Custom Ordered smartphones

[gamby]

Its time that we start demanding the ability to "build" our own phones and be able to select both the hardware and software that would be on the phone. Custom orders can be done for personal computers/laptops and even Nike sneakers, so why not smartphones?

There are a lot of phones that I like, but there are always a few things about the phones that put me off. Be it a physical keyboard that makes the phone too large, or some a Custom UI put on top of android that makes updates to the latest build few and far in between.

I'm sure many of us would pay a little bit more to have a phone made to our exact specifications. Perhaps you like the Droid Incredible but want a physical keyboard, and don't want HTC's Sense on it. How hard would it really be for the manufacture to develop an incredible with a physical keyboard and not add their UI to the phone?

Just my two cents anyway.

 

[coolbone]

The design would just be too prohibitively expensive. Because they couldn't mass produce 1 million units, it would have to be as expensive as laptops or else not very profitable.

 

[gamby]

Unsubsidized, most phones are already as expensive as most mid-range laptops so there isn't much difference

 

[cds0699]

Unsubsidized, most phones are already as expensive as most mid-range laptops so there isn't much difference

Agreed, I paid $600 for my laptop, which is the same cost of some of the top end smartphones (not factoring in rebates, upgrade discounts, etc).

I like the idea, and think it would be something that could potentially give one company a distinct advantage over some of the others. HTC should take this idea and run with it.

 

[rwZephyr]

Yes, unsubsidized, but a majority of customers don't want to pay for an unsubsidized phone. Then there is the design you have to look into, if you wanted an incredible with a physical keyboard then you'd need to re design the housing, not to mention having all the internals become modular. I mean, there is a hell of a lot of design that goes into a phone, for size, weight, shape, and specs.

 

[lyons238]

i think it could work if they gave u a number of options per phone. they could mass produce all the parts and then just assemble them. not saying it would happen because its still much easier and more profitable to just mass produce one phone.

but it would be really nice if you could pick a phone, cpu, ram, internal memory, physical keyboard or not, camera, os (android w sense or not) etc etc.

just throwing this out there i wish they had an incredible with a wider screen option lol it just seems oddly narrow. that is one of the main reasons why im getting the evo.

also idk why they didnt put 8gb of internal storage in the evo like they did with the incredible. it makes no sense. the evo is bigger and its obviously gonna attract some pretty techy people with a lot of data...i cant understand why they wouldnt put 8gb internal with a possibility of 32gb expandable, for a total of 40gb

 

[gamby]

Yes, unsubsidized, but a majority of customers don't want to pay for an unsubsidized phone. Then there is the design you have to look into, if you wanted an incredible with a physical keyboard then you'd need to re design the housing, not to mention having all the internals become modular. I mean, there is a hell of a lot of design that goes into a phone, for size, weight, shape, and specs.

Just because the phone was custom made doesnt mean a carrier couldnt offer a 2 year contract deal. For example, for the EVO 4g, you could go through sprint and have them place your order with HTC and still get a 2 year discount but instead of $199, you pay $299 or something like that.

 

[TheSultan]

There isn't a single company that would take this on as a project.

And think about troubleshooting--impossible!! Though....it would put an end to threads like "is your battery door squeeky??"

 

[rwZephyr]

Well, I could see some discount on a contract.

But there is still the limitation, of design, it takes a hell of a lot of money to design a phone perfectly, I mean, they could make multiple designs of the same phone so every customer can add on different parts, but that would be hard to do with one phone say the X10, you'd have to make an housing that will hold it without a keyboard, then one that would, then say a customer wanted a smaller OLED screen. Its not economical to do with one phone, let alone a whole array of phones

 

[gamby]

You don't have to be able to change ever facet of the phone. The biggest complaints are added UI's and the presence or lack of a physical keyboard. Start off small and then once you get the hang of how to process and produce custom orders, start offering other areas that can be customizable.

And i agree with you rwzepher, changing screen sizes would be very difficult and would probably never happen.