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Resurrected Full-Screen VoIP Phones
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Feb 05, 2005 07:52 PM
from the device-of-the-future-of-the-past dept.
from the device-of-the-future-of-the-past dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Looking for a suitable VoIP phone, I came across these Full-Screen Thin-Client Phones. Not only do they do voice, but they also have a 480x640 screen running at 65K colors and run a number of apps remotely via VNC. They seem to allow a lot more functionality than normal phones, and look really cool too. The site says they have 70 phones running in their office. This seems the way forward for telephony-computer convergence in the 21st century. A document at the end of the page explains their approach and has some cool pictures as well."
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The question is.. (Score:5, Informative)
The Broadband Phone (BBPhone) is basically a Strong-ARM 1100, with 8MB of flash, 32MB of RAM, touchscreen, 10Mbps Ethernet and a sound card running a derivative of the Linux 2.2 kernel.
w00t!
5 Years Late (Score:5, Funny)
Better late than never, I guess!
Re:5 Years Late (Score:2)
Re:5 Years Late (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
They promised us more than that ... (Score:4, Interesting)
With this affordable video phone, now all I need is a practical hover car and society's promises of things I would have by the year 2000 will be complete.
What about common supersonic civilian transport, robots to do our house cleaning and upkeep, and a standard 20 hour work week.
We were promised all of these things, had one taken away (the Concord, which never really fulfilled the promise but was more of a teaser), and certainly don't seem to be getting our 20 hour workweek anytime soon.
Don't let them sidetrack you from the other promises by giving you a flying car! You'll still need to get your pilot's license to fly it, and you'll still be working a 60 hour week!
Parent
Great... Another thin client for the home. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sprinkle in a HTPC..
add a pinch of x10
You have a hella integrated house.
Actually the HTPC could be the server.. sweet.
Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Finally (Score:2)
Prototypes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dan East
Re:Prototypes? (Score:5, Informative)
But they're more than prototypes, the phones work really well even six years after being built (mainly due to their thin-client architecture, as only the servers need to be upgraded to run more complex services, not the edge phone hardware).
It's a bit of a shock to see this randomly show up on Slashdot, but for those interested readers, here's a WIP paper [recoil.org] about what we're doing with them these days (using the Active Bat [att.com] location system to migrate mobile phone calls via Bluetooth to the nearest environmental phone among other things).
As I said, the paper is very much WIP, and is being hacked up after being freshly rejected from a conference so the link is liable to disappear
As far as I know, no commercially available VoIP phone uses VNC these days, which is a real pity as its a really neat way to offer easily upgradable services to the end user (forget running mobile code on the edge device, compute power is cheap these days).
Parent
Re:Prototypes? (Score:3, Informative)
The correct link to the department is:
Laboratory for Communication Engineering [cam.ac.uk], and the correct name is Rip Sohan (sorry!)
Re:Prototypes? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd assume that someone will latch onto this idea on a more common platform a lot sooner than later. The inclusion of VNC expands what you can do, too.
Imagine this: Those "phones" could be outfitted with higher-quality sound. As you walk by one (ie. RFID or something of that sort), it l
Run apps on your telephone? (Score:3, Informative)
The new Vonage WiFi phone is the closest thing to something like this that will actually have potential. Around here, there are a lot of WiFi points that are free. I can go to almost any of the locally owned coffee shops and get free WiFi access. Now that has some potential, emphasis on some.
Re:Run apps on your telephone? (Score:3, Interesting)
WiFi seems orthogonal to th
I Want My AT&T (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I Want My AT&T (Score:3, Interesting)
In this case because the US government decided to kill it. Read the history of it here [bellsystemmemorial.com] That's why you don't have your innovative AT&T anymore, the feds killed it pretty much out of spite. Then they killed it some more by allowing the Baby Bells to raise the rates they charged AT&T for connecting calls into what is essentially the network AT&T built in the first place! Which is why AT
VOIPix ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it would be most excellent if someone were to make up a knoppix distro that only exists to be a VOIP client, such as Damn Small Linux doing VOIP..
If someone were to come up with something to turn old POS pc's into dedicated voip boxes that would be pretty interesting..
Just my
Similar cheap platforms to experiment with: (Score:3, Interesting)
When I first heard about it, the idea of what was essentially a touchscreen terminal attached wirelessly to your desktop seemed to open a huge number of possibilities, VoIP telephony being one of them. Ultimately, Smart Displays failed - one of the main reasons being the price and the simultaneous release of the Tablet PC which was similar, yet gave much more VFM. The SD tended to be based around CE.NET running on an ARM chip with around 32MB of RAM if I remember correctly.
So, although these 70-odd phones at the Cambridge labs are unique (you can't buy them commercially), there exists out there a large number of devices with ARM chips, touchscreens and WiFi that are capable of doing this kind of thing. You can probably pick them up cheap now so modifying a secondhand SD device may be a neat way to get started...
Perhaps.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps.... (Score:3, Funny)
Where they intended to be voip or just web phones? (Score:3, Interesting)
The voice modem option of the ones I have should be fast enough to do voip (if they had an ethernet interface but that never happened either) or run linux but I never got around to hacking them in any useful way.
There was lots of technology from a few years back that was hunting for a market that they never found.
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
They can get bogged down running an app.
Do you want a phone that is as reliable as your computer? Think about it. It is not good to put all your eggs in one basket.
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft will never like thin clients (Score:3, Informative)
1. WebTV/msntv [msntv.com]
2. Thin clients fall directly into the MS mindset. Everything runs off the server, and you subscribe to a 'service', perpetually. No 'piracy' allowed, and they have ultimate control over your desktop, and your wallet. Stop paying, your PC doesn't work anymore.
Microsoft (and Oracle and Sun and all the others) will 'like' whatever model brings the most profit. If they can make thin clients work in the mond of the user, they will.
Re:Nice, but... (Score:3, Informative)