$10 Paper Mobile Phone To Launch This Year 176
ROU Nuisance Value writes: "Made (mostly) out of recycled paper and coming this year. The Register article makes the phone sound like a non-hoax, and claims that companies like McDonald's are interested in mass distribution. If so, it's destined to replace AOL CDs as World's Most Annoying Giveaway. Inventor's Web site has pictures of prototypes but I'm willing to bet that call quality won't be worth the paper the phone's printed on. She promises a $20 laptop, too. Anybody know if the patents/inventor/company are for real?"
Drug dealers will love these. (Score:1)
Re:why must it be disposable? (Score:1)
For those of us who don't fall for gimmicks (A phone for a penny? What a deal!), companies such as Sprint PCS will be happy to provide you with service for only as long as you need it. Their phones aren't necessairly the cheapest, but their contracts are only necessary to get a better plan.
Re:i like cell phones (Score:1)
Don't confuse the issue with logic. This is slashdot, after all! :>
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Re:Hoax (Score:1)
>million people!
Please listen to this entire phone call before you hang up. I thought it was too good to be true, too, but then I tried it and now I have received over 14 million one dollar bills in my mailbox!
Here's what you do...
-LjM
Re:Water (Score:1)
I've been cleaning IBM model M keyboards for years by unplugging them, hosing them off with the shower head, and letting them dry for a day or two before reconnecting...
Granted, this is for serious grime, usually just shaking out the accumulated crud is fine.
-LjM
Here's what I know (Score:1)
As for the laptop, I don't remember hearing about that, but what good is a disposable computer? First of all how fast can it be? Secondly, you obviously wouldn't be storing anything important there. So is it just a clunky, throw-away calculator? And finally, isn't all this ridiculously wasteful? I'm American and I'm sure I am far more wasteful already than a lot of people, but *damn*.
Re:Mobile phones are overrated! (Score:1)
Yeah, go ahead and bash cell phones. But I find having one extremely useful. I like being able to find my friends when we're all out a different places on a weekend night. I also like the price, which is why I got one in the first place. For $39 a month, I get 1200 minutes. Hhmm...that means I get long distance for $0.03 cents/minute! I'd like to see your long distance carrier beat that. I'd spend that much on long distance without a cell phone anyway!
The worst part is that I manage to use most of the 1200 minutes up too.
Idiot. (Score:1)
Immortality Ring (Score:1)
Re:Hoax (Score:1)
Still, 300 million is a huge run for any product, except for mabye paper clips, matches, AOL disks, etc.
Re:McDonalds??? (Score:1)
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Re:Hoax (Score:1)
Re:Has anyone thought of... (Score:1)
Oops! I meant DISposable.
My native language is not english, and even proofreading in preview missed that.
rolltronics? (Score:1)
i like cell phones (Score:1)
What about the environmental cost of the product? (Score:1)
What is the cost of disposing of the cell phone and all its internernal components in an environmentally sound way? I would love to see that added to the cost.
Re:Hoax (Score:1)
It's a great idea. Here's why. (Score:1)
Re:Water (Score:1)
Sure enough new models will come out in the shape of a scrubbing spunge.
Next some marketing dude may propose making them like rubber ducks that quack when you get a call :-)
-miki
Re:Hoax (Score:1)
Well, if most of this new phone is really made from paper, at least it will not add that much to the waste problem like all those discarded conventional phones do.
You can always recycle the paper again...
Re:Drug dealers will love these. (Score:1)
Re:Yea I have some info... (Score:1)
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
Re:electic ink, (even M$oft uses this technology!) (Score:1)
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
BATTERY?!?! (Score:1)
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
Re:Doctored Photo? (Score:1)
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
Re:Hoax (Score:1)
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
Re:Yup. Its real. (Score:1)
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
Re:Similar to this... (Score:1)
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
Re:They can make it, but not for the cost they say (Score:1)
Re:Yup. Its real. (Score:1)
Re:Doctored Photo? (Score:1)
Re:Yup. Its real. (Score:1)
Re:Mobile phones are overrated! (Score:1)
I broke down and bought a cell this year when my wife's second pregnancy got complicated. It is kept in her handbag and off unless an emergency. It's been used precisely once and it was worth every penny for that one call.
Re:Doctored Photo? (Score:1)
Re:Hoax (Score:1)
$20 dollar laptop? (Score:1)
Hey, if they can make a $20 dollar laptop, think of the size of the beowulf cluster you could make for $100,000!
Re:Hoax (Score:1)
All the phones are prolly going to have the same phone number...
Wow! Dial a single number, and talk to 300 million people!
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Re:Hoax (Score:1)
So, we'll say about 500 million to be overly conservative. This company thinks they can add another 300 million in one year to the total.
It's not impossible. If the phone is cheap enough, they'll get a lot of people using them. And they seem to believe production costs and such are within range for the $10 phone.
Can they almost double the cellphone market in one year? Well it's been increasing at a rate of about 60% a year as is...
Um, people? (Score:1)
paper? (Score:1)
Re:Doctored Photo? (Score:2)
I think you both need your eyes checked :). The numbers on the keypads do line up. That is, the numbers line up but they are shifted left on the button. And, in the unfolded phone, the black buttons are just the bottom layer. The black-on-white numbers are on the unfolded part, in the panel above the guy's thumb.
Ahem... let's look a bit closer (Score:2)
Ahh, those marketing folks pulled a fast one on you, just imagine what they do to non-chemists
Of course those greeting cards that record your voice have a silicon chip in them and it wouldn't
surprize me if that if this turns out to be real, there's a silicon chip in there as well attached
by epoxy to a thin film flexible circuit board which has an embedded antenna and a voltage
regulator in thin film technology.
And the state-of-the art allows for low cost microphone and speaker tranducers (they already
come with those greeting cards), although it looks like from the pictures that it requires a cheap
hands-free cell phone adaptor...
I've seen similar thin film circuit boards with a package-less silicon chip be manufactured for 20
to 30 cents so this isn't really out of the realm of possibility (although I'm guessing a cell phone
chip is more complicated than the ones I've seen).
Just some food for thought...
Many chips in consumer devices are not packaged (Score:2)
packaged, but in many "cheap" consumer devices, silicon die are generally wirebonded to cheap
circuit boards and then simply epoxied over. No leads, sockets, connectors, or other stuff...
Given this "cell phone" would probably just 4x4 button cross sense lines, power, ground, antenna,
speaker out, mic in, maybe 24 wires, this is more than what's in your wrist watch, but not by much.
If you have a chance, tear apart one of those greeting cards that can record and playback your
voice... That whole thing cost about $2 to manufacture... The total card cost is dwarfed
by the cost of the battery at about $1... (oh yeah, they have to pay for the paper and
printing too...), doesn't leave much for the electronics (including mic and speaker)...
Admittedly, RF cell phone logic is more advanced than the analog flash memory cells that make up
most of the greeting card, but hey for a few bucks more, you get something better... Right now, 10
million transistor chips cost about $5/die, I'm pretty sure a bare bones cell-phone is on the
order of ~1M transistors... (to put things in perspective, a 6502 had 4,000 transistors)
"Cheap and bumb" (Score:2)
"I'm going cheap and dumb," she told The Register, revealing: "In monetary terms, I want to be the next Bill Gates."
Yeah, Bill Gates is cheap and dumb.
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
This is a truly great idea (Score:2)
$10 video cameras (Score:2)
the conventional charge couple time. Moderate
resolution ones can be manufactured for a couple
dollars. These are the chips you see in Barbie's
Camera, watch camera's, som computer cams etc.
You can put such cameras everywhere for minimal cost.
Re:Criminal applications? (Score:2)
Which often times aids people who want to know that type of information. And nothing that gets broadcasted over airwaves is really all that secure anyway, fsck the little sim cards -- all for show.
Probable Hoax (Score:2)
Just so you know.. (Score:2)
In Canada, anyway, they will always ask for your name and address, but I told the guy 'It's pay as you go, yuo don't need to know', and he just put in 'john doe'.
And in Europe, where wireless is wayyy bigger, nobody ever even asks unless you want a contract... you walk into the store, pick a phone, and walk out 5 minutes later with a working phone and new phone number, and absolutely no record of who bought what.
Is that an American thing? (Score:2)
In Canada, the merchants still ask....
In Europe, you just buy what's called an 'open' gsm phone, and you put a phonecard in it.. a smartcard that has your phone# and stuff on it... and it's prepaid. You can buy cards anywhere.. and phoens anywhere... you can keep the same number, or just buy a new one whenever you want. No names are ever asked for... it's not relevant.
You can borrow someone's phone because yours got stepped on and as soon as you insert your card, it becomes your phone number... the phone is just an interface.
Doesn't that make more sense?
I mean, is the US that paranoid? (yes)
Re:why must it be disposable? (Score:2)
Unfortuately, the widespread release and use of this product will just reinforce our society's dependance on disposible applications. That's why I hope this and similar technologies will fail until a more ecological friendly idea comes along.
Re:Ummm, cheap wireless modem? (Score:2)
Better off with that ham radio network stuff.
Re:Yup. Its real. (Score:2)
BTW: A hackable one of these would be cool.
Yup. Its real. (Score:2)
Well, the price quoted back then was a bit cheaper... $2 to create? But I'm not surprised to see them at $10. If it catches on, it'll be a landfill hell. But its a cute idea, and you have to love it.
Re:A wasteful product for a wasteful society (Score:2)
I give up.
I point at the utter wastefullness of making disposable products for the sole reason that it is possible to create them, never mind the consequences of those things littering the mullheap.
In reply, I get a couple of trolls calling me a 'commie' (guess that's an insult, or at least meant to be one) and such. Also, the fine moderator corps mark my posting as 'troll' and 'overrated' (overrated? It wasn't even rated to begin with...).
Conclusion: don't interrupt the cheering crowd or you'll regret it. Doesn't matter what they cheer about, just cheer along or buzz off.
I'll buzz off...
Re:How about the battery? (Score:2)
Re:Criminal applications? (Score:2)
Re:Yea I have some info... (Score:2)
b) If it's actually comparable to disposable cameras, I'm excited. Sure, they're autofocus, no zoom and no f-stop setting, but that's no worse than your average instamatic. If the disposable phone is basically like a cell phone only with no voicemail and no personal directory, then hell! sign me up for 10!
Re:why must it be disposable? (Score:2)
Nitpick, except for the polaroids, single use cameras are not disposable. They must be given, whole, to a film processor, who then sends the shell back to the factory to be reused. Still not the most effecient modle, but they aren't actually thrown away after one use. (the polaroid one shot comes with a prepaid return package and you can get a rebate for sending it back. I haven't sent mine back yet, but I haven't thrown it away either.)
Kahuna Burger
never (Score:2)
Re:Yea I have some info... (Score:2)
Disposable cameras are fixfocus, not autofocus. Otherwise, I agree. I would love to have a cell-phone that's easy replacable if it breaks, is stolen, lost, forgotten, or whatever...
Unless somebody makes them so small they fit in your wristwatch, of course (without making it bigger, and still being pleasant to use...)
Hyphenators (Score:2)
The disposable device is the brainchild of Randice-Lisa Altschul...
How the heck do you end up with a hyphenated first name?
Microphone (Score:2)
Of course, I'm sure you're right about the rest of the stuff
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Re:Water (Score:2)
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Cutting corners (Score:2)
I suppose there is, and then you can make snowflakes!
Maybe... (Score:2)
Re:i like cell phones (Score:2)
Interestingly, I still keep the old thing around since I discovered through AT&T:
1. You can always dial 911
2. You should always be able to dial the Highway Patrol *55 in an emergency
3. It can be activated at any time if the reason exists.
Thus, mobile phones' most useful application, I believe is in emergency situations, not "Honey, which kind of ice cream should I get" when I'm at the grocery store.
I think its common knowledge that many people have little concept of cell phone etiquette, and unless we establish that, I'll consider them evil.
Hey...remember telephone booths? That provided privacy for both user and passersby.
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Re:Hoax (Score:2)
Not by much [census.gov], besides, the article only mentions the phones will be produced in the United States. Considering this fabrication technology would be the cheapest technology available in less than a year; it is quite possible this many units will sell worldwide [census.gov].
3,000,000 Phones / 6,000,000,000 Potential Customers = 0.05%. This doesn't seem unreasonable considering their apparent new hold on the market as well as the fact that fabrication costs may be lowest in these very large blocks. We have no idea what projected sales vs. projected fabrication costs really are.
Besides, being disposable - who's to say the customers won't need to order more than one in the span of a year? 8-).
Re:Drug dealers will love these. (Score:2)
Any decent person who values their privacy perhaps?
The NSA and their ilk will try to tell you that uncrippled encryption is likewise only useful to criminals, yet it clearly has a huge range of legimate uses - some of which would also apply to cellphones that can't be used to secretly identify or track a person, and I imagine there are a fair few legimate uses on top of those.
Verry Eenteresting (Score:2)
Semi Topical: Anyone notice the story also on the register [theregister.co.uk] regarding BT's campaign against cell phones. Looks like everyone's favorite (not!) phone company doesn't believe in competition and economic evolution, do they?
this is for dweebs! (Score:2)
Now the cell phone fot a true Urban Survivalist should be able to survive 20m of submersion and a 10m drop on concrete. Equipped with a cast steel case with a built-in bottle opener and a tear gas spray (helluva lot more useful features that tetris).
Water (Score:2)
I'll pass. Why don't they just use those polyurethene packages from the 80s?
Just who are these things for? (Score:2)
Joe Average: Joe average, like just about everyone else, probably already has a cell phone for his local area/country. So he won't be using them much.
Mr. Suit: Mr. Suit, on business travel might use one of these, but again, he probably has a good cell phone already, or can just use calling cards provided by his company at the hotel or pay phones.
Bart Simpson: The perfect user! Bart likes to make crank calls. What better way to do it than a totally anonymous $10 phone!! (That way there's no chance of Moe chasing him with his psycho knife).
Mr. Crack Dealer: Another natural user. He likes to be anonymous, and to change his phone number often! He'll probably use them frequently to communicate with his pals Mr. Drug Runner, Mr. Hit Man, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Triad
So I thank the brilliant engineers of this device that will surly increase the number of phone calls that Ivana Tinkle gets, as well as the number of times the phrase "have you got the stuff?" is used on the airwaves. Not to mention posh homeless guys searching through dumpsters for dinner AND a phone!
electic ink, etc (Score:2)
So the idea of paper telephones is not outrageous.
Disposable communications pushes things in the direction of anonymous communications. This will be a good thing ofor the society, over all.
Politicians deserve to be nervous.
I sure as heck hope this are more better than the free phones they have know
Terrific (Score:2)
Re:Criminal applications? (Score:2)
Now, will this happen? Who knows. The FCC might screw things up before these even get printed.
Kierthos
bogus patents (Score:2)
But think about the patents (look for "Altschul" on delphion.com). The patents aren't on any technology to make the phone particularly cheap or light or easy to manufacture. They are on the notion of a disposable phone itself, and a phone that only works for a limited amount of time. Where is the invention there?
Since the article raises the issue of "women inventors", what this demonstrates to me is merely that women can be just as greedy as men. For women who are smart technologists, we have to look elsewhere. Fortunately, they are around.
Warning! (Score:2)
Doctored Photo? (Score:2)
Is it just me or does it look somewhat fake? The numbers on the buttons of the phone do not line up, and seem to have been cut and pasted using an imaging program.
I'll jot down your number... (Score:2)
We must be crazy! (Score:2)
Why are we doing this? Because *you*, the customer demanded it. With products like these our prices can be LOW! LOW! LOW!
Our paper phone slices! It dices! It juliennes! One tomato lasts a month! How much would you pay for an exquisite phone like this? $99.99? $199.99? $299.99? THAT'S TOO MUCH! We're *giving* this phone away for the rock bottom price of only $29.99!
The Fine Print: This product may not be transferred, sold, reverse engineered, given away, licensed, lent, gifted, or crammed up one's dialated anus. The PaperPhone (tm) is copyrighted, trademarked and patentpending. We can and will release our squadron of trained attack lawers on your ass if you think you can get away with copying our product, Chester!
Pranking, harassment made e-z (Score:2)
Look for regulation to follow swiftly, along with new "options" for which consumers will be bilked by the ever helpful telcos (ability to block incoming calls from disposable phones, etc.).
w00t (Score:2)
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I'm a karma whore, mod me up damn you!
They can make it, but not for the cost they say. (Score:3)
To make this work, you'd need one IC capable of doing all of the RF functions of the phone and implementing a microprocessor as well to do the protocol of the phone. We are talking about an 800 MHz RF signal here, and thus an IC that does both UHF linear analog circuits and digital logic functions - that is asking a lot of the IC process, unless you split it into two ICs and then you have to interconnect them. You'd need a crystal for a frequency standard. Microphone, earphone, and battery, and whatever discrete components it takes to glue this together. The rest of it is the "paper" part.
I think you can make it cheap, but I don't see it reaching the $20 price point unless the cell phone companies heavily subsidize it, which means you'd need a monthly charge.
Bruce
Has anyone thought of... (Score:3)
Reason: they are being sold by the millions to manufacturers of cellphones. Who wants to sell a couple of hundred to small fish like us?
And this is for non-disposable cellphones only. Make them cheap and exposable, and demand will rise manyfold.
What I heard, at this moment, manufacturing capacity of tantalum capacitors is limited by the rate tantalum mines can dig up the raw materials.
For the surface mount ceramic capacitors, a similar situation exists for the palladium that is used in the end caps.
Any increase in demand will lead to a shortage, and suppliers will only deliver to the largest (not necessarily highest!) bidder.
Oh yes, although the phone is mainly made of paper instead of plastic, this does not mean that the components are as well...
Re:They can make it, but not for the cost they say (Score:3)
I've seen Family Radio Service two-way radios for under $20 at Best Buy or one of those stores. They're operating at 467 MHz, so it's lower, but in the ballpark. And unlike this phone, they have an audio amp & real speaker, replacable battery, multi-part plastic housing (at least three molds - front, back, and battery door, likely requiring manual assembly), real (non-membrane) buttons, external antenna (rather than a loop antenna on the circuit board), and probably some LED and/or LCD info (can't remember offhand). Just the packaging on these things, with two-piece vacuum molded clear plastic with an eye-grabbing four-color insert, are relatively expensive.
Strip all that out using an earphone you stick in your ear, one-use battery placed & soldered as a circuit board component, no case (it's integrated with the circuit board), no display or blinking lights, basically cheap out on any component you can, and $10 seems quite feasible with mass market production.
I don't know about the stuff specific to cell phones, but I've designed circuits with short-range 300-433 MHz data transceivers. It's a different RF thing altogether, but even in quantities of a few dozen, you can build them for under $20 (production cost not consumer price).
Re:Probable Hoax (Score:3)
what's next disposible Calculators. (Score:3)
This stuff is going to get cheaper and cheaper. I don't see why it couldn't exist. And after all, in most places in the US you can pick up a phone for free a long with a serive agreement. Notice that this thing doesn't use it's own speakers/mic, so it's really nothing more then electronics.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
All photos look fake, (Score:3)
If the photo was fake then the buttons would have lined up perfectly, pixel for pixel.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Re:Doctored Photo? (Score:3)
It's possible they were, but it still doesn't mean it's fake. The phone is made of paper, including the buttons.
I actually was reading about this 'technological' idea on some stupid free-energy website. The site was talking about creating Bifield-Brown Disks (Flying Saucers made of huge capacitors). Well building your own capacitors at home is a real pain if you are to make them according to the Biefield-Brown instructions, ergo: some-one came up with this nifty idea:
Because you are layering conductive material upon non-conductive material (thousands upon thousands of layers); it becomes a real problem to layer them accurately by hand. So, somebody thought of using a fairly conductive ink-type, and simply printing the conductor pattern on a sheet of paper, which would act as a non-conductor.
Basically, a Printed-Circuit-Board printed on standard white paper using some variation of standard printer ink. Now, other applications of this technology with better ink, and different forms of paper would allow (through layoring) the creation of basic gates, basic components (resistors, capacitors, diodes?) and easiest of all, buttons such as the ones shown on the face of the phone.
I won't disagree with you here, they do look fake to me also, but the technology is possible. You know, come to think of it; maybe I'll get to work on my own paper circuitry. 8-)
Solve the energy crisis with AOL (Score:3)
You just inspired an idea that could save California - turn a national liability into a national asset - that's right - collect all those AOL CDs that pollute our environment, glue them to sheets of plywood (reflective side facing up), and make huge mirror-based solar farms - free!
Plus, you get more (and more useful) "free hours" out of each and every CD this way.
I calculate each reasonably sized solar farm would want a good two million AOL CDs, so if we build enough farms, we could quite possibly put a noticeable dent in the number of AOL CDs floating around.
I wonder if I can patent this...
Newsweek (Score:3)
Hoax (Score:3)
The phones, 300 million of which should be produced in the US in the first year, are due to be unleashed on the US market in the third quarter of 2001.
That's more that one phone for each citizen of the U.S. Pretty big first run of a new product, wouldn't you say? And where's the battery? And what wireless network are they going to unleash these 300 million phones on, exactly?
Yea I have some info... (Score:3)
very tired (Score:3)
She promises a $20 laptop, too.
OK I need sleep... I first read that as "a $20 lapdance."
I blame society.
Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.
Do me a favor... (Score:4)
Mobile phones are overrated! (Score:4)
http://www.statepress.com/columns/hepp/index.html [statepress.com]
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why must it be disposable? (Score:4)
This seems to be a ploy from the cellular providers to get people who can't afford calling plans to begin using mobile phones and, eventually, they will buy a 'real' cell phone. At that time the mobile providers can lock the users into a contract with outrageous termination fees. They are borrowing the drug dealer's business model -- give the first hit and you'll have a cell phone junkie for life.
-josh
Criminal applications? (Score:5)
Re:Hoax (Score:5)
There aren't that many spare PHONE NUMBERS!
Some areas of the US are constantly having to redo their area codes just to keep up.
Even if this thing were real, it would have to be for outgoing calls only... as it could almost certainly not have a phone number it's self.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"