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Open source Symbian OS is very attractive, but cellphone hardware is closed, so you always have to stick with what you bought.We learned from PC how fun is upgrade you hardware, why not to use same experience in phones? Maybe it's also the time to introduce open cell phone, in which you could add required hardware? For e.g. you by phone with basic hardware, resistive touchscreen, GSM module, card slot and 64Mb RAM. What you need you can buy as a chip and put it on phone main board. You can choose camera module from 1,3 to 12 mpx. If you need more RAM you can add it 128-256 MB. If you don't like resistive screen, you can change it to capactive. If you want stereo sound, you can add additional speaker and so on. If you need trackball, you can have it. So you have possibility to replace and upgrade all hardware. If there's need in additional holes on phone for camera, trackball or need more space under the plate (compared with basic), you can buy such phone plates or they can be sold together with camera or other hardware. Also if you prefer to have physical keypad (two choices qwerty and numerical), you can connect it to the side of your phone and if you don't use it you can flip it to protect your phone screen. 
Posted on 02/04/2010 04:06 PM GMT
, Last Modified on 02/26/2010 06:18 PM GMT
 Comments (9)
> We learned from PC how fun is upgrade you hardware, why not to use same experience in phones? Sarcasm surely? I seriously doubt that phones will ever be like the PC market where you have end user upgradable components, a lot of work goes into making sure that the HW components the engineers specify actually fit into the box the designers draw. To have that sort of flexibility you'd end up with something akin to the occasionally mentioned Zoom II, which is monstrously ugly, big, impractical and quite expensive. If all you want to do is tinker with various hardware options, then I think a good start would be the Beagle Board. It doesn't yet do phone calls (see Wild Ducks project), but I think it's the closest thing (practicality wise) to what you are imagining.
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Image if PC would be the same as phone. If you want better web cam, you have to change all PC. You want more RAM, again look for a new PC. Drastical? I think so. Sure I understand that till this moment engineers wanted to put everything compact as its possible, but with time size and weight of phone is increasing and it's not main thing to make up your mind when you by a phone. So theoreticly it's possible to have place on board for such "chips" and to have nice form factor. But as it was a challenge to create smallest cellphone, I guess it will be a challenge for future to make upgradable phone, because you need to design new ways to plug these chips. I see bigger challenge in manufacturing these additional parts and making them compatible with phone OS, than to make it compact and with attractive form factor.
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The Zoom2, ugly? Haha, yeah I guess - relatively. Obviously you have no experience with hardware reference platforms to call it ugly though.
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No, clearly not ,:-/ As a reference platform it's OK, but as a device you'd actually want to carry in your pocket for daily use?
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>but with time size and weight of phone is increasing Who wants that? Not me, I'd like my phone to be light, and small enough to sit nicely in the pocket.
>I see bigger challenge in manufacturing these additional parts and making them compatible with phone OS. Yeah, because that'd be great fun for your granny to do, put all the bits of her phone together and then wade though hundreds of lines of driver code to try and make the thing work. The Linux community has spent well over a decade trying to get to a point where you can take an OS image and load it up onto any PC hardware and stand a good chance of it working - and they haven't even got it 100% right yet. Symbian is starting from a much stronger position in this regard, it would be suicidal to abandon that.
>If you want better web cam, you have to change all PC. Yeah, it's a shame, but that's the business model the entire industry is founded on. I bet you ever box shifter in the PC industry would kill to get on that bandwagon.
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<Yeah, it's a shame, but that's the business model the entire industry is founded on> If we used to it, it doesn't meant that it has to be this way and you don't have a choice.
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Yes, Wild Ducks project is closest thing to what I had in mind with this idea. Sure it's rough concept (it don't make calls as you mentioned and target is just to show how open symbian platform is, but not create open hardware phone), so maybe one day we will have such nice form factor upgradable phone.
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I'm sure they'll manage to get a phone call out of it. Perhaps one day we will have upgradable HW handsets in the future; I was going to post a link to a company that did something similar a few years back, they made a stackable linux system, you bought the main board and just stacked little daughterboards on top of it, each in it's own little box. Virtual Cogs IIRC, but they seem to have gone bust, so perhaps you shouldn't hold your breath.
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I never heard about this project. I just remember that there was one chinese manufacturer who offered to choose configuration of the phone on their website and they would built it for you. Okay, long trip starts from small steps. Maybe in near future any of phone manufacturers (Nokia, Samsung, LG or etc.) will add possibility to change at least a camera or to boost phone performance with adding extra RAM.
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