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Technology

$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?"
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$10 Paper Mobile Phone to Launch This Year

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    Who else needs anonymous wireless communication?
  • In your rush to demonize cellular companies, try to remember one thing; noone's forcing you to sign that contract so you can get a free cell phone. Remember that all businesses get their power and money from you, the consumer.

    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.
  • What's the difference between someone having a cellphone conversation in line, and just having a conversation with a friend in line? It's still a conversation that doesn't involve you.

    Don't confuse the issue with logic. This is slashdot, after all! :>

    --
    A host is a host from coast to coast...

  • >Wow! Dial a single number, and talk to 300
    >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
  • Was the phone turned on at the time?

    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
  • I saw it on a national TV news show (don't recall which) a few months back. I don't really understand why the hell anyone would want one, but...

    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*.

  • 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.
  • In the audio world, the height of technology IS a vacuum tube.
  • I sure hope these new phones don't interfere with my Eternal Life Ring [alexchiu.com]. I think the cold-fusion battery in the phone my just emit enough bogons...
  • Umm... they _could_ sell phones to some of the other 6 billion people on the planet.

    Still, 300 million is a huge run for any product, except for mabye paper clips, matches, AOL disks, etc.

  • Seriously. What I'd like to see is a genuine CrackerJack Cellphone. Sure beats the hell out of plastic toys...


    What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
  • OK so what do you do with disposable phones? you throw them out after they are used. Think along the lines of if 30 million people used these phones in a year, and replaced the phone 10 times each during the year, how many phones will that be?
  • > Make them cheap and exposable

    Oops! I meant DISposable.

    My native language is not english, and even proofreading in preview missed that.
  • This looks a lot like the technology described in last week's I, Cringley [pbs.org] column.
  • i think dealing with something you may find annoying when someone else does it but when you do it its fine, is exactly hypocritical and the price of progress.
  • Disposable cell phones are a perfect example of resource consumption out of control. Isn't this a rather frivolous use of resources? With all the environmental issues facing the world, this type of product development is as ridiculous as it is disturbing.

    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.
  • by nmx ( 63250 )
    Well, duh. It is for outgoing calls only. Or have you not been paying attention?
  • Whether or not you buy this one, there'll be a convergence between current phone design and this thing. You'll end up with a phone so light you'll end up losing it more often than your house keys, and probably have to clip it to your navel ring. -schmaltz
  • Isn't it hard to clean yourself while holding the phone?

    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

  • Actually the 500 to 580 million figure is what the cell phone manufacturers estimate they manufacture/sell each and every year.

    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...

  • How about people on holiday who want to be able to phone without running up huge hotel bills. They could be dispensed from vending machines at the airport, no need to worry about converting your existing phone to international, or buying expensive triband gear to visit the states. If these came out at sub £20 and had a fortnights worth of battery life - I'd have one every time I visited anywhere.

  • Dude it would be like those dick tracey watches... I have always wanted one of those ever since i was a little kid...


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h
  • yeah, but the controller on the keyboard is basically just a ROM to sort out the keystrokes and send the scancode for the proper keycode to the PIC. Its a lot less complicated than doing high frequency circuits... dealing with interference on high freq circuits is not fun.


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h
  • looking at that picture of it unfolded, i dont see a battery anywhere in there. Granted it could be in/near the chip and the IC board is mostly screened by the keypad circuit layer, but I wasn't able to make out a battery position anywhere on the IC... that tends to detract from the realism--or at the very least the usefulness--if the battery is too small to see, then it probably cant hold much of a charge to power a transmitter like a cell phone for very long.


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h
  • dont you mean 4C artwork... if it is for print anyway... damn me and my marketing experience.


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h
  • if they are disposable, its a decent ratio... low in fact. Think about how many TRASH BAGS there are for each individual in the united states... just between me and my roomates (a rather poor statistical sample i admit) the ratio is like 30 to 1... Disposable lighters the ratio is about 2 to 1 (damn pyros), so i dont think its that far fetched.


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h
  • Gimme your spiral notebook ted, i need to print me up some new ram for my phone so i can 'hack' it.


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h
  • boy would a paper computer put intel out of business... OMG MY LAPTOP IS ON FIRE AGAIN... DAMN PENTIUM V's run too hot! also, it would screw the overclockers... trying to water cool a paper laptop... burhahaha OH NO WE SPRUNG A LEAK!!!


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h
  • Silicon Labs, for which a few of my classmates intern, here in Austin, has integrated at least all the RF functions onto a single chip, and they're selling those by the truckload to Motorola and Nokia. I wouldn't be surprised if they integrated more of the functions soon, or already have.
  • I was at a conference in '99 where Nicholas Negroponte (spelling?) of the MIT media lab was speaking about this technology and its application being mostly lowcost computers for the third world. From what I understand, it all has to do with electro-conductive ink being printed on standard paper. Now considering that they were working out the logistics of a computer, I don't see how this would be too unfeasable for phones.
  • The numbers are to the left of center in the larger photo, and the 3 button looks decidedly lower than the two button. Although the unit in the smaller photo is a different design altogether, with better aligned numbers, and white-on-black writing. The web site looks like that of a typical struggling startup, with pics of prototypes. Possibly doctored, possibly poorly designed, but either way not unusual for a cash-strapped startup. Doing final quality three-color artwork on a prototype intended to raise venture capital wouldn't be a priority.
  • Landfill hell? Did you see the size of this thing? A single daily newspaper subscription would probably take the space of several hundred of these phones per day. This would be trivial for landfills.
  • Righteous!!!

    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.

  • Not sure about the photo, but the site looked totally fake to me - far too little information, fairly poor site design condidering they're a hi-tech company. I also can't believe that this is all economically viable, and if it were then why hasn't it been bought by Motorola or another major mobile phone company...?
  • They're paper. They're cheap. And, oh yeah, they're disposable. That throws a bit of a wrench into your straight-forward calculation because one person might purchase very many. And if they're distributed in some fashion--like a Happy Meal prize (free brain tumors for the children with a hey-that's-not-beef and hey-that's-no-cheese cheeseburger? The only prize I ever got from McDonalds was a clogged artery)--the numbers aren't so unbelievable.


  • Hey, if they can make a $20 dollar laptop, think of the size of the beowulf cluster you could make for $100,000!

  • All the phones are prolly going to have the same phone number...

    Wow! Dial a single number, and talk to 300 million people!

    --

  • One in 12 people on the planet now has a cell phone. [vodacom.co.za]

    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...
  • Please read the press release on the site. It should be pretty clear that this is a hoax... (count the exclamation points, for one thing...)
  • Suddenly, paying five cents for copies doesn't seem so bad.

  • 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.

  • I don't think there's a claim that it's thin film technology (it's called super thin technology).
    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...
  • I can imagine that people who deal with computers all the time think that silicon chips have to be
    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)
  • From the article:

    "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.
  • As long as we can recycle them again. Cheapo limited use phones - RU kidding, this is great. Give them out in malls and amusement parks to keep track of people, give them out in parks for day trippers in case they get lost. Give them out on field trips, the kids, etc. When its done just toss it in the phone recycle bin and pick up another. For the price of phone card you could have minutes and a phone. Are you kidding this is great.
  • CMOS camera chips are much cheaper to make than
    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.
  • I'm not sure exactly what you were referring to with mobile phones being hard to trace. It is very simple to find out what calls where placed at what time, or what calls received.

    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.

  • The page is immensely, well, fluffy. There's almost no actual information ("STT: Super Thin Technology," anyone?). The Press Release is particularly telling. It's basically a pep-talk/biography for the founder of DTC (Randi Altchul). Apparently she's 'taking her Toy Mentality to the Technology and Telecom Industries and having a lot of fun along the way!!!' Sounds pretty fake to me. The Press Release claims that she's been granted more than 20 patents (including ones for the 'PAPER LAP TOP'), but there are no links or even direct references to said patents (like, say, patent numbers) anywhere on the webiste. Almost certainly a hoax or a scam.
  • Most places in the world now, you can just go buy a pay-as-you-go cellphone for cheap, especially as far as drug-lord budgets go. And you don't have to give your name, at all.

    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.
  • Seriously... can't you already get pay-as-you-go phones without giving your name or anything else in the US? Because you can in Canada, or all of Europe, and probably most other places too. It's no big deal at all...

    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)
  • I agree with you. Unfortunately, we (Americans and most of the developed world) live in a society that views disposible products as convenient and useful and does not really care about the ecological costs involved. AOL CDs are a good example of this (convenient and useful from AOL's perspective of course).

    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.
  • The quality on a cell phone like this will probably be piss-poor. If you're lucky, maybe you'll get 300bps.

    Better off with that ham radio network stuff.

  • But, as I've read, aren't they having enough trouble with REAL cellphones in foreign countries that are filling up the landfills? Imagine what these things would do.

    BTW: A hackable one of these would be cool. :)
  • I think it was Wired or News.Com that did a story on this (and didn't Slashdot link to it?) regarding a woman who patented her idea for a cell phone that was made on a flexible PCB. It has no display, but was very cheap to make, and great for use as disposable / giveaway / low cost cellular phones. Didn't they then mention the idea of including them in Happy Meals? :)

    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.

  • Right.

    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...
  • Oh you mean the $99 (not optional) "Paper Phone Holder". Which looks just like a cellphone with the front missing. Hey look even a battery in there. [/;-)
  • Yeah, because as we all know beeing a drug lord these days means you don't have much money and all things you want to get must be through legal channels :)
  • a) Have your friend post some of his/her experiences,

    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!

  • These products serve a niche, just like those disposable cameras, which BTW, take pretty decent photos.

    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

  • trust a press release that uses three exclamation points in a row. "CONCEIVE IT ! ! ! BELIEVE IT ! ! ! ACHIEVE IT ! ! !" Wow, what a scam.
  • If it's actually comparable to disposable cameras, I'm excited. Sure, they're autofocus,

    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...)

  • The disposable device is the brainchild of Randice-Lisa Altschul...

    How the heck do you end up with a hyphenated first name?

  • Actualy, if you'll look at the pic, it shows the phone using a 'hands free kit', a fancy way of saying cheap earphone with an integrated clip-on mic.

    Of course, I'm sure you're right about the rest of the stuff

    Amber Yuan 2k A.D
  • Yes, and current cellphones just love watter. I take mine in the shower with me!

    Amber Yuan 2k A.D
  • but there are a lot of corners that can be cut

    I suppose there is, and then you can make snowflakes!

  • Maybe this is what Ginger is.
  • Since I ditched my cell phone a few months ago, I've saved some $30.00/month (so I could get a Cable Modem) and I can avoid being hypocritical.

    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.
    ------------

  • "That's more that one phone for each citizen of the U.S."

    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-).
  • Who else needs anonymous wireless communication?

    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.

  • Actually I see this as the next logical step in disposable phone technology. Instead of having to slog off looking for a payphone or whatnot if your cell phone gets lost/loses it's battery charge/etc., you just pick up a phone from the local Sav-On and use that. Of course, this can also be incredibly useful for nefarious purposes, especially when coupled with the disposable laptop featured here a few days ago.

    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?

  • Another throwaway toy for the throwaway generation.

    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).
  • Watch your phone call be defeated by rainwater, standing too close to the summer pool, or the occasional neighborhood kid with a Super Soaker.

    I'll pass. Why don't they just use those polyurethene packages from the 80s?

  • Ok, while I can appreciate the technical achievement that making a cell phone out of paper represents, I'm left wondering: Just who are these things for? So, let's go through the list of people who are likely to use these things.

    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!
  • well, there was a collection of tech novelties written up in the NY Times Last year. One of the things had to do with electric ink that would eventually shuffle itself on the paper.

    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

  • Great! Just what we need: more displosable junk in the landfills... excellent!
  • Try being able to buy a mobile phone for cash, leaving very little of a paper trail as to who used it. Also, mobile phones are much harder to trace (although the cop shows always make it look easy), and the limited life-span is actually a "bonus" as when it runs out, you have no incentive to keep it. Set the sucker on fire and move on.

    Now, will this happen? Who knows. The FCC might screw things up before these even get printed.

    Kierthos
  • If they want to produce this kind of stuff and fill the landfills with more electronic junk, that's one thing.

    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.

  • Aw hell...the brain tumor was bad enough, and now I have paper cuts all over my ear? dang :)
  • look at this picture [dtcproducts.com]....

    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.

  • Gimme your phone so I can jot down a number... who needs memory when you can write on the phone?

  • Why, these phones are made out of paper! We're working on an all cardboard laptop and next year we're planning to completely replace all the audio recordings in the world with aluminum foil!!!

    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!
  • In the age of Caller I.d. and blocking, people are less likely to misuse their telephone. When the call isn't traceable, however, things could get interesting. The disposable could be the heavy breather's best friend.

    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.).
  • I have seen a prototype of these, although it wasn't working it was a great idea, just think of it as one of those desposable cameras. It is made out of paper, so you will have problems if you want a nice solid phone, but there are really made for someone who needs to make a phone call while on the run, or their cell is out of service, they can just run into the local Quicky-Mart and pick up a nice phone that can be used for 15, 30, or 60 mins.
    --------------------------------------
    I'm a karma whore, mod me up damn you!
  • I think they can make this, but not for the cost they say.

    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

  • by Hank the Lion ( 47086 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @12:34AM (#478198) Journal
    ... the amount of electronics that is going to be thrown away in this way? I work at a small electronics firm, and from last year on it has been nearly impossible to get surface mount tantalum and ceramic capacitors.

    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...
  • by Argy ( 95352 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @10:50PM (#478199)
    Bruce writes: 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.

    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).
  • by ectizen ( 128686 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @11:14PM (#478200)
    Sounds pretty fake to me
    that press release that contains 24 exclamation marks!!! it must be real!!!
  • by elegant7x ( 142766 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @10:46PM (#478201)
    "Imagine, a mathimatical calculator, given away for free, the size of a bussness card. Who could belive such a thing, I bet it's a hoax, total vapor."

    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
  • by elegant7x ( 142766 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @10:51PM (#478202)
    if you look hard enough. Look at everyone claming that the Mac cube image was fake "Look at the shadows, they don't line up! there's no way this is real, I know my Photoshop." Proclaimed one mac site. Sure enough, the photo was exactly the same one use by Apple a couple of days later. Most of the good celeb fakes look more real then the real pics (skin tone differences between face and body are more likely in real images then fake ones.)

    If the photo was fake then the buttons would have lined up perfectly, pixel for pixel.

    Amber Yuan 2k A.D
  • by Ace905 ( 163071 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @11:24PM (#478203) Homepage
    "The numbers on the buttons of the phone do not line up, and seem to have been cut and pasted using an imaging program."

    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-)
  • by -Harlequin- ( 169395 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @07:22AM (#478204)
    I agree with you. Unfortunately, we (Americans and most of the developed world) live in a society that views disposible products as convenient and useful and does not really care about the ecological costs involved. AOL CDs are a good example of this (convenient and useful from AOL's perspective of course).

    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...

  • by blueg3 ( 192743 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @09:19PM (#478205)
    Yeah, there was an article on this in Newsweek a while back (many months ago at least). AFAIK, the inventor and company is completely real, and it seems like a valid idea. The quality won't be top-notch, but there are a lot of corners that can be cut. These would be particularly good for people like me who would only want a cell phone so they can call in case they really have to and they're far away from a real phone. Voila! A thirty-minute disposable phone!
  • by micromoog ( 206608 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @09:30PM (#478206)
    This has got to be a hoax:

    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?

  • by Operandi ( 231803 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @09:21PM (#478207)
    My pal at CMU has been checking out a demo on loan (Electronic engineering major or something.) and says it's legitimate. (Not incredibly high-quality, though of course. He says it's like disposable cameras.)
  • by 3prong ( 241218 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @09:40PM (#478208)

    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.
  • by lildogie ( 54998 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @09:32PM (#478209)
    fax me the phone, will you?
  • by rackrent ( 160690 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @10:27PM (#478210)
    The fact that mobile/cellular phones are as commonplace and annoying as they are, it's good to see a guy at this school finally took things into his own hand!

    http://www.statepress.com/columns/hepp/index.html [statepress.com]


    ------------

  • by gotih ( 167327 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @09:32PM (#478211) Homepage
    Why do we create disposable products when reusable ones can be manufactured for just as little cash? These products are not recyclable and will probably release toxic materials as they degrade in a landfill. Why not create an inexpensive phone which can be recharged and used more than once? Oh yeah, then the manufactures wouldn't have the constant stream of revenue from users who used up the battery life.

    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
  • by bokane ( 36382 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @09:16PM (#478212) Homepage Journal
    Wow. It seems to me that this'd really be a huge boon to people whose phones are monitored (ie, drug lords, mafiosos, etc) -- they just have to buy one of these suckers, then toss it away in a few hours.

  • by Jace of Fuse! ( 72042 ) on Friday January 26, 2001 @10:08PM (#478213) Homepage
    Wireless Network!?!? WIRELESS NETWORK!?

    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.)"

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce

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