misterc | # 651 | 2013-09-29, 20:54 | Report

& how are you going to manufacture those devices? paying 60'000€ upfront to the manufacturer? ask ppl to pay 1st, get your device in a few... weeks, months?
Jolla pulled that stunt, but how do you hope to "sell" that?
leave alone to a wider audience...
(1000 units ≃ 500'000€
10'000 units ≃ 3'900'000€
business plan, anyone?)

and i thought you had no sense of humour

joerg_rw | # 652 | 2013-09-29, 21:08 | Report

Could you please be bothered to read the related posts *) in this very thread? THANKS! Also notice please that GolDeliCo already DID manufacture and sell >300 devices GTA04. And don't get our headaches! We're not going to discuss our business plan with you publicly, particularly not in a phase of the project when no reasonable professional would even bother about business plans since the figures such business plan had to base on are not yet available. We're just about to do a feasibility study and I reported on that just a few posts back. Don't you think that a sales figure of 300 GTA04 implies that there been a obviously working business plan for that scenario?

*)
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...79#post1369379
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...76#post1370776
and somewhere there been even a rough time schedule that I failed to spot since the tmo search suddently "kicked me out"

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Last edited by joerg_rw; 2013-09-29 at 23:12.

misterc | # 653 | 2013-09-29, 22:40 | Report

Joerg,
thanks for the insight about the GTA4.
and i didn't have to reread the over 600 posts as the answer lies in a post i saw (& referred from the beginning) namely Sebastian's production cost "forecast" (whatever it might be based upon)

do i conclude correctly that for less then 10'000 units, it would only be an upgrade to a N900?
seems unrealistic to have even fans here do that kind of upgrade.
until i switched to (desktop replacement) laptops i have always designed & assembled my PC myself
so far i have only had to replace a LCD on a N900, but honestly? i'll pass on doing a hardware upgrade, sorry.
i'm afraid unless you reach 10'000 units or adjust the prices above 390€ to include a case as well...

misterc | # 654 | 2013-09-29, 22:50 | Report

another thing that has been bothering me since i 1st read your (1st) post...

Canada dry, maybe?!?

N900

• CPU up to 1.15 GHz
• Thumb2 seems to need less RAM

unless you add & use a lot of SW, in how far is the Neo900 you suggest better then the current N900 with Thumb2?

joerg_rw | # 655 | 2013-09-29, 23:22 | Report

sorry that I am not able to understand the meaning of your posts just like you seem to have difficulties to understand what dos1's post is all about.

What dos1 quoted been a list of options and costs/prices for GTA04,
NOT for Neo900. So the "new plastic case" is meant as an alternative for the hard-to-source GTA02 case - the fact that gave me the idea to use a N900 case instead. It's been stated several times in this thread that Neo900 is a complete device incl case, while the GTA04-NeoN variant is the bare board without case and other parts, and that we plan to offer both variants. First post to clearly state this: #1,
last post on exactly same issue: one of my last 4 or 5 posts!
I honestly don't know how to make the info any more clear so you don't miss it. :-/
Your 2nd post I don't get at all. You know pretty good that N900 CPU is rated @ 500MHz continuous, 600MHz temporary overdrive. While Neo900 DM3730 is rated @1GHz, so 2* as fast.
And what the heck about thumb2 in this context? Yes, DM3730 also can do thumb2! This sounds OT nevertheless.

I honestly would appreciate when you would bother to read all the thread so you might find the answers to questions you otherwise post here without prior thinking, and which cause redundance and poor S/N and make the thread unattractive to follow for other readers. Thanks!

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Last edited by joerg_rw; 2013-09-30 at 00:26.

knuthf | # 656 | 2013-09-30, 00:36 | Report

Sorry Joerg, you do not get my vote, essentially because you may know some HW, but little about packaging and nothing about marketing and sale.

You can buy an MTK95xx, quad-core, 1.5Ghz complete chipset, fully integrated for Android specifications to around $10. Throw out the old N900, and make a new casing with a screen. You can get these with 2SD cards and since the N900 only has 1 USB, take the extra USB and insert another SD memory - total of 128GB - where 32GB is removable. Now the MTK can be thin, and make room for a 4000mAh battery that covers the entire back, place a BT keyboard on top of that that can be detached and the unit is about the size of the N900. The BOM (Bill of Media) is now $20. We need an alliance with one of the Chinese manufacturer of Android phones to get their drivers. The interface to e.g. the camera is standard, the phone software is essentially what you need, and a variety of different HW drivers. The battery, camera (I like the HDMI - but this is very resource demanding), the BOM should be around $40 - with a casing that match iPhone 4s, just twice as thick but twice the battery capacity, and a keyboard that can slide in and out - and be detached and use the battery as a stand. Using the iPhone button placing, you get a ton of extra - like another huge battery - 10 000mAh for a week's work. What we need is the Maemo open source, and the proprietary drivers, to replace Nokia's drivers.
The software approach is somewhat similar to "LinuxOnAndroid" on SourceForge, just that here you strip it all down and replace Android with Hildon. Instead of guessing about the drivers, the factories have made this for Android - and the source here needs to be shared. I will make one change: The Hildon desktop should have phone and lockscreen/ log-on screen - and the rest is application select. The phone and lockscreen will not twist, the other can. This is an ARM processor, and multithreading is in the libraries - available for Android, which is Linux. If your target price is $400, it is very expensive but reasonable could we get Maemo with full Debian to tun on it. The production cost is then $200, and you here have $160 per unit to develop the software and conduct QA/QC.
You even have the N9 with MTK chipset - the Chinese have done all of this, runs MeeGo, and uses their proprietary drivers. Sorry, with everything cast and ready to be integrated there is no fun things to do. Well, there is a reason fro Siemens sold of their foundry, and here, you do not even have TI - but a complete assembly - all in one ASIC. What Nokia discovered was that the best they could do was the software and the QA/QC - so take it all the way. Make so that it fits all the cheap extras, including the covers. Bottom line is that with good design you can get one N9 kind of sandwich, thin and no keyboard, Then you can buy an extra keyboard if you want it, and a battery inside it. Suddenly we have 3-4 different models running the same software with a price range. Chuck in the 41Mpx new camera in a high end variant and you have you $700 phone. With access to the phone software - we can release that as open source, we can install Asterix on the phone - and you have voicemail, automated voice response and fax in the pocket. So, HDMI and 2 USB ports, a client and a host, with a BT keyboard we can have decent fun with Apple in particular. You can use a regular BT keyboard then, and a 60" TV monitor and fits neatly in the pocket. Talk to Kingston, and they will make a 1TB SDcard form 16 small ones and who needs a laptop - they have 512GB ready,

joerg_rw | # 657 | 2013-09-30, 00:49 | Report

@knuthf
Sorry to say you completely missed the point (or are you just trying to troll me on a very "educated" level? 41Mpix cam, suuuuure! "Bill Of Media"??). But that's no problem, we learned that you're not interested just like the ~50k users of tmo that didn't vote at all.
And thanks for your rating of my marketing and "packaging" (whatever that means in this context) skills. Luckily we got other competent people in the project for that. It's however not like your "vote" was any related to my skills, it's just about your interest to purchase such a device like explained in post#1 and the poll itself. If you don't like to vote on the poll, fine, no problem. I'm not desperate for votes, they are not actually "for me".

I'm actually kinda grateful for your post, it's an excellent instance to demonstrate why open source free community driven EE didn't work when we tried to do it at OM, and the justification to not do it now. I leave it to others to state what they think about credibility and perceived competence of your suggestion, but by all means go ahead and start such project by yourself instead of trying to change our project.

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Last edited by joerg_rw; 2013-09-30 at 02:38.

jalyst | # 658 | 2013-09-30, 03:47 | Report

Same here, getting mighty tempting, I was already at 400EUD IIRC...

And, how do you propose that this should be done?
For starters, the Cordia which you're constantly referring to has been dead for ages now.
Out of all the MeR derivatives, Nemo & Plasma have been far more active...
Also Sailfish code isn't available yet, & it's still not even clear how open it will be -if at all.
If they're still working closely with Myriad for the Android layer, & if it's not based largely on libhybris as some have claimed.*
Then it's probable that some/all of it will be a closed portion of Sailfish...
For Android hw compatibility libhybris is open, but who's to say it can't be leveraged at some future point for Freemantle.
(although I believe binary blobs/fw etc. goes against the whole ideology of this project)
<end off-topic>

*which makes little sense to many

W.T.F...?

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Last edited by jalyst; 2013-09-30 at 04:33.

wolke | # 659 | 2013-09-30, 04:39 | Report

oh my GOD so many WORDS shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

ketmar | # 660 | 2013-09-30, 04:58 | Report

2knuthf: oh no, not another one, please! people, can you read at all?! please, PLEASE, read at least the first post in this topic before writing another rant about overpriced and old hardware and how you will buy it if it will be another "2013-android"!

believe me, reading is not so hard. i myself, not being native English speaker, was able to read and understand that post and i'm in no way brilliant or even smart. my replies are full of bad English as you can see. but i was able to accomplish reading AND UNDERSTANDING task (well, almost…). so i believe that anyone can, just like me. please, at least try!

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Last edited by ketmar; 2013-09-30 at 05:08.