enviroment friendly development for v2?

[Robert Michel]

Salve Tomasz!

On Sun, 04 Feb 2007, Tomasz Zielinski wrote:

> 2007/2/4, Robert Michel <openmoko at robertmichel.de>:
> 
> >Don't get me wrong, I don't ask for making all better from the
> >beginning - but on the longterm, it would be nice to promote
> >OpenMoko/Neo1973 also with ecological criterias.
> 
> "Average OpenMoko user takes a bath once a week. iPhone user takes a
> shower twice a day! Buy Neo1974, save the Earth!"  :-]

Wow what a seriously answer. It seems that you haven'd used
the link:
> http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/electronics/copy-of-how-the-companies-line  

Ok, when you are only interested in competing with iPhone 
- greenpeace is helping to seperate from Apple:
> http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/greener-electronics-apple-rank-2.pdf

> >No keyboard is a good design to be able to use it for
> >a longer time :)
> 
> You can still use phones made in 60's, are you sure touchscreen will
> survive 40 years too? ;-)

First I was comparing mobil phones, second, because the touchscreen
has no mechanical parts, I think it is possible to produce this
touchscreen in a way, that >> 80% are usable in 40 years.

And making the case strong enough to be able to use the mobile
outdoor and in the rain would help using the touchscreen in 40
years as well.

But you are not seriously it makes a big differance if the
devices are usable due crap keys or no softwareupgrade posibilities
for 2 years, or if the Neo1973 will be used for 10 years.


I was not kidding with a ecologicaly view on mobil phones, we can bring
OpenMoko and the Neo1973 into seriously science - influence of
OpenSoftware to reduce hardware cycles - it is absolutly unsmart to
produce devices only for 1-2 year use.


And your kidding replay let me thing that with OpenMoko it would be
possibe to go one stepp further - recycling of old smartphones
1. refurbishment and selling them with OpenMoko
2. desodering ICs and recycling of SoCs, GSM ICs, displays and
condensors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalum


"I don't think there is any other consumer electronic device that is
generally replaced every 12 months."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6174422.stm

Visit Nokia "Sustainable products":
http://www.nokia.com/A4197011

And I think it is possible to find studies about the ecological
footprint of mobil devices like:
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/108819806775545330

See:
http://howgeen.blogspot.com/2006/12/mobile-phone-one-more-enemy-for-earth.html
"In our mind, the mobile phone's not associated yet with the
environmental, social or economic problems that it leads to. However,
some figures are scary: nearly 30 kg of raw materials are necessary to
manufacturate a device of about 100 grams! And in the world, one
estimates that a billion devices are living!"
[...]

http://www.wwf.be/fr/index.cfm?group=news&menu=factsheets.cfm&page=factsheets/campaign/gsm-environment.cfm

PC 764m^2  mobil phone 32m^2
http://www.weeeman.org/html/impact/footprint.html

BTW the ieee has an IEEE 802.3 Energy Efficient Ethernet Study Group:
http://www.ieee802.org/3/eee_study/


The more I think about ecolgical points with OpenMoko/Neo1973 as more I
think it could be a good promoting argument.

1. OpenMoko/Neo1973 give the user the freedom to update and install new
   software - independent from the hardware producer or network
   provider. This gives a perspective to use the Neo1973 longer then
   any other smartphone with a fast changing market - mostly protocolls

2. The ecological footprint of a smart phone is much smaller than that
   of a PC or laptop - giving full Linux power to the Neo1973 it will
   reduce the need for a PC/Laptop

That could be combined with avoiding toxical chemicals during producing,
posibilities to repair devices and recycling ideas....


So I would not talk about to aim a livetime of 40 years, but 
what about sinicicant longer livetime (5-10 years) than normal smart phones?


Green greetings,
rob