10-11-2020, 02:45 PM
The idea sounds very cool! These days, voice communication isn't a hard necessity and especially for a privacy-focused device, the fewer environmental sensors the better. Practically, if a person is to communicate outside of the range of the mesh/wifi networks, they will be carting along some sort of cellular device and if they are at home, then a larger device will likely be the first thing a person reaches for, considering ergonomics and ease-of-use. At home, I use my laptop mainly followed my my phone, since it has all of my conversations already on it, but I don't need cellular.
There might be an opportunity to create something like a "communication core". A scaled down and stripped down version of the pinephone that can run all of one's communication applications and then snap into different docks depending on the desired erogonomics, kind of like what the PocketChip attempted to do.
The core would have the SOC, ram, an indicator light, a small radio, USBC (supporting different host modes) and a small liion battery, like a 10440 or smaller. It then could attach to a pine-phone-style case to get a screen, proximity sensor, ambient light, sixaxis, larger battery, cellular radio, front/rear cameras, etc. Or, it could attach to a pinetab style case for all of the above, with a larger screen. Or it could attach to a cosmo-communicator-style case for a subnotebook-sized keyboard. Or it could attach to a full-sized keyboard for a cyberdeck-esque experience at home.
The idea is that one can detach the "communications core" and leave it in a headless mode if they want to receive messages only (limited to the battery capacity), or attach it to another computer/phone if they want a gateway to a local mesh. Then the user has the option of attaching the device to different form factors if they want a phone on the go or a web-browsing machine at home, and the user's session would be seamless--they wouldn't have to synchronize conversations, keys, images, etc across multiple devices.
Although, it seems like it would be hard to make the phone pack thin (which is okay), and would create lots of additional SKUs as opposed to just making a different device.
Just a thought, cheers!
There might be an opportunity to create something like a "communication core". A scaled down and stripped down version of the pinephone that can run all of one's communication applications and then snap into different docks depending on the desired erogonomics, kind of like what the PocketChip attempted to do.
The core would have the SOC, ram, an indicator light, a small radio, USBC (supporting different host modes) and a small liion battery, like a 10440 or smaller. It then could attach to a pine-phone-style case to get a screen, proximity sensor, ambient light, sixaxis, larger battery, cellular radio, front/rear cameras, etc. Or, it could attach to a pinetab style case for all of the above, with a larger screen. Or it could attach to a cosmo-communicator-style case for a subnotebook-sized keyboard. Or it could attach to a full-sized keyboard for a cyberdeck-esque experience at home.
The idea is that one can detach the "communications core" and leave it in a headless mode if they want to receive messages only (limited to the battery capacity), or attach it to another computer/phone if they want a gateway to a local mesh. Then the user has the option of attaching the device to different form factors if they want a phone on the go or a web-browsing machine at home, and the user's session would be seamless--they wouldn't have to synchronize conversations, keys, images, etc across multiple devices.
Although, it seems like it would be hard to make the phone pack thin (which is okay), and would create lots of additional SKUs as opposed to just making a different device.
Just a thought, cheers!