[Tfug] VoIP phones

[Bexley Hall]

> I would think the question to be fundamental to what the target buyer
> would be.  A dumb phone for corporate and lock the user into our
> system.  A smart phone for openness and independence.

No "buyer" per se.  This is an open source/hardware project.

> If this question can be answered then the issue resolved.
> 
> But I would argue in either case to design to the smart phone chips as
> because the firmware can be made to act dumb.  When smart feature are
> desired or required they can be added in with out change of the
> hardware.   This of course mean the the chip for smart does no
> preclude dumb features.  And maybe that the unit cost of chips is not
> that dramatic.

It's not really that sort of decision.  Rather, it's how much
resources you make available to the software and what types of
resources.  E.g., a "dumb phone" needs very little configuration
information as much of the "other" data can be stored on a
server someplace (and retrieved by the phone as needed).

OTOH, a more full featured phone has more "stuff" that needs
to go along with it.

It's sort of like the difference between a diskless workstation
and a traditional workstation -- and all of the *peripheral* issues
(administration, etc.) that go along with that!