Will The Iphone Replace The Zaurus?

[Da_Blitz]

i wouldnt say that OS guys cut corners, considering that nearly everyone outsources phone OS dev to symbian, linux/windriver/montavista, wince

i think its more a case that you make do with the hardware you are given and i think that holds true with the epoc example you mentioned

the new arm chips are great and feature rich, they have had a mmu for a long time but it can be an advantage somtimes to turn that stuff off, shock gasp horror i know but i have heard of people turning off the mmu and cache in arm chips so that the timings are predictable which for dsp work with a base band processor is critical

i think we are really forgetting that embbeded development is really a diffrent world and is driven by diffrent market forces, in the mobile phone world those market forces are the telcos, they can say what is and isnt allowed on thier networks and cingular and the others relise this. i also belive that they relise the customers would be willing to rip thier throghts out over somthing they cant fix due to the botched and weakened implemintations (thank you nsa)

in relation to the iphone, its market angel is somthing i simply cannot fathom, i see it but i dont understand it, but i say the same about windows. its alien to me and some of thier postions are plain wierd however i belive for them to come out on top they have made very correct decissions at the cost of the user, though they will never know it and its not that bad because the top can be lonly and complicated (try explaining how thi internet works to someone)

[dhns]

If they are able to spend 512MB flash for OSX, they can also spend 5-10 EUR for a separate module (which also saves several Mio EUR of integrating a GSM stack into any kernel).
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I used to work in mobile radio and paging systems, where they would happily spend $10,000 on engineers time to save a few cents on the assembly cost each pager (making 100,000 PER WEEK), but "waste" 20 cents on higher performing components to increase battery life by 10%.

I think you misunderestimate how serious companies are at cost reduction. OK, just US$5 for a module. Multiple that by one million phones manufactured. Are you telling me that US$5M isn't a lot of money? Then, add on the costs of additional circuit board and testing, the module becomes perhaps US$15 by the time the iphone reaches the shelves, maybe pushing the iphone into a different price bracket, stopping the notoriously fickle consumer from buying it - even if it dents sales by a few percent, that's a lot of money... all for something that the average consumer won't understand!

So, you ask, how come they'll put in 512MB flash instead of 256 and miss a few things off? Because the marketing men look at the competition and say it needs a certain minimal specification to be "worth" the price point of X.
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Well, I know how much they look for cost savings (I have worked for a mobile phone company for some time). But there is always a tradeoff being made between BOM savings, development cost to leverage the BOM saving (which depends of course on expected number of devices being sold), and timing. If you can save 5 EUR by invesing 5 Mio EUR into R&D (which is roughly 30 man years), the break even is at 1 Mio units. But if it needs 1 year to develop everything, you better spend the 5 EUR to finish the product earlier. You can save the potential savings for the next generation.

-- hns

[jerrybme]

This is an interesting read in terms of the 3rd part "closed" issue. http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech....D286B4D23C.html

[Srono]

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[Antikx]

iPhone has competition already: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/11/iphone-...arated-at-birth
Yikes!

[xjqian]

Is iphone's screen better or worse than Zaurus' CG Silicone technology? (not pixelwise comparison but LCD material quality)