{"id":2179,"date":"2013-04-22T18:48:23","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T00:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=2179"},"modified":"2013-04-22T18:52:42","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T00:52:42","slug":"cell-phone-for-12-us-check-this-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=2179","title":{"rendered":"Cell phone for US$ 12.00"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\n
\u00a0April 2013<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The $12 Gongkai Phone<\/h2>\n

How cheap can you make a phone?<\/p>\n

Recently, I paid $12 at Mingtong Digital Mall<\/a> for a complete phone, featuring quad-band GSM, Bluetooth, MP3 playback, and an OLED display plus keypad for the UI. Simple, but functional; nothing compared to a smartphone, but useful if you\u2019re going out and worried about getting your primary phone wet or stolen.<\/p>\n

Also, it would certainly find an appreciative audience in impoverished and developing nations.<\/p>\n

<\/center>$12 is the price paid for a single quantity retail, contract-free, non-promotional, unlocked phone \u2014 in a box with charger, protective silicone sleeve, and cable. In other words, the production cost of this phone is somewhere below the retail price of $12. Rumors place it below $10.<\/p>\n

This is a really amazing price point. That\u2019s about the price of a large Domino\u2019s cheese pizza, or a decent glass of wine in a restaurant. Or, compared to an Arduino Uno (admittedly a little unfair, but humor me):<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Spec<\/th>\nThis phone<\/th>\nArduino Uno<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Price<\/td>\n$12<\/td>\n$29<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
CPU speed<\/td>\n260 MHz, 32-bit<\/td>\n16 MHz, 8-bit<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
RAM<\/td>\n8MiB<\/td>\n2.5kiB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Interfaces<\/td>\nUSB, microSD, SIM<\/td>\nUSB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Wireless<\/td>\nQuadband GSM, Bluetooth<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Power<\/td>\nLi-Poly battery, includes adapter<\/td>\nExternal, no adapter<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Display<\/td>\nTwo-color OLED<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How is this possible? I don\u2019t have the answers, but it\u2019s something I\u2019m trying to learn. A teardown yields a few hints.<\/p>\n


\n\"\"<\/a><\/center>First, there are no screws. The whole case snaps together.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Also, there are (almost) no connectors on the inside. Everything from the display to the battery is soldered directly to the board; for shipping and storage, you get to flip a switch to hard-disconnect the battery. And, as best as I can tell, the battery also has no secondary protection circuit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Bluetooth antenna is nothing more than a small length of wire, seen on the lower left below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, the phone features accoutrements such as a back-lit keypad and decorative lights around the edge.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The electronics consists of just two major ICs: the Mediatek MT6250DA<\/a>, and a Vanchip VC5276<\/a>. Of course, with price competition like this, Western firms are suing to protect ground: Vanchip is in a bit of a legal tussle<\/a> with RF Micro, and Mediatek has also been subject to a few lawsuits of its own.<\/p>\n

The MT6250 is rumored to sell in volume for under $2. I was able to anecdotally confirm the price by buying a couple of pieces on cut-tape from a retail broker for about $2.10 each. [No, I will not broker these chips or this phone for you…<\/em>]<\/p>\n


\n\"\"<\/center>That beats the best price I\u2019ve ever been able to get on an ATMega of the types used in an Arduino.<\/p>\n

Of course, you can\u2019t just call up Mediatek and buy these; and it\u2019s extremely difficult to engage with them \u201cgoing through the front door\u201d to do a design. Don\u2019t even bother; they won\u2019t return your calls.<\/p>\n

However, if you know a bit of Chinese, and know the right websites to go to, you can download schematics, board layouts, and software utilities for something rather similar to this phone\u2026\u201dfor free\u201d. I could, in theory, at this point attempt to build a version of this phone for myself, with minimal cash investment. It feels like open-source, but it\u2019s not: it\u2019s a different kind of open ecosystem.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Introducing Gongkai<\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome to the Galapagos of Chinese \u201copen\u201d source. I call it \u201cgongkai\u201d (\u516c\u5f00). Gongkai is the transliteration of \u201copen\u201d as applied to \u201copen source\u201d. I feel it deserves a term of its own, as the phenomenon has grown beyond the so-called \u201cshanzhai\u201d<\/a> (\u5c71\u5be8) and is becoming a self-sustaining innovation ecosystem of its own.<\/p>\n

Just as the Galapagos Islands<\/a> is a unique biological ecosystem evolved in the absence of continental species, gongkai is a unique innovation ecosystem evolved with little western influence, thanks to political, language, and cultural isolation.<\/p>\n

Of course, just as the Galapagos was seeded by hardy species that found their way to the islands, gongkai was also seeded by hardy ideas that came from the west. These ideas fell on the fertile minds of the Pearl River delta<\/a>, took root, and are evolving. Significantly, gongkai isn\u2019t a totally lawless free-for-all. It\u2019s a network of ideas, spread peer-to-peer, with certain rules to enforce sharing and to prevent leeching. It\u2019s very different from Western IP concepts, but I\u2019m trying to have an open mind about it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m curious to study this new gongkai ecosystem. For sure, there will be critics who adhere to the tenets of Western IP law that will summarily reject the notion of alternate systems that can nourish innovation and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, it\u2019s these tenets that lock open hardware into technology several generations old, as we wait for patents to expire and NDAs to lift before gaining access to the latest greatest technology. After all, 20 years<\/a> is an eternity in high tech.<\/p>\n

I hope there will be a few open-minded individuals who can accept an exploration of the gongkai Galapagos. Perhaps someday we can understand \u2014 and maybe even learn from \u2014 the ecosystem that produced the miracle of the $12 gongkai phone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bunni<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0April 2013 The $12 Gongkai Phone How cheap can you make a phone? Recently, I paid $12 at Mingtong Digital Mall for a complete phone, featuring quad-band GSM, Bluetooth, MP3 playback, and an OLED display plus keypad for the UI. Simple, but functional; nothing compared to a smartphone, but useful if you\u2019re going out and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[98],"tags":[232,233,234],"class_list":["post-2179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","tag-gongkai","tag-mediatek","tag-twelve-dollar-phone"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/dozendp_1_sm.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2SfUR-z9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2179"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2186,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions\/2186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}