12-19-2020, 11:34 PM
(12-19-2020, 06:49 AM)KC9UDX Wrote: Yep FRS stinks but then there's GMRS, MURS, CB, and other obvious things that no one cares to use either, so why do we need another such service? People only use FRS because you can buy a pair of radios for $5.
By itself we probably don't need another service all *that* much, although MURS/GMRS/CB also all suck in their own way, due to regulatory limits forbidding repeaters and the fact that they're analog.
But when the same device can also be your multimeter with an add-on, or your TV remote, or whatever else, and has a better battery life than the usually crappy FRS, it makes a lot more sense.
Smartphones took over and replaced a large class of devices, but there's plenty of other gadgets that *could* be integrated with a convergence device, but not with phones, because it's just not a good fit.
If this really does wind up being a "PinePhone Lite", I'm totally with you, It just shouldn't exist. Any attempt to make this something like a phone-class device will just result in a useless old phone.
But if this is optimized at the hardware and mechanical level for all the stuff phones don't do, it could be something really special. Hackers accumulate tons of seldom used gadgets with a crappy display and a crappy battery, and no connectivity. Most of those things could be modular add-ons.