If you want best signal quality you will have a high gain
dish antenna with an auto alignment system to keep
it aligned with the tower antenna and get the best SNR
performance.

That's going to be a bit bulky and awkward to deal with however.

ALL cell phone antennas are a compromise on usability, compactness
signal strength in transmission, sensitivity to orientation and sensitivity to
close proximity loading (the big sweaty hand syndrome)

And a dozen other things.

The average end user doesn't notice and they don't care until it
affects what they are doing.

Apple Screwed Up - and Jobs doesn't want to show humility.
Old Jobs from 20 years back. Pretty typical for him.

In San Jose, there is a street named for Steve Wozniak (Woz Way downtown)
Nothing there for Steve Jobs.
Woz is well liked by the engineers in Silly Valley - Not so for SJ...

The Works of Benjamin Franklin, 1817:

        "'In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

I see how this could be tracked on EBay - especially "Power Sellers" with 1000's of transactions.
But on CL? that's going to be interesting to see happen.

check out the presently available HP35S -- Still a science & engineering
calculator and not too fancy but very RPN and "Enter" key friendly.

I bought 4 of them in case HP discontinues them.

Double Bad Here -
The engineer breaking company confidentiality was out of line. Getting fired will probably be the outcome.
The "journalist" (such as it is here) revealed a confidential source. That said, they will never get anyone else to talk to them off the record.

Both did the wrong thing.
People on the outside of Apple don't like the "hush hush" way they do product development, but that's part of how Apple functions. If I was getting my paycheck there (and I am not, but friends of mine do!) I would keep that stuff internal as the company wants.

"Loose lips sink ships" - Good thing its not a defense contract, and just a next generation piece of consumer electronic gadgetry.

Hmmmm... all my years working as an IC designer and all I have been creating is magic smoke??? Cool!
Thanks for making me smile.

Hey - Missing Option - I cut and paste from Encyclopedias!

Problem is, the scissors I got don't have a paste button!

Do Post-It Notes Count?

Seriously, Two invaluable things of the information age - Wiki type materials, and Topic Specifc Forums.

Forums that have common interests are invaluable to have - and, I am not talking about SlashDot type forums,
but those forums where everyone there is involved in a common area and has knowledge to share.

If you really want to use optical communocation you might as well go infrared so you don't need to see it, similar to your TV remote.

Then you have all the problems (visible light or infrared) of orientation, line of sight and similar.

Hopefully the creator of this gadget has not quit their day job.

utterly stupid.

water is suicide - distilled, lab grade whatever...
As an EE I have done a little too much "suicide testing" of devices.

cold freeze you should be able to survive, the battery might need replacement, but the chips will survive.

If you want to dunk a phone into a fluid and see it survive you need to use something like 3M's Fluorinert

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert

Neat stuff - you can take a computer (No disk drive) and put it in fluid and it still keeps on running while totally immersed in the fluid.

I went out as an independent contractor about 9 years back. My health care coverage has tripled in that 9 years, part of that is getting older and the big part of it is raising rates. (the big chunk is heatlh coverage rates thru the roof)

Oh, and I am healthy so I could get coverage. Forget it if you are sick. Presently costs me over $400/month, and the first $7500 isn't covered.

America encourages starting your own business and being an entrepreneur? Right, sure, utter BS - most people are captive to their corporate coverage, and don't realize there is a problem till they retire or try to go out on their own.

Support Obama and his efforts to get reform (of any form) in place. - And don't blame Democrats for a failure to pass this bill, at least they are trying to make something happen, rather than just saying "no"...

Rant machine off...

The re-purchase of silicon at many levels is a pretty common thing. Somebody comes out with a good memory chip and the world buys wafers of the chip from the other vendor. Or in a final package, or pays for their name on the outside of the package.

I have had several experiences with foundries taking a design, fabricating it for me, and then 6 months to a year later a "sister organization" comes out with a chip that looks pretty bloody similar. Then, when you do a tear-down of the competitor's chip (nitric acid and a microscope) and you find your design inside the thing. Lawsuit time if you can, but what usually happens is some form of licensing agreement.

What I would question here is what testing of the chip was done after it was assembled. Test time costs a lot of money to do, and anything that can be done to reduce that is a common strategy. Sometimes they do "blind package assembly" (no testing at the wafer level) and do testing just after final assembly.

In this case it sounds like they are doing blind assembly, and shipping out with no final test either. A shoddy way to cut costs.

the amateur astronomer understands that Pluto is noting more than an asteroid with a big ego

The attitude gets even bigger when its closer to the sun than Neptune.....

How would you like to be demoted?

This is old news, and just a variation on a theme -

As somebody who does this sort of stuff for a living - now they need to get around the IEC-60601 compliance and the FDA before they could introduce it in the USA.

http://www.devicelink.com/mddi/archive/03/09/015.html [devicelink.com]

Something similar is in the works for hospital use:

http://www.soterawireless.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55&Itemid=18 [soterawireless.com]

That goes out over WiFi inside a hospital.

Also - Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) is designed for this application and there are a bunch of "health monitors either int the works, or already out there for this:

    http://mobihealthnews.com/2577/continua-picks-zigbee-bluetooth-le-for-health-devices-sensors/ [mobihealthnews.com]

Blood Glucose monitors using this technology have been around for a while:

http://www.dexcom.com/default.aspx [dexcom.com]

Now if you want exciting - research into electronic eyes, electronic ears and neural pacemaker for people with epilepsy are kind of interesting. Google them and you will find them.

Got your Borg Implants? :-)

As somebody who does this sort of stuff for a living - now they need to get around the IEC-60601 compliance and the FDA before they could introduce it in the USA.

http://www.devicelink.com/mddi/archive/03/09/015.html

Something similar is in the works for hospital use:

http://www.soterawireless.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55&Itemid=18

That goes out over WiFi inside a hospital.

Also - Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) is designed for this application and there are a bunch of "health monitors either int the works, or already out there for this:

  http://mobihealthnews.com/2577/continua-picks-zigbee-bluetooth-le-for-health-devices-sensors/

Blood Glucose monitors using this technology have been around for a while:

http://www.dexcom.com/default.aspx

Now if you want exciting - research into electronic eyes, electronic ears and neural pacemaker for people with epilepsy are kind of interesting.

Got your Borg Implants? :-)

"storing data on rust is where the similarities end"

Ferrous oxide tape and disk drives haven't been used in new media in over 20 years (30?)
What cave have you been hiding in?

I actually know somebody who did exactly that. Yes! at Apple! No Joke!