Brainstorm: less functionality per device, more devices

Fabien fleutot+openmoko at gmail.com
Tue Jul 3 18:19:08 CEST 2007


If you want, say, phone, music and camera capabilities:
- either you have plenty of pockets, then you buy a proper camera, a proper
phone and a proper mp3 player
- or you don't want to carry an extra 2kg in your pants, then you buy an
all-in-one device; then compactness is a must.

For many features, there's little value added by the ability to chain
devices together: you might save extra screens, maybe RAM and CPU, but the
space you gain is lost by connectivity gear, and the money you save on
hardware is lost in harder testing, logistics (it's hard and expensive to
handle stocks of plenty different modules worldwide), reliability (it's hard
to make stuff communicate reliably when they aren't soldered o nthe same
PCB).

For most cases where chaining makes sense, bluetooth protocols already
exist, and you don't even need to get every device from the same vendor. You
don't want the reliability, bulkiness, availability and extra cost issues of
a ZIF-like CPU socket or modular RAM sticks; if you want more Flash, microSD
is your friend. etc.

As for going clubbing without a GPS, that's the best way to get lost while
trying to go there :)
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