Interesting idea, but the hardware spec for that device is so lacking in basic facilities that it will probably be a non-starter for a lot of people.

Sure, as long as the batteries last and you have useful reception in your current location (and the base station isn't affected by the outage). These are relevant concerns with a cell phone, while they matter little with a traditional land line.

That's a matter of opinion. Do they crash every five minutes? Of course not. Do they crash often enough to be annoying and potentially dangerous? Yes, every major mobile OS platform has had this problem at various points in recent years. Given this is a device you might need to call an ambulance one day, none of the major platforms has a great record on stability.

As for doing their jobs, there have been a few antennagate-style stories over the years, where some fundamental design flaw has undermined the basic functionality of the device as a phone. It seems popular to make thinner smartphones with larger screens that then bend or break in your pocket lately.

Modern smartphones seem to be about on par with PVRs and so-called Smart TVs. They do their job up to a point, and they do offer some advantages over the devices we used before. On the other hand, they are also trying to do too many different things to do any of them really well, they often try to be a bit too clever about how they do them too, and at some point these things affect the reliability of the system and/or raise security and privacy concerns.

I often have a feature phone in my pocket and a tablet in my case/bag, and I have yet to find anything I want to do while I'm out and about where a typical modern smartphone would be better at it than one or other of the devices I actually use. YMMV, but I'd be genuinely interested to hear of any common tasks that a modern smartphone really is better at than other widely used but more specialised devices, because I can't think of any myself.

And I knew it was a good idea to go for AVM's Fritz!Box-es...

(regular updates even for old models, no market segmentation where models only differ by firmware, trying to cram as much feature in one model as possible instead of launching 20 subtly different models, etc.)

I prefer to read my book at 304.8mm, in insensitive imperial clob

But that's a different measurement.
If someone is short sighted, they may not be able to focus on something 20 feet away.
They may have perfect vision at a distance of 4 inches.

Sounds perfect for the screen of a smartphone.

There's a company called GT Advanced Technologies, I hear they're eager to get in to that market. Give them a call. In fact, you could probably buy them. Their share price is currently sitting at $0.29, down from $19.77 back in July

The fraction in your example being 1/10

Apple tried it, they couldn't even make a piece big enough to cover an iPhone without it shattering under the same conditions where glass survives.

It's harder than quartz. Says so right in the summary, Mohs scale of 7.7. Glass is in the middle somewhere, depends on the type of glass. Gorilla glass is apparently around 6.5

More to the point, some time back in the 1980s or 1990s, the cable companies and municipalities were sued over the government-granted monopolies they were getting for subscription TV service. They eventually prevailed in court with the argument that satellite TV companies like DirecTV and Dish provided sufficient competition that they weren't really a monopoly. i.e. Even if a city gave Comcast a local cable TV monopoly, anyone in the area could subscribe to DirecTV instead, so it wasn't really a TV service monopoly. This is why Comcast, TW, Verizon, AT&T, etc. are currently allowed to be given service monopolies by the local government.

I really don't see how this merger can be approved. Either they'll have to risk giving up their local cable monopolies (which they'll never do willingly), or they're gonna have to prove Dish alone is a viable competitor. This is further complicated now that Internet service is a major component of their offerings. Satellite TV companies which offer Internet service typically use satellite for the downlink but DSL for the uplink. Which was OK when the DSL, cable, and satellite companies were all different. But with Verizon and AT&T effectively turning DSL and cable companies into the same thing, for Dish to provide Internet service they'd have to contract with AT&T, who is their competitor for TV service.

Even with undocumented migrants, population density in most U.S. cities is still nowhere near the high-rise apartment density you see in Japan or Korea.

That's fine if you agree to upgrade the urban population density to at least South Korea networks.

I can think of a couple fantasy authors with R. R. in their name who have followed that model.

In northeast Indiana, Super NES games typically went for $60 new, and PlayStation games were $50 because the disc was cheaper to replicate. Those who stuck with Nintendo saw a price cut between the Nintendo 64 ($60-$70) and the GameCube ($50) and then another price hike with the Wii U ($60). If you're looking for reliable sources to add to (say) a Wikipedia article, you can put something like super nes game msrp into a search engine and find things like "Why 1990s SNES Games Were so Damn Expensive" by Luke Plunkett.

In the Super NES era, you likely had to share a monitor with other members of the family who wanted to watch broadcast or cable television. Because you got only about an hour per day with the TV, those same 10 to 12 hours stretched over several days. Besides, it was common to repeat those 10 to 12 hours for a better overall score. This is how speedrunners got good enough to complete all 101 goals in Donkey Kong Country in 50 minutes (source: YouTube).