1. Bring Back Awesome Devices

Your development cycle is stalled, Palm. It's stuck this year as you develop Nova and we all know it and all know why. We accept it, even, knowing that you're facing the twin difficulties of developing an all new OS and facing ever increasing competition both for consumers and carrier's desire.

Come next year, though, we're expecting a lot from Nova. What's more, we're expecting a lot from the 2nd generation of Nova devices, and the 3rd. If you could just create them and sell them without fighting through the traditional cell phone industry noise, you could really bring back the shiny.

Yes, leaving a gaping slot for a phone module would hurt the form factor, but look to the Visor Edge - a Visor Edge with modern specs plus a thinner, cooler-looking VisorPhone would be a lot of fun.

...OK, Why Not?

5. That Hump.

The VisorPhone is ugly. It might be impossible to develop a device like this that wouldn't be ugly.

4. Who will build the modules?

With the VisorPhone you had some support, several companies developed phone modules for the Visor. Would they do so again?

More to the point, would anybody both developing other types of modules besides radios and phones? If not, why bother modularizing it? Plus, really, who would want to pull out the phone in order to use another module?

3. The carriers would stop it.

Sure, just the phone module would need to pass inspection, but do you seriously think that given how much lucre these carriers have been picking up from services and throwing their software directly onto handsets that they'd let something like the VisorPhone back onto their networks? I know they've been talking about being more open lately, but so far it's a lot of talk.

2. Chips. Power.

This is a serious contender for #1. The chips that power smartphones are getting increasingly smaller while, at the same time, are able to do increasingly more things. Qualcomm's offerings can power the "computer," accelerate graphics, run the mobile radio, the GPS, the WiFi, and Bluetooth all on one chip. A VisorPhone would necessitate at least two (and possibly more). That's a serious hindrance.

It's a serious hindrance not just for space, but for power. It would require a bigger batter, and bigger is bad.

...and the number one reason:

1. Integration of the Hardware and the Software

Palm's traditional strength is a tight integration of the hardware and the software. Shortcuts, consistency, speed, and ease-of-use all become radically more difficult the further away the software and hardware engineer get from each other.

The iPhone is a good example of this -- the hardware couldn't work at all without the software and vise versa. A modular system wouldn't rise to that level.

Wrapping Up

Ok, so it was a fun idea but it's not really viable. Right?

...right?

Chat it up in the forums!

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Read Merciful by Casey Adolfsson