Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

I'm basking in the glowing embers of what I KNEW putting a cellular radio into a tablet would get us.

Nokia should have just designed the damned thing with a slot for a radio so you can buy a radio for whatever carrier you needed. It'd be cheaper and modular. heh Way to be forward-thinking.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Ha! Modular in mobile devices isn't cheaper.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Ha! Built-in hardwired radio is SOOOO cheap, right? :P

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

You're adding: certification costs, design costs, fabrication costs, all while increasing both bulk and decreasing ruggedness for a feature that only a very small number of your customers will ever use.

Yeah, no thanks.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

All the costs I could have saved if I bought that modular device without the radio if I chose NOT to have a cellular radio.. POSSIBLY opening up a sale in the future if I decide to spring a little more DO go the radio route. MUCH more affordable to more people.. and invites more of them to become a LARGER number of customers through the CHOICE of which radio to use.

As opposed to the current route of customers buying the first unit with only the supported bands it has.. then pissing off a bunch who'd rather get the later model designed for their own carrier (or worse, making people switch when they didn't want to).. making MULTIPLE models to support MULTIPLE carriers--which incurs allll the same costs mutiple times, warehousing MORE devices--many of which might not sell, all depending on which carriers people wanted to use with whichever model.

Oh yeah.. I can see how embedding a hardwired radio versus a modular design is so much cheaper for everyone involved. Sure. :rolleyes: So uh.. how's this going to end up satisfying the people complaining about AT&T 3G again.. .and cheaply? Small number customers indeed. :)

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

T-mobile uses 1700 in conjunction with 2100 (one for upload, one for download)...they are not used separately like AT&T uses 850/1900.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Yeah..and the radio-less internet tablets were just amazingly popular with the average joe before. You have it backwards..having a cellular radio makes it more appealing to the masses (single device that does everything), thus attracting larger numbers of customers...thus encouraging economy of scale and finally helping to keep costs down.

A "modular" N900 with removable/detachable radio would likely cost as much or more than the N900 we have now...without the radio. Modularity, as has been previously mentioned, adds enormous costs to development and manufacturing. Just having a removable battery adds to those costs in a non-trivial way (just ask Apple).

If there is enough demand, perhaps Nokia will release a true "tablet" follow-on, but given the relative commercial failure of the N800/N810 by comparison to their phones...I wouldn't hold my breath.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

@danramos: So, these modular radio chip/antenna/sim-holder combos will come from where? I haven't really seen anything like that available off-the-shelf. If you have seen something like that available from anywhere else, I'd be pretty interested in hearing about it to use with a couple embedded projects I've been following. :)

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

I'm not sure that Nokia's phones have been the raging success with either the average joe or otherwise, the last time I checked. Can you check the numbers? I thought that Nokia lost marketshare in the period since the internet tablets were around--so it's probably not the just tablets' fault.

Near as I can tell, this whole new market that Nokia just about created and led (the Internet Tablet) is something for which they could have continued to pioneer--and it appears to be the trend you're seeing with several competitors that have popped up recently (Pandora, Archos 5 Internet Tablet, ODROID, etc.). Instead, they've relegated the N900 to another iPhone wannabe. That'll be a raging success in the "mass market" alright. :P Treat it like the openly expandable, portable general computing device that it should be and it'll do better than the iPhone wannabe that it seems poised to be.

I also don't buy the soldered battery argument. NOTHING excuses a soldered-in battery.. not size, not weight, not anything. Cell-phone batteries are thin enough and last well enough not to use that sorry excuse to charge people money to swap out a battery and make sure there's no third party market or competition.

Seems to me a company with Nokia's size and experience should have the resources and the intelligence to be able to make a small module that could be used across many devices to support a carrier.

I remember hanging around people in Silicon Valley, back when I lived in Santa Clara in the late 90's and early 2000's, that used to build their own cell phones. I'm not sure if these are useful for your interests:
http://www.opencircuits.com/Open_Mob...ts#GSM_modules

You might even want to take a look around the whole wiki for interesting project resources and information.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

I can vouch for that! Us folks in Kentucky may perhaps see 3G in 2011, but are lucky to have decent edge connections for a lot of areas, though I must admit it has gotten better in the past year.... A little bit.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Modularity adds costs in so many ways that nobody is winning. The cost of a modular platform WITHOUT the radio would cost as much of not more than the current price of the N900 with the radios included. You have to add bulk to the device to provide the mechanical ability to add the module to the device, the device itself needs certification from the FCC, ETSI, SAR, etc, as well as the device itself. Now instead of doing the certification on a single device, you now have to certify the device and each module separately. Do you plan on having a modular antenna system as well? The antenna design for each module will be different, certification will need to be done with the appropriate antennas for each band. You're not embedding the antenna into the radio module since this will likely be too small to allow an adequate element to radiate sufficiently.

Have you seen GSM modules? You can get a GSM module off the shelf that is roughly half the size of my Nokia E71. This is HUGE compared to the device you intend to use it with. Surely Nokia would make this as small as possible, but it's still a separate assembly that needs to be packaged to protect the circuitry and that add bulk, no matter how you slice.

Now you've got to set up separate manufacturing space for each module plus the device itself for test and calibration. You're adding to number of tests and test times by testing everything separately versus testing a single device.

Once you get through all that now you have the customer to deal with. Can you guarantee that the module will be placed correctly, having optimal contact to provide the best performance of the radio? Is the antenna connector robust enough to always provide optimal RF match?

You haven't decreased inventory at all, you've increased it. Instead of a single device with cellular radio, you now stock the device, multiple radio modules and maybe an antenna modules. Then you have to design packaging for each of your plug-ins as well. At the end of the day, nobody is paying less for a product such as that, and if Nokia were to product it you'd likely be saying "man, that thing is freakin' expensive, it would have been cheaper just to drop the UMTS radios on the PCB"... Exactly!

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Just wanted to add my voice as another customer who would like a 850/1900 band N900 phone. Maybe another version in the near future to support it? I would definitely love to develop on maemo but I don't see the point in purchasing a device if I can't use it on my network's 3G

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Sure I can check the numbers...market share of over 40% worldwide for celluar phones. I'd say that was pretty popular. Versus a relative pittance of internet tablets (sans celluar stack) sold world wide.

Yep, they could have..but instead decided they wanted to create a mainstream cellular device. You don't want a mainstream cellular device. That's cool..so perhaps the N900 isn't for you and you should look at the alternatives you listed. It's for me, however...and for a LOT of other people precisely BECAUSE it has an included cellular stack.

And a more expensive (modular) version would be even more popular how? Nothing like a $1000 tablet with a $300 available cellular upgrade to spur market uptake ;)

Buy it or not....acceptable or not...the fact remains that it exists in the Apple products and it exists primarily due to cost concerns. Your opinion does not change the reality of the situation, however justified it might be.


Sure they could...but as has been repeatedly explained to you, it would wind up costing MORE than having everything integrated. Not to mention it would necessarily be even larger due to the space wasted with the modular connectors versus having chips soldered to a PCB. Sure..sign me up for N900-A aka "the brick"...bigger, more expensive, and doesn't provide a performance benefit. That'll be a best-seller for sure!

Let me know when they get all of the functionality and performance of the N900 in the same form factor for less money spent ;)

I'm sure there are plenty of interesting resources and information...that doesn't change the reality of the manufacturing process of consumer electronics.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

there is maybe a way by flashing the N900 to change the frequency so it might be usable 3g for AT&T or Canada. Like they do for other cell

http://cellphoneforums.net/nokia/t30...62-1661-a.html

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum...ad.php?t=87744

maybe someone will find a way

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Flashing should not change the frequency. The frequency is a matter of the antennas and tuners inside the phone.

I believe the quad band GSM / GPRS / EDGE radio and tri band WCDMA radio inside the N900 are separate.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

@JD2010: I just read those threads and it seems the consensus was that it's impossible to change the frequency by flashing the phone. Why do you think it would be possible to do on the N900 when it's not possible on other phones?
To stretch an analogy a bit, that'd be like changing a car from right hand drive to left hand drive by flashing the ECU.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

I think there are some CDMA phones that were flashed to turn on some Freqs and that's where it's coming from.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Are the frequency bands really a hardware and not a firmware/certification issue?
I mean are the antennas for 850/1900 that different from 900/1700/2100? Any RF engineer who could explain that, around?

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Yep they are. A quick search on Wikipedia will explain the basics to you. The length of the antenna is basically linked to the frequency range that will work (wavelength). Frequency has to be generated using a carrier frequency based on clock cycles, only so many multipliers on a base cycle so that is definately a chipset design limitation.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

...and... where is Peter reply!!??

PEDRO: Just put that chip or set the BIOS option on on n900 in order to support WCDMA 850/1900. and... wualaaaaaa

That is not a big deal for them, the technology exist.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

of course that is not a HW problem. frequencies are way Old, look regular radios ^^, or do u need buy extra radios to switch from one station to other, or from FM to AM, SW1,2,3,4.......

So PETER!!! surprise us, giving us a xmas gift including WDCMA 850/1900 on n900;
TIA!

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

@Arrancamos: Great analogy about the FM radios. It applies more than you think. Try taking your old FM radio from the US (87.8 - 107.7MHz) to Japan (76 - 90MHz). And that's just on the receiving side...

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

the deep point is that there is no technological issue about enable all bands on a desired celular phone. This practice is nothing new.

so, all is about Nokia political and/or marketing strategy decition.

At least hope they include quad band for WCDMA on n900, in order to enable it thru software in the future.
Regards.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Are there any quad band UMTS devices? I've never heard of any from any manufacturer. I think it's bit more complicated than building FM radios....

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

wrong, please read Fargus' comment above!

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

That's too broad. As has also been mentioned, modularity can LOWER development and manufacturing costs as well. Manufacturing one battery that would work across numerous devices, for instance, is much, much cheaper than dealing with numerous battery configurations.

I really wish we could put this simplistic and misleading canard to rest...

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Odds are a deal was made with T-mobile for 3G exclusivity on first-run devices. Circumstantial evidence increasingly points to that as highly possible and even probable.

Disclaimer: I have zero inside info on this (I would not speculate at all if I did).

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Yeah, those folks wanting modularization are just crazy. Everyone knows devices with modular components are always insanely more expensive.

Look at PCs. I'm sure those crazy folks want CPUs you can just pop in a socket to change them out to a faster speed one. That would make the PC just outrageously expensive. Thank god they are all soldered to the motherboard.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Rather than any exclusive deals might it just be the chipset is cheaper without the frequencies that AT&T use? I believe that the frequencies chosen are well used outside the USA and GSM is afterall a European standard. Maybe it's just as simple as reducing costs when the expected market was predominately outside the USA?

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

OK, so you go on the cheap and make your device non functional on the biggest cell Data network in the US? TMO is number 4 in the US, without a deal that move makes no sense to me.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

The chipset and antenna still need to be present in the device in the first place for the software to utilise them or all those old phones that used single or dual band would have magically been able to work worldwide too!

Yes it is a hardware basic limitation as to what frequencies are supported. Things are then refined to a subset of that (including all) for certification. Finally the software uses whatever it wants out of whatever is left.

Are we clear now? If someone can pull a certification for the N900 on other frequencies then it might support this debate if not then it's pointless as at very least you would be operating illegally. Nokia usually make a big thing about having lots of bands on their phones; if a frequency is missing it tends to suggest that it simply isn't available to the hardware.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Yep. As of last year:

AT&T 70.2 million
Verizon 65.7 million
Sprint 48.5 million
T-Mobile 28.7 million

Going with just T-mobile is a really bad move if they aren't giving you a deal.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Really depends on where you live. For example, for where I live and all the states I travel to TMobile pretty much covers the areas I frequent so Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint don't offer much of an advantage. (I switched over from Sprint). And at the rate of TMobile deployment they'll pretty much cover all the areas of the US I'm interested in visiting anyway.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

WTF!
They can set all those bands in one celphone. Yes!

If they didn´t do it atm is cuz they want some mice for test ^^ get over it!

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

Seriously? The dark tiny dark spots are the only areas of the US you are interested in visited? Wow, that's limited.

http://coverage.t-mobile.com/default.aspx?MapType=Data

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

I don't have much free time given graduate school and my work with the Federal Government. By the time I'm finished the TMobile 2 year contract would've long been over so I could get another phone and tether it to the n900 if I wanted too by that time. Though there really isn't much in the USA I want to see that I haven't seen already. Chicago, some cities in CA, Las Vegas.

My girlfriend (future fiance :D) and I are more interested in Europe (her) and Asia (me) than cities in the USA.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

LoLz
http://www.wireless.att.com/coverage...37500002&sci=1
zoom once, and you will see 3G

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

I know right?
And they go and sue verizon for "there is a map for that" ad where it clearly states "5X More 3G" what a bunch of *****s wasting their time and money in lawsuit rather than upgrading their network.

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

@Arrancamos: Alright. You figured it out. There were no technical, marketing or demographic reasons. We all tried to trick you but you were too smart for us. Nokia specifically crippled the N900 just so you couldn't use it. Also: They've been following you. Know that car that always parks on the corner of your street for hours everyday? Yup. It's Nokia corporate spies out to get you! Run!

-John

PS: Honestly interested to see if you can find any *currently shipping* phone with quad-band WCDMA...

Re: Why not support AT&T 3G Bands? (Peter please respond)
 

guys, that's the solution: attach a Droid to your N900 to get the best of both worlds
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/tethering-droid/