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It has none of the qualities of a cellphone other than being a radio, so it is not a cellphone prototype. It is a passively-powered radio prototype. They may

by IncRnd 9y ago

It has none of the qualities of a cellphone other than being a radio, so it is not a cellphone prototype. It is a passively-powered radio prototype. They may later build a cellphone prototype, but this isn't such an animal. > But you may have missed this part "or ambient light collected by a solar cell the size of a grain of rice". So, yes they built a cellphone, even if they can't gain power from arbitrary sources. A cellphone is not "a radio that cannot connect to a phone network and that uses a solar cell". That would be a solar-power radio.

Retric 9y ago
Technically you can have 100% of the logic for a cellphone in the cell towers and not the phone though this limits you to one frequency per phone. But, this also handles dialing to make Skype calls so it's not just a radio.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  > But, this also handles dialing to make Skype calls so it's not just a radio. Wrong. This communicates with a base station that made skype calls. This is a radio. You sound as if you have a vested interest in continuing to mislabel this device.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Look I like low power devices. Anyway, the base station does not say interpret voice data from a radio and then decode that to make a call. You have an actual touch pad to use to dial so it handles the dialing part of making skype calls. But yea it's not in any way running skype, but that's > pure radio functionality thus what I said is literally true. There are a ton of things this device does that are cheesy, because they are trying to push the limits on low power. But they could have jacked up the received power by 30x and fooled most people reading, but they actually did create something novel by pushing almost all functionality to the base station. It the use case is IMO not general calls it's more like a limited call 911 when battery is dead mode that could still be useful.

by IncRnd 9y ago

Retric 9y ago

Technically you can have 100% of the logic for a cellphone in the cell towers and not the phone though this limits you to one frequency per phone. But, this also handles dialing to make Skype calls so it's not just a radio.

IncRnd 9y ago
> But, this also handles dialing to make Skype calls so it's not just a radio. Wrong. This communicates with a base station that made skype calls. This is a radio. You sound as if you have a vested interest in continuing to mislabel this device.
- Retric 9y ago
  Look I like low power devices. Anyway, the base station does not say interpret voice data from a radio and then decode that to make a call. You have an actual touch pad to use to dial so it handles the dialing part of making skype calls. But yea it's not in any way running skype, but that's > pure radio functionality thus what I said is literally true. There are a ton of things this device does that are cheesy, because they are trying to push the limits on low power. But they could have jacked up the received power by 30x and fooled most people reading, but they actually did create something novel by pushing almost all functionality to the base station. It the use case is IMO not general calls it's more like a limited call 911 when battery is dead mode that could still be useful.