Modular Cell phone

October 22, 2005, 1:29 pm
Filed under: Tech

So I have been thinking that cell makers have been doing it all wrong when it comes to the high end cell phones. See you can’t ever make a cell that does it all, PDA, camera, gaming, mp3 player. You have to make too many compromises when trying to shove all that stuff into one phone. What they need to sell is a modular cell phone, one we the consumers can customize like a laptop. You make it as close as you can to making the über phone, but you make the all the major components plug and play.

Imagine you go to a website and you’re asked what features you would like your phone to have. Say you want PDA functions with camera too; you could go in and select those options. Also I would have some area of the website be in flash so you could see “your�? phone being built by “you�?. Another person could go to the website and decided that they want an mp3 player and the ability to play games with their phone. So their phone would be just a little different from the phone you just ordered.

So you got your phone all built and then as you proceed to check out you then get hit with the option to customize your phone even more with a “custom�? paint job for the low price of twenty five bucks or something. You really wouldn’t need to include every color under the sun either. I am really stealing my ideas for the website from Nike.com. Just check out their website and just imagine a cell phone instead shoes being sold.

Here’s the catch, consumers wouldn’t really be paying cell phone makers for a customize cell phone. What they would be paying for is the cell phone maker to take features and parts out of the über phone. Then say down the road you decide that you want mp3 features on your PDA/camera phone. No problem. Take your phone to your local cell phone store at the mall and they unlock the mp3 features and take out the small piece of plastic that was blocking the SD slot and, poof, there you go. The store charges you fifty bucks for the “work�?.

Heck, and if people find out how to hack the phone and do it themselves so much the better. That would only push the sales of the phone even more. As an example I am sure the sales of the PSP would be much less if the thing wasn’t so hack-able.