{"id":25511,"date":"2020-01-08T12:25:39","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T17:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=25511"},"modified":"2019-12-27T10:33:12","modified_gmt":"2019-12-27T15:33:12","slug":"why-arent-specialty-smartphones-available","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/08\/why-arent-specialty-smartphones-available\/","title":{"rendered":"Why aren&#8217;t specialty smartphones available?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The automobile market requires high capital investment, yet we don&#8217;t see just a handful of almost-identical models taking the entire market. Starting from Android, building a smartphone shouldn&#8217;t require anywhere near the investment that is required to build a sports car or niche SUV, but where are the niche phones?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Example: Pilots would surely appreciate a smartphone, maybe Garmin-brand, with built-in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Automatic_dependent_surveillance_%E2%80%93_broadcast\">ADS-B<\/a> receiver and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Attitude_and_heading_reference_system\">AHRS<\/a>. Now a full backup panel is available at all times. Frequencies for ADS-B are 0.978 GHz and 1.09 GHz, not too different from the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cellular_frequencies\">0.8-1.9 GHz mobile phone bands<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Readers: What other capabilities would make good additions to smartphones for niche users? Why don&#8217;t these devices exist in the marketplace?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The automobile market requires high capital investment, yet we don&#8217;t see just a handful of almost-identical models taking the entire market. Starting from Android, building a smartphone shouldn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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":""},"categories":[6,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why aren&#039;t specialty smartphones available? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/08\/why-arent-specialty-smartphones-available\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why aren&#039;t specialty smartphones available? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The automobile market requires high capital investment, yet we don&#8217;t see just a handful of almost-identical models taking the entire market. 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