do otherwise. To use a module-based modem would mean that we'd have to have the iMX running all the time to wait for incoming calls. . . Chips like the MXC which are designed for it, take up alot less power. .  .

[Da_Blitz]

we have vodaphone here in australia

the only thing i am really aiming for is compatability with the austrialian networks as that is all i have to test it with

quick anyone remeber if wavecomm is open source friendly, 2.5g is alright however the definition of 2.5g is diffrent between some people, for me its gsm+gprs but wikipedia does mention EDGE in there as well

looks like those were modules, and there site is not what i would call friendly. it seems they are a large bulk only manufacturer

I still think that the integrated 3G modem is the best way to go. EVEN if we have to license a stack. This way we can do alot of stuff that we wouldn't be able to do otherwise. To use a module-based modem would mean that we'd have to have the iMX running all the time to wait for incoming calls. . . Chips like the MXC which are designed for it, take up alot less power. . .

not true at all, we can just wake the iMX up by an external interupt, if we are using the serial port then that should be built into the serial port hardware

modules are fine however they will add bulk and i then have to design around them rather than slapping everything in the best posible spot, from what i gather those moudles are huge but i assue its a perspective thing (and the fact i havent read the datasheet yet

[Craigms]

With reguards to the LCD, I think we should be looking at widescreen (800x480) panels, such as the ones iRiver is using in their G10 in their hand held video players, as many people will undoubtably be using it for playing videos (and most are widescreen nowdays).

[Da_Blitz]

it all comes down to what we can get, if you can find a supplier (not a surpluss dealer) then i will consider it, so far i think we have had only one link that i would even consider with the rest bieng links to surpluss dealers that might not have the part in 3 months time

remeber that the larger the screen the more power it takes to drive it as well as cpu time and ddr bus time. it is slightly slower for palying video and games because of this and it tends to be larger

[speculatrix]

do we need an LCD when we could use one of these:
http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials...scellphones.php

[speculatrix]

Yeah, the GPS got dropped. Just as a note, we still need the External Aerial outputs. . .
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could we consider adding back the GPS?
[a href=\"http://www.cieonline.co.uk/cie2/articlen.asp?pid=1272&id=14104]http://www.cieonline.co.uk/cie2/articlen.a...d=1272&id=14104[/url]

[speculatrix]

Is there room for a universal digital TV receiver?
http://www.cieonline.co.uk/cie2/articlen.a...d=1272&id=14073

OK, maybe this is a bit big for a PDA, but it would be a nice module for the deskpenguin!

[Ferret-Simpson]

Better to leave that out, because those who don't use it may still get picked up by the TV licensing guys just for having one. Seriously. Those guys are more devious than Steve Jobs.

[Da_Blitz]

i have no idea what you are refering to, i belive that it has to do with recording free to air, which is legal (at least here in australia it is)

i really dont want to deal with upstarts, however there may be an advantage to diong so, i was hoping to stick with the one manufactutrer (look at the infeon GPS chips)

i would love to chuk that display module in, it would be like a futristic vt102 terminal, green  as well

with the amount of RF stuff on there i dont want to touch the DVB stuff, however if we do want an DVB chip then i suggest we start by seeing what linux supports that is USB compatible (just get the linux source code) and work from there, at least in a pinch we can unsolder the chip and solder it onto the PP

actually that brings up a good point, why dont i look and see what is supported in the kernel to reduce developer time, make sense to me

[Da_Blitz]

the union FS wont be too hard, in my opinion the setup in konoppix is overly complicated

what we really need is "overlays" in the kernel allowing wore than one filesystem to be mounted in the same spot (eg have 2 filesystems mounted on /) and have them merged automagically instead of the symlink hell that konoopix uses (havent used it scince 3.9 so correct me if i am worng, i assume that all folders except /mnt are symlinked into /mnt/<rw root> with a ro file system on /mnt/<ro root> and there is another /mnt/<w root> that is a tmpfs folder, with the 2 merged into /mnt/<rw root>

there might be a trick where we can chroot into the rw root but i bet there is somthing that will stuff up.

[desertrat]

... because those who don't use it may still get picked up by the TV licensing guys just for having one.

i have no idea what you are refering to, i belive that it has to do with recording free to air, which is legal (at least here in australia it is)

In the UK, the non-commercial TV channels, ie BBC, is funded by the TV license. Every household that owns a TV has to pay an annual fee (regardless of whether they actually watch the BBC channels). So to clamp down on the TV cheats, there are fleets of detector vans that sit outside of homes that have not paid the TV license and they point some sort of receiver into the lounge area of the house hoping to pickup the secondary radiation from the TV screens. This apparently can give a good enough image that they can tell whether you are watching broadcast TV, if they catch you doing so without having paid the license you're in B-I-G trouble