why can't somebody make their own homemade handheld device or cellphone?

people always complain that the phone or handheld device they purchased is sooo close to perfection, but isn't perfect. and it's usually something really small that they are missing ... can't these things be modified to fit better? moreover, can't somebody make their own cellphone or handheld pc with all the features they want?

why hasn't anybody done that? does it require some expensive machinary to assemble micro chips or something complicated like that?

i'm just wondering.

er, wow.. ok.

It's incredibly prohibitive. You need fundimental understanding in CPU architecture, electical circuity and communications systems. PCB's need rendering plants, machinery, robots.

It takes teams of people months to design a new phone, model it (greatly hhastened by computer technology) and even think about prototyping. Even if you were apt at all these things, the device would cost you thousands upon thousands, and if you wanted it to look like a polished product, thousands more.

ok, create for me a new t39, that is similar to the old one but without the dreaded typical failure (losing reception forever after 1-2 years), and with EDGE and 3G capability! one or two small things as well, but those are the important stuff.

yeah, i thought it was as complicated as you described. even companies seem to have hard time coming up with new designs and products.

i remember seeing some personal website where someone described how to build a self-balancing scooter, like segway, he even had the software for it and everything...that gave me the idea of a homemade device!

thanks for the clarification c:amie

You can certainly make your own handheld device. Just get a really inexpensive or old processor, and etch out a motherboard! You can use all the pins on the processor! And the best part would be making your own case.

-Did anyone figure out what I was describing? A handheld CALCULATOR!

Images of the first Apple computer comes to mind...

No I never saw one in person, just on films and such

Yes, the first PC design, development and production "plant" was a garage where Steve Wozniac, the electronics man, and Steve Jobs (helping) made the first Apple PCs. The monitor was tiny and inserted into a home made wooden box. They got the idea from a telephone system logic card maker who was hard up for bucks. He saved his company by putting together the first desktop computer with a phone system logic card core.

He sold it in kit form. It was a cover feature in Popular Mechanics (about 1975) and sold like hot cakes, which suprised him, since all it did was light up memory lights, had no printer, monitor, etc.

I could swear, though, that before that I had a small, white calculator like computer designed and produced by a young British genius, Clive Sinclair. It came with a thick programming book, as you had to program it to do anything (except work as a basic calculator). There were games, amortization tables, weights & measures converters, etc. I used it mostly to program calculus & statistical formulas and thus save considerable time and get dead accuracy over pencil and paper calculations. Unlike $500 Texas Instruments programmable calculators, this one cost $49, took a standard 9-volt battery and could do many other things besides work formulas.

I could be mistaken but I swear I had a Sinclair (and it had something of a screen and a tiny input pad) before the American desktop computer kit, which didn't do anything productive. I've always wondered if Apple was inspired more by the Sinclair than by the Popular Mechanics kit. Apple got key ideas, too, from a Xerox ignored small Xerox research group. It conceived and invented the mouse and the GUI replacement for the computer command line.

Too bad the American PC businessmen did not get together with the British electronics genius Clive Sinclair kooky businessman but a genius for creating PCs from inexpensive existing parts!



Edited by Theodosus 2005-09-28 2:39 PM

lol, well a mobile phone is much more difficult i think. all the <removed> with offices and tons of papers to fill out, thanks. i would like if hitachi(sh3) releases some self-construction kits where you can make a handheld built in into a desk, or a........bike??? another way maybe opening an old handheld, replacing the rom with an EEPROM(why don't these guys at HPuse them,you wouldnt need any backup batteries anymore and the trouble with the soft reset which may be a hard reset wouldnt be to have discussed) and building the equipment out of the handheld into the desk, the bike or your bed, as you like.

but all this doesnt work because of stupid m$. why they dont release the sources of windows ce, so we could add hardware euro key support(normal alt gr+e) or a command console like COMMAND.COM for apps workin on STDIN/STDOUT or billions of other things. but the sources arent useful when u habve to pay $30000 for a little compiler!

Cussing removed from post ~ C:Amie
Warning issued

Apple was 1976. Sinclair was 1981. So no.

Yes, I was thinking the Apple I, particularly 8-bit computing. You can make your own products with electronics knowledge and some money with those.