Pandora As A Phone

[mali]

Conspiration theories are hip these days.

 

[bzar]

Yes, especially if they involve big companies. Nokia certainly did not brag about the case you're talking about. Get your facts straight.

 

[pelrun]

Steps to turning your new pandora into a phone:

1) Open the pandora up
2) Throw away the internal electronics
3) Get an actual phone
4) Throw away the pandora case
5) Profit?

 

[Varu]

But more importantly I don't trust Nokia for two reasons:
1. They recently bragged that they exported technology to Iran to let the government there spy more precisely on protesters.
2. They lobbied the government of India to have all Chinese GSM phones banned, which is anti-competitive.

the hell does that have to do with anything

People who systematically oppress the freedoms of others are the enemies of mankind and must be defeated. If Nokia assists such people, it must be boycotted.

 

[Varu]

If no other device is going to do it for you, then while GSM radios do exist for USB, you also have to have SIM capability so you can get on a carrier's network, which may be pretty difficult.

All GSM radios have SIM slots.

 

[mali]

Viva la revolucion!
*raises fist*

Edit:
ROFL
Derailing is impolite, but the effect reduces after some identical threads and this is so awesome, I just have to post it:
http://hewho.com/posters/chebush.jpg

 

[Varu]

But more importantly I don't trust Nokia for two reasons:
1. They recently bragged that they exported technology to Iran to let the government there spy more precisely on protesters.
2. They lobbied the government of India to have all Chinese GSM phones banned, which is anti-competitive.

The first point is quite inaccurate

It is entirely accurate.
My link

Were you one of those folks using a Chinese phone with a cloned IMEI? The actions taken by the telecom authorities were done to stop the latter. Which is very, very reasonable.

Many excuses were presented for banning Chinese competitors but as usual, since India is a corporate-controlled fake democracy, it did not really matter which excuse was used.
My link

 

[Varu]

Conspiration theories are hip these days.

No, the truth is important and people realize this. The Internet has provided a means around the censorship and lying that is status quo in the media.

 

[pelrun]

What the heck does that have to do with the Pandora?

 

[mali]

Varo, go on the street an throw stones instead of flooding these boards with tears

 

[WizardStan]

There's a USB stick that allows a computer to actually do phone stuff, texts, data, etc... (as opposed to the ones that just do data) that I had researched and found quite usable. When I've finally got a Pandora in my hands, I'll probably look it up again, but for now it's enough to know it exists.
As far as actually using it as a phone, just get a bluetooth headset.

 

[Varu]

Varo, go on the street an throw stones

Your lack of respect for others is due to your lack of self-respect.

 

[mali]

Your lack of respect for others is due to your lack of self-respect.

You don't see, because you are blinded by the rage
*waits for Chip*

 

[Varu]

What the heck does that have to do with the Pandora?

Do you not know why Linux and free software were started in the first place? It's about freedom. If you don't care about freedom then go buy yourself a PSP.

 

[Varu]

There's a USB stick that allows a computer to actually do phone stuff, texts, data, etc... (as opposed to the ones that just do data) that I had researched and found quite usable. When I've finally got a Pandora in my hands, I'll probably look it up again, but for now it's enough to know it exists.

There are many USB GSM devices, for instance from Sierra Wireless. Some are known to work with Linux.

 

[mali]

Varu, you have a problem with your communication skills. Even if there is a germ of truth in what you say, the way you act makes it impossible to follow your thoughts. A good rhetor makes his audience believe that they found the truth themselves. So with your lack of skills you better throw stones to get an effect

 

[WizardStan]

There are many USB GSM devices, for instance from Sierra Wireless. Some are known to work with Linux.

There you go, you've answered your own question then. Why did you need to ask here if it were possible? Like Michael Jordan says, Just Do It!

 

[OrR]

As for Palm, they were recently caught red-handed uploading Pre users' personal data to their servers, which is to say there was a spyware rootkit. So I'd be concerned about my privacy with any Palm phone.

Huh? Can you link me to that story? The Pre is supposed to send my personal data to the Palm servers, at least to some extent. That's how the whole cloud backup thing works... Of course, if you can't live with that (which I absolutely understand), the Pre might not be for you, or you'd have to wait for alternative Linux distributions, or patches to the OS that remove the whole cloud thing. I love my Pre, because it's a very open Linux with a fantastic UI and great hardware.

But more importantly I don't trust Nokia for two reasons:
1. They recently bragged that they exported technology to Iran to let the government there spy more precisely on protesters.
2. They lobbied the government of India to have all Chinese GSM phones banned, which is anti-competitive.

The first point is quite inaccurate, the second is total rubbish. Either you don't know a thing about the Indian phone market, or, what I think, you do know and you're completely perverting the facts. Were you one of those folks using a Chinese phone with a cloned IMEI? The actions taken by the telecom authorities were done to stop the latter. Which is very, very reasonable.

No, it's not reasonable at all. You can still clone IMEI numbers and still use phones with them. Only you can't buy phones without a proper IMEI anymore. There is no sane reason for that, though. IMEIs can still be changed easily so they do absolutely nothing for security.

People who systematically oppress the freedoms of others are the enemies of mankind and must be defeated. If Nokia assists such people, it must be boycotted.

Well, yeah, to some extent that's true. However, I don't like that your example is about Iran. Nokia & Siemens have provided backdoors to American intelligence services for ages and they certainly didn't use them to spread freedom and democracy.

 

[Yoyobuae]

If the phone functionality is added as an extra, with a USB dongle or similar, then just do it yourself. There was an attempt at doing just that, "Pandaphone" it was called.

What I noticed from reading the forum thread of that project is that is not trivial just hooking up a GSM modem and making voice calls. The hardware is out there, but the software is not (that I know of). And to me it seems that making the software oneself would involve reverse engineering what happens during a GSM phone call, without the help cellphone companies (why would they help you "hack" into their networks?).

I would also really dislike Pandora as a smartphone. A phone is a different device from a UMPC/gaming console. The phone functions will take valuable resources (Iphone 3GS starts with only ~150MB free memory, out of 256MB, from a fresh boot). The phone function will take priority over the "additional" gaming/application functions (incoming call interrupts your games/apps).

It's nice that Apple managed to pull off something like the Iphone. But I personally am staying clear from smartphones. Mobile internet service is too expensive for me, I'm not gonna accept a contract tied to a device.

For me a phone is a phone: it makes and receives calls and as extras it has phonebook/call logs/etc. That's functional enough for me.

 

[Rayek]

I personally got really excited recently about the Motorola Cliq because of the user interface they present with the phone, and it uses Android.

As an added bonus, my roomie has an account with T-Mobile and adding me in his family plan (which includes data, 3G and all the texts and calls you can muster) would be less than 40 dollars a month.

Before this, I was contemplating turning the Pandora into a skype-ish phone, but now that I think about it it would be a pretty poor replacement for something designed to be a phone.