Pandora As A Phone

[mali]

In the end the talented game designers will create new games for anything but Pandora.
Maybe Pandora's having Wifi and a web browser will raise interest in it, but when netbooks with bigger screen and keyboards cost less, don't bet on it.

The N900 is the perfect example of how it shouldn't be. The maemo community was great and it was a pleasure to be part of it. Look at it now, the boards are flooded with trolls and whiny kids who are too dumb to learn how to use an open Linux phone and just to accept that it's not an idiot proof iPhone.

The audience is completely different. Phones are kid's status symbols nowadays. I am, and have always been, against bashing n00bs and all, but I really dont want a freaking phone. If you care so much, then start a poll.

Comparing Pandora to a netbook makes equally little sense.

Edit:
And to put the bickering to a rest, I'm sorry that I seem to have offended you, but what I wrote can be read in different ways. It was not so bad like you seem to understand it. Enough of that. Let's just ignore each other.

 

[WizardStan]

In the end the talented game designers will create new games for anything but Pandora.
Maybe Pandora's having Wifi and a web browser will raise interest in it, but when netbooks with bigger screen and keyboards cost less, don't bet on it.

And your solution to that is to add a phone to it? I'm not sure what you're getting at. Phones are not in direct competition with netbooks, and neither is the Pandora. Each serves a different purpose. If you change things to try and get into a different niche, you'll necessarily lose some people from the current niche. I don't think the number of users you'd gain by making it a phone would balance out to the number you would lose.

 

[OrR]

Adding a phone to the Pandora is a fun little project that might even lead to there being a phone variant of the next Pandora generation if it's successful. Adding the phone component to every Pandora will not happen any time soon and should probably never happen.
The Pandora doesn't lose much by not being a phone. It gains credibility, a huge price advantage, a huge design advantage etc. etc.

 

[Tor]

I suspect adding phone capability involves a much higher cost increase than just $100. Again the N900 can be used as an example. The price is way above $600, considerably more expensive than the previous non-phone tablets. There's a 5Mp camera in there too, but my guess it doesn't add that much cost -- I believe the GSM/3G part is the cost driver. And to be useful as a phone it has to be much smaller (I love the cartoon above..). I got myself one, only because I could get it at the DDP price. As I expected, it can only be considered a compromise device, and that's how I'll be using it: When I can't bring my other phones and tablet and PDA and Pandora I'll bring the N900 instead. Otherwise I'll use the dedicated, non-compromise devices.

 

[OrR]

Way above 600$? Wasn't it pretty much exactly 600$?

 

[wardred]

The only way I see it working well is with a bluetooth headset/mic in once device and something like google voice, if it'll even run on a lowish end processor - in comparison with desktop CPUs.

This assumes you're using wifi. If there's a good mobile phone USB adapter / sim chip arrangement that has open source Linux drivers, then I assume a similar thing could be done there, but you're running both bluetooth and the cell connector thing, I don't know what that would do to your battery life.

I'm sure all this has been mentioned before, probably in the links Chip referred to. :b

 

[Tor]

Way above 600$? Wasn't it pretty much exactly 600$?

Maybe it was - my memory got a bit hazed due to all the price popping up with combos of coupons and short-lasting rebates and cancels and re-ordering and so forth. Anyway, $600 flat still validates my point (-> that the GSM part vastly increases the cost).