So now I'm wondering about different types of LCD.

At the bottom end, you have those silver ones they put in calculators. 
Usually a 7-segment one. I have a graphing calculator somewhere with a 
dot matrix LCD, but still silver, with no greyscale capability.

I'm wondering... Is there a specific *name* for this type of LCD? What 
does it cost to put one of these into your product? Like, if you're 
buying a couple of thousand of those things, what's the unit price? How 
much circuitry does it take to drive it?

At the other end of the scale, you have the stupid-DPI full-colour 
back-lit LCDs with touch sensitivity that they put into every mobile 
phone, ever. What do *those* things cost? I'm guessing you need way, 
*way* more hardware to drive it. (An entire framebuffer, for starters...)

I've heard it said that on "most" electronic devices, the buttons and 
lights are the most expensive part. As in, removing one button or one 
indicator light is a significant cost saving. So a toaster with three 
buttons is "much" more expensive to make than the same toaster with only 
two buttons. I'm not sure why this is; presumably because it's awkward 
to assemble a mechanical switch? (I.e., you have to have an extra step 
where a machine inserts all the moving parts into the right places.) I'd 
be interested if anybody has numbers.



I'm just wondering... High-colour LCDs are in even cheap phones now, so 
the LCD itself can't be all that expensive. So why don't more devices 
have these displays? For example, at the gym, the treadmill has a 
7-segment LED display, and three buttons for cycling through the menues 
and selecting the option you want.

So you've got this huge black slab of plastic, with a tiny, tiny little 
display in the middle. Why not just replace the entire thing with an LCD 
touch-screen? I mean, you damn well *know* there's a microcontroller in 
there. (Something has to drive the complex, unintuitive menu system!) 
You could show all the statistics *at once*, without having to scroll 
through them. (And in metric and imperial too.) You could show all the 
available programs at once, and a single touch would choose one. It 
would be drastically easier to use, and it would look hip and modern. 
(I.e., people would totally buy it.)

Naturally, a full-colour multi-touch LCD costs more than a 7-segment LED 
display. But then, you *know* a quality treadmill that's going into a 
commercial gym probably costs, like, £20,000 in the first place. My 
entire phone cost £80, so the screen *in* the phone must be less 
expensive than that. In terms of material cost, it should be negligible. 
Hell, the computer monitor I'm using right now as only £200. (Which is 
probably a more realistic comparison in terms of size.)

What *will* cost money, of course, is the cost of changing a product 
you're already making. Like, if you already make this thing, and people 
are already buying it, why change it?



I don't know if you knew, but a *huge* amount of lab equipment is like 
this. We had a temperature monitoring system. It could *only* 
communicate by RS-232. So we enquired about the networked version... It 
turns out this consists of an RS-232 to Ethernet adaptor, and then some 
software on your PC which makes the antiquated Windows 3.1 control 
software think that the remove RS-232 port is actually local.

Seriously, not only did the company not spend $1 adding an Ethernet port 
to the product itself, it also didn't bother to update its utterly 
ancient control software. When we upgraded to Windows XP, it stopped 
working, because it assumes that every user will have write permission 
to the C:\WINDOWS folder (which is here it stores TempConfig.ini, which 
has all its settings). It took me 20 minutes to figure out (mostly by 
*guessing*) which file it couldn't access, and manually tweak the file 
permissions. Seriously, they didn't even need to update the *software*, 
just fixing the *installer* would have been enough. But noooo...

(Did I mention the software comes on a CD-ROM, which contains four 
folders named "DISK1", "DISK2", "DISK3" and "DISK4", each of which is 
almost *exactly* 1.44MB in size. Hmm...)

Then again, maybe it's not the manufacturer we ought to be mad at. When 
a lab has a validated process for doing something, if you were to 
*change* that process, you would have to revalidate everything. This 
causes massive, massive inertia to change. This is why 100% of all lab 
equipment uses RS-232, and floppy disks and dot matrix printers are 
ubiquitous. (Also, *our* lab has nowhere near enough money; I don't know 
if that's common to all labs, or just ours. I imagine it's not 
*uncommon*...)

One time, we validated a new release of a program, and upgraded all our 
stuff. Then we found some really bad bugs in the software. I installed 
the hotfix, and we found it fixed all the problems. And then I had to go 
*uninstall* the hotfix, because it is not validated. So real bugs that 
are causing real problems and real lost productivity could not be fixed 
because nobody did the magic "validation" dance. Sad, really...



I'm sorry, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, LCDs. How come (for 
example) my washing machine doesn't have one? I've only ever seen them 
on the most expensive ultra-luxury models. Surely this stuff isn't 
actually that expensive to manufacture anymore?

Post a reply to this message

orchid, do you ever submit your lengthy rants to

http://thedailywtf.com

? :)

Post a reply to this message

Am 11.10.2015 um 13:20 schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
> So now I'm wondering about different types of LCD.
> 
> At the bottom end, you have those silver ones they put in calculators.
> Usually a 7-segment one. I have a graphing calculator somewhere with a
> dot matrix LCD, but still silver, with no greyscale capability.
> 
> I'm wondering... Is there a specific *name* for this type of LCD?

"7-segment LCD" maybe?

> What
> does it cost to put one of these into your product? Like, if you're
> buying a couple of thousand of those things, what's the unit price?

You might ask a quote from a company that manufactures those thingies.
Or a distributor. You know, like Farnell:

http://uk.farnell.com/displays-lcd_7-segment

> How much circuitry does it take to drive it?

Zip, as long as you choose a static panel (one single common contact,
plus one contact per segment) as opposed to a multiplexed one, or go for
a complete module. A microcontroller with enough output pins and the
correct output voltage, that's all.

Directly driving a multiplexed panel (segments connected in a
matrix-like fashion) is a much more complex issue (especially so in the
case of non-TFT panels), as you'll need the capability to drive each
line to more than two different voltage levels. Some microcontrollers
provide built-in multiplexed LCD support though, and may only need a
dozen pieces of "bird seed" (resistors and capacitors) to generate and
stabilize a bunch of different voltages.

> At the other end of the scale, you have the stupid-DPI full-colour
> back-lit LCDs with touch sensitivity that they put into every mobile
> phone, ever. What do *those* things cost? I'm guessing you need way,
> *way* more hardware to drive it. (An entire framebuffer, for starters...)

No, not really - you only need more output pins to drive the thing. And
as they're usually TFT, they may actually be easier to drive than
7-segment muxed displays. Depending on your display content you don't
even need a framebuffer: If text is all you want to display, you could
create the actual data on the fly from a text buffer as you refresh the
panel.

> I've heard it said that on "most" electronic devices, the buttons and
> lights are the most expensive part. As in, removing one button or one
> indicator light is a significant cost saving. So a toaster with three
> buttons is "much" more expensive to make than the same toaster with only
> two buttons. I'm not sure why this is; presumably because it's awkward
> to assemble a mechanical switch? (I.e., you have to have an extra step
> where a machine inserts all the moving parts into the right places.)

It's often worse than that: Depending how the switch is mounted, manual
labour may be required.


> I'm just wondering... High-colour LCDs are in even cheap phones now, so
> the LCD itself can't be all that expensive. So why don't more devices
> have these displays? For example, at the gym, the treadmill has a
> 7-segment LED display, and three buttons for cycling through the menues
> and selecting the option you want.

Probably because (1) display quality is /the/ top selling point in the
mobile phones market, even in the low-cost niche, while it is less
relevant in treadmills; (2) in the mobile phone market per-unit margins
are minimal, and profits are made by volume, whereas in the treadmill
business volume is low, and profits are made on a per-unit basis, so
mobile phone manufacturers can get significantly higher discounts on
displays than treadmill manufacturers; and (3) mobile phones have
mind-bogglingly fast development cycles, and adapting an existing
hardware design to use a different display is a routine process; also,
serving a volume market, development teams can be large, possibly even
with a dedicated expert for display technology; in the treadmill
business, development cycles are much longer, adapting the hardware
design to a different display is less pressing and therefore not done
with every cycle, and the development budget may even be too small to
have any dedicated embedded computing hardware expert on the team at all.


> What *will* cost money, of course, is the cost of changing a product
> you're already making. Like, if you already make this thing, and people
> are already buying it, why change it?

Also, what *will* cost money is changing an existing embedded computer
design to drive an entirely different type of display, as opposed to
just adding one more switch or even just changing the software.


> I'm sorry, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, LCDs. How come (for
> example) my washing machine doesn't have one? I've only ever seen them
> on the most expensive ultra-luxury models. Surely this stuff isn't
> actually that expensive to manufacture anymore?

The question is, would you pay for it?
Would your decision to purchase model X of brand A instead of model Y of
brand B really depend on the presence of an LCD, or would it instead be
driven by a gazillion of other factors? And would you really pay, say,
30 GBP (*) for a multi-color 3.5" 320x240 dot matrix LCD that doesn't
show any more information than the otherwise identical model with just a
rotary knob, a set of switches and a 7-Segment LED display?

(* Wildly guessing here, based on Farnell's offer of the MIDAS
MCT035L6TW320240LML for about 15 GBP apiece at a quantity of 600+, plus
an overhead of 15 GBP for protecting the module against humidity and
vibrations, using a more powerful microprocessor with more I/O pins,
physically connecting the display to the microcontroller, and last not
least developing the modification in the first place.)

Post a reply to this message

> At the bottom end, you have those silver ones they put in calculators.
> Usually a 7-segment one. I have a graphing calculator somewhere with a
> dot matrix LCD, but still silver, with no greyscale capability.
>
> I'm wondering... Is there a specific *name* for this type of LCD?

Passive matrix. As opposed to active matrix.

> What
> does it cost to put one of these into your product? Like, if you're
> buying a couple of thousand of those things, what's the unit price? How
> much circuitry does it take to drive it?

$1 would be my guess. You can probably find a bulk lot of 1000 on 
aliexpress or something. Regarding the electronics it's quite simple, 
just bang a voltage onto each segment you want "on", reverse the 
voltage, and then repeat very rapidly. The most important thing to 
remember with any LCD type is that the *time-average* voltage across any 
segment must be zero, or you will damage the LC material. If you've got 
a microcontroller or CPU already it should be easy to do in software.

> At the other end of the scale, you have the stupid-DPI full-colour
> back-lit LCDs with touch sensitivity that they put into every mobile
> phone, ever. What do *those* things cost? I'm guessing you need way,
> *way* more hardware to drive it. (An entire framebuffer, for starters...)

Price is roughly proportional to screen area (the factory doesn't care 
much how many screens it gets out of each "mother sheet"). For a 4" 
smartphone screen with touchpanel I'd say about $10. A laptop display 
could be $50. Really the price depends heavily on the volume, who the 
customer is, whether it is a custom design/off the shelf, what 
additional electronics/touch is included etc.

Yes you'll need some electronics to continually pump in the pixels. Most 
screens like that will use an LVDS interface, but you can get HDMI/DVI 
-> LVDS converters if your "system" already has those.

> I've heard it said that on "most" electronic devices, the buttons and
> lights are the most expensive part. As in, removing one button or one
> indicator light is a significant cost saving. So a toaster with three
> buttons is "much" more expensive to make than the same toaster with only
> two buttons. I'm not sure why this is; presumably because it's awkward
> to assemble a mechanical switch? (I.e., you have to have an extra step
> where a machine inserts all the moving parts into the right places.) I'd
> be interested if anybody has numbers.

In the world of very high volume mass production you can almost ignore 
tooling costs, so the cost is mostly made up of two parts: materials and 
assembly. A toaster might be a bit of bent steel with two plastic sides, 
you're talking $1 or so for those parts plus heating eleemnts, wiring 
and some screws, so maybe $10 total? A switch on the other hand is like 
a complicated mini-assembly in itself, so although the material cost is 
very low, there is a high assembly cost, so a switch could easily cost 
$1 too. So you've got a total cost of $13 or $14 depending on how many 
switches you use. If you're expecting to sell a million toasters, using 
one less switch will make you $1m more profit :-)

> I'm just wondering... High-colour LCDs are in even cheap phones now, so
> the LCD itself can't be all that expensive. So why don't more devices
> have these displays? For example, at the gym, the treadmill has a
> 7-segment LED display, and three buttons for cycling through the menues
> and selecting the option you want.

How many treadmills are they expecting to sell? If it takes an 
electronics engineer 12 months to design, prototype, test and debug the 
system, will it be worth it for them? Or would it be more profitable to 
just reuse the cheapo $5 LCD and board from the previous treadmill?

> I'm sorry, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, LCDs. How come (for
> example) my washing machine doesn't have one? I've only ever seen them
> on the most expensive ultra-luxury models. Surely this stuff isn't
> actually that expensive to manufacture anymore?

How much profit do you think the manufacturer makes on a cheap washing 
machine? Even if there were zero development costs, is it even worth 
them spending an extra $10 on a high res screen with touch panel?

Post a reply to this message

On 10/12/2015 11:47 AM, scott wrote:

> So you've got a total cost of $13 or $14 depending on how many
> switches you use. If you're expecting to sell a million toasters, using
> one less switch will make you $1m more profit :-)

Another way of looking at it is that if you add another switch you can 
charge more. So if you increase the price of a toaster by $10 and add a 
switch that cuts out one heating element to toast bagels on one side 
only. For a million units you make an extra $9 million profit.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

>> So you've got a total cost of $13 or $14 depending on how many
>> switches you use. If you're expecting to sell a million toasters, using
>> one less switch will make you $1m more profit :-)
>
> Another way of looking at it is that if you add another switch you can
> charge more. So if you increase the price of a toaster by $10 and add a
> switch that cuts out one heating element to toast bagels on one side
> only. For a million units you make an extra $9 million profit.

Yes, and I guess that's why most manufacturers will have several 
different models so that no matter how much you are willing to spend 
they will still maximise their profit :-)

BTW I was just in Tescos and the cheapest toaster was £4.50. So maybe my 
estimates of part costs easrlier were a little high.

Post a reply to this message

On 10/12/2015 1:02 PM, scott wrote:
> Yes, and I guess that's why most manufacturers will have several
> different models so that no matter how much you are willing to spend
> they will still maximise their profit :-)
>

I don't know why you would think that. ;-)

> BTW I was just in Tescos and the cheapest toaster was £4.50. So maybe my
> estimates of part costs easrlier were a little high.

I thought that the figures were for simplicity.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On 11/10/2015 08:53 PM, clipka wrote:
> Am 11.10.2015 um 13:20 schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
>> What
>> does it cost to put one of these into your product? Like, if you're
>> buying a couple of thousand of those things, what's the unit price?
>
> You might ask a quote from a company that manufactures those thingies.
> Or a distributor. You know, like Farnell:
>
> http://uk.farnell.com/displays-lcd_7-segment

I've never heard of Farnell before. And that's kinda the thing; I don't 
work in this industry, so I have no idea who you'd go to.

I *am* kinda surprised you can get prices from a website. I thought 
these things are usually like "call us and we'll think about telling you 
a price [which will only be valid for 21 days]"...

>> I've heard it said that on "most" electronic devices, the buttons and
>> lights are the most expensive part.
>
> It's often worse than that: Depending how the switch is mounted, manual
> labour may be required.

Ouch! Man, that's gotta get expensive fast...

>> I'm just wondering... High-colour LCDs are in even cheap phones now, so
>> the LCD itself can't be all that expensive. So why don't more devices
>> have these displays?
>
> Probably because (1) display quality is /the/ top selling point in the
> mobile phones market, even in the low-cost niche, while it is less
> relevant in treadmills; (2) in the mobile phone market per-unit margins
> are minimal, and profits are made by volume, whereas in the treadmill
> business volume is low, and profits are made on a per-unit basis, so
> mobile phone manufacturers can get significantly higher discounts on
> displays than treadmill manufacturers; and (3) mobile phones have
> mind-bogglingly fast development cycles, and adapting an existing
> hardware design to use a different display is a routine process; also,
> serving a volume market, development teams can be large, possibly even
> with a dedicated expert for display technology; in the treadmill
> business, development cycles are much longer, adapting the hardware
> design to a different display is less pressing and therefore not done
> with every cycle, and the development budget may even be too small to
> have any dedicated embedded computing hardware expert on the team at all.

That... is quite an interesting analysis, actually.

So essentially you're saying it has nothing to do with the manufacturing 
costs at all, and it's all about what it will cost to design the thing 
versus what they can sell it for. (?)

> Also, what *will* cost money is changing an existing embedded computer
> design to drive an entirely different type of display, as opposed to
> just adding one more switch or even just changing the software.

I have no idea how this stuff works. Like, I have no idea what kind of 
circuitry it takes to hook a microcontroller up to a display, and how 
much different display types differ.

> The question is, would you pay for it?

I'd probably pay £20 more for it, yes. But of course, it doesn't cost 
£20 more; it costs £400 more (typically). Which is equal to the price of 
some washing machines. (I.e., I could buy 2 for that price.)

> Would your decision to purchase model X of brand A instead of model Y of
> brand B really depend on the presence of an LCD, or would it instead be
> driven by a gazillion of other factors?

Honestly? The main concern is the physical size of the hole it needs to 
fit into. And what colour it is. That usually limits you to only one 
specific model possible, IME...

Post a reply to this message

>> I'm wondering... Is there a specific *name* for this type of LCD?
>
> Passive matrix. As opposed to active matrix.

OK.

What about the blue/purple ones? You know, like they had on ancient 
laptop screens?

>> What does it cost to put one of these into your product?
>
> $1 would be my guess. You can probably find a bulk lot of 1000 on
> aliexpress or something.

Wow. I didn't expect it to be quite *that* cheap. Even a simple resistor 
costs more than that! (Or maybe it doesn't if you buy a thousand of 
them, IDK.)

> The most important thing to
> remember with any LCD type is that the *time-average* voltage across any
> segment must be zero, or you will damage the LC material.

Oh, that's interesting.

> If you've got
> a microcontroller or CPU already it should be easy to do in software.

Yeah, that's what I figured. And most electric devices with more than 
one button on them probably have a CPU already. (Probably...)

>> At the other end of the scale, you have the stupid-DPI full-colour
>> back-lit LCDs with touch sensitivity that they put into every mobile
>> phone, ever. What do *those* things cost? I'm guessing you need way,
>> *way* more hardware to drive it. (An entire framebuffer, for starters...)
>
> Price is roughly proportional to screen area (the factory doesn't care
> much how many screens it gets out of each "mother sheet").

Linearly proportional? Or is it "more expensive" to buy really big screens?

> For a 4"
> smartphone screen with touchpanel I'd say about $10. A laptop display
> could be $50.

OK. Again, that's not nearly as much as I thought. Makes me wonder why 
you can't just buy a little £6 thing that plugs into a Raspberry Pi and 
makes it a high-colour touch-screen device...

> Really the price depends heavily on the volume, who the
> customer is, whether it is a custom design/off the shelf, what
> additional electronics/touch is included etc.

I imagine touch would be really expensive - but IDK...

> In the world of very high volume mass production you can almost ignore
> tooling costs, so the cost is mostly made up of two parts: materials and
> assembly. A toaster might be a bit of bent steel with two plastic sides,
> you're talking $1 or so for those parts plus heating elements, wiring
> and some screws, so maybe $10 total?

I have a really cheap toaster somewhere that looks like that might 
literally be all there is to it.

I also have a more expensive toaster with a defrost mode, reheat mode, 
and automatic timing adjustment based on the bread thickness. Because 
when you press the lever, a pair of grills spring out and hold the slice 
in place, and (I presume) tell the microcontroller how thick the bread 
is. Also, the case is polished chrome with a two-tone paint job.

I don't know, but I'm guessing it must be reasonably expensive to 
manufacture. It wasn't "that" expensive to buy, though. (Like, £45 or 
something?)

> A switch on the other hand is like
> a complicated mini-assembly in itself, so although the material cost is
> very low, there is a high assembly cost, so a switch could easily cost
> $1 too. So you've got a total cost of $13 or $14 depending on how many
> switches you use. If you're expecting to sell a million toasters, using
> one less switch will make you $1m more profit :-)

Sure, but you don't *make* the switch yourself, surely? You buy an 
off-the-shelf microswitch, and then you just got to mount the thing 
securely and give it a nice-looking button that matches the casing. (?)

I agree, depending on production volumes, the profit difference might be 
large. ;-)

> How much profit do you think the manufacturer makes on a cheap washing
> machine?

That's actually an interesting question.

So a typical washing machine is, what, £400 or something? Now a washing 
machine is one of those rare objects that contains *metal*. Obviously 
*metal* is very expensive. But is it actually £400-expensive? I doubt 
it. IDK, but I doubt it. The machine is also probably quite awkward to 
physically assemble. And they're large and heavy, so storing and 
shipping probably isn't cheap.

I'm still not sure how much of that £400 is material costs, and how much 
is pure profit. I guess there's enough people in the market that it 
can't be *that* profitable, but... IDK.

> Even if there were zero development costs, is it even worth
> them spending an extra $10 on a high res screen with touch panel?

I guess it's only really "worth it" if it makes more people buy them. I 
don't know for real how much extra money somebody would actually pay for 
a screen.

Then again, my washing machine [which I didn't pay for] has about a 
dozen lights on it, and 6 buttons. So the buttons can't be *that* 
expensive! (Well, for a _washing machine_ they probably aren't...)

Post a reply to this message

On 11/10/2015 08:43 PM, nemesis wrote:
> orchid, do you ever submit your lengthy rants to
>
> http://thedailywtf.com
>
> ? :)

Why? Do you think I should? :-P

Post a reply to this message

> What about the blue/purple ones? You know, like they had on ancient
> laptop screens?

Passive matrix too. The key difference is there is no electronics 
per-pixel to hold the voltage over the length of the frame, so the LC 
response time must be very slow (much longer than 1 frame) to keep any 
decent contrast. On an active matrix display the pixel electronics 
(transistor + capacitor) can keep the voltage at whatever you last set 
it to for the duration of a frame, so an LC material with very fast 
response can be used (eg 1 or 2 ms is common now in monitors).

> Wow. I didn't expect it to be quite *that* cheap. Even a simple resistor
> costs more than that! (Or maybe it doesn't if you buy a thousand of
> them, IDK.)

If you want 1000 or more you don't buy them from maplin, RS or Farnell. 
Try this:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/High-quality-character-LCD-7-segment-LCD-module-3-3V-TN-positive-reflective/32293200442.html

Just remember, if you buy a calculator like this for £2.50, the display 
cost must be significantly cheaper:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sharp-EL-240SAB-Calculator/dp/B0002I8VLU

>> Price is roughly proportional to screen area (the factory doesn't care
>> much how many screens it gets out of each "mother sheet").
>
> Linearly proportional? Or is it "more expensive" to buy really big screens?

Roughly linear - the factory costs to run are mostly independent of how 
small they chop up the glass at the end.

The only complicating factor is yield. If you get a dead pixel within a 
display then you can't sell it at the "dead pixel free" price. Obviously 
if you are making two huge TVs from each sheet of glass it is much more 
likely you have to scrap (or sell at a discount) 50% of the glass area, 
but if you're making 200 mobile phone screens you might only have to 
scrap 2 or 3 of them.

> OK. Again, that's not nearly as much as I thought. Makes me wonder why
> you can't just buy a little £6 thing that plugs into a Raspberry Pi and
> makes it a high-colour touch-screen device...

There's this one for £22. If you ask the manufacturer about buying a 
million of them then I'm pretty sure you could get them for £6 each:

http://www.gearbest.com/lcd-led-display-module/pp_231779.html

> I imagine touch would be really expensive - but IDK...

The expensive bit in capacitive touch is the controller IC that does all 
the processing. There is also a premium on this because of the IP that 
has gone into the algorithms etc. The physical bit is very cheap, it's 
just another sheet of glass with some quite chunky conductive layers.

> I don't know, but I'm guessing it must be reasonably expensive to
> manufacture. It wasn't "that" expensive to buy, though. (Like, £45 or
> something?)

A good rule of thumb for medium-volume consumer goods like that is that 
the cost to manufacture is roughly 25%-33% of what you pay. The rest is 
VAT, shipping/logistics, paying for everyone who works in all the 
companies involved, and maybe a little bit of profit for each company 
along the way.

> Sure, but you don't *make* the switch yourself, surely? You buy an
> off-the-shelf microswitch,

Someone else needs to make it though, my point was for their size/weight 
switches are much more expensive than a sheet of bent metal because the 
assembly costs are higher (whoever does it).

> So a typical washing machine is, what, £400 or something? Now a washing
> machine is one of those rare objects that contains *metal*. Obviously
> *metal* is very expensive. But is it actually £400-expensive? I doubt
> it. IDK, but I doubt it. The machine is also probably quite awkward to
> physically assemble. And they're large and heavy, so storing and
> shipping probably isn't cheap.

You might be interested in something like this, it gives a detailed 
breakdown of the costs of the parts in the latest iPhone (if you didn't 
know this is a very high-end phone that is expected to sell in high 
volumes):

http://www.techinsights.com/teardown.com/apple-iphone-6/

So that's $242 (or £157) for the parts. You can buy one on amazon for £450.

Post a reply to this message

On 13/10/2015 08:27 AM, scott wrote:
>> What about the blue/purple ones? You know, like they had on ancient
>> laptop screens?
>
> Passive matrix too. The key difference is there is no electronics
> per-pixel to hold the voltage over the length of the frame, so the LC
> response time must be very slow (much longer than 1 frame) to keep any
> decent contrast. On an active matrix display the pixel electronics
> (transistor + capacitor) can keep the voltage at whatever you last set
> it to for the duration of a frame, so an LC material with very fast
> response can be used (eg 1 or 2 ms is common now in monitors).

OK. So what's the difference between the silver ones and the purple ones?

>> Wow. I didn't expect it to be quite *that* cheap. Even a simple resistor
>> costs more than that! (Or maybe it doesn't if you buy a thousand of
>> them, IDK.)
>
> If you want 1000 or more you don't buy them from maplin, RS or Farnell.

[Rant] I remember when Maplin used to sell electronics. Now they're just 
a white-box shifting company. You used to be able to go in and just 
*buy* a string of 30 resistors or something. Now they're all like "oh, 
you want 10? Ooo, we'll have to order those in specially. We only have 4 
in stock." WTF?

> Try this:
>
>
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/High-quality-character-LCD-7-segment-LCD-module-3-3V-TN-positive-reflective/32293200442.html

That's... a dollar per display? Damn, you can't get too much cheaper 
than that. I wonder what a Z80 costs these days...

> Just remember, if you buy a calculator like this for £2.50, the display
> cost must be significantly cheaper:

Well, I guess that's true enough!

>>> Price is roughly proportional to screen area (the factory doesn't care
>>> much how many screens it gets out of each "mother sheet").
>>
>> Linearly proportional? Or is it "more expensive" to buy really big
>> screens?
>
> Roughly linear - the factory costs to run are mostly independent of how
> small they chop up the glass at the end.
>
> The only complicating factor is yield.

Yeah, I thought that might be the case.

>> OK. Again, that's not nearly as much as I thought. Makes me wonder why
>> you can't just buy a little £6 thing that plugs into a Raspberry Pi and
>> makes it a high-colour touch-screen device...
>
> There's this one for £22. If you ask the manufacturer about buying a
> million of them then I'm pretty sure you could get them for £6 each:
>
> http://www.gearbest.com/lcd-led-display-module/pp_231779.html

Damn, that's not bad at all! I'm surprised nobody seems to be using these...

>> I imagine touch would be really expensive - but IDK...
>
> The expensive bit in capacitive touch is the controller IC that does all
> the processing. There is also a premium on this because of the IP that
> has gone into the algorithms etc. The physical bit is very cheap, it's
> just another sheet of glass with some quite chunky conductive layers.

Interesting. I thought all the extra faff of assembling it was the 
expensive part.

>> I don't know, but I'm guessing it must be reasonably expensive to
>> manufacture. It wasn't "that" expensive to buy, though. (Like, £45 or
>> something?)
>
> A good rule of thumb for medium-volume consumer goods like that is that
> the cost to manufacture is roughly 25%-33% of what you pay. The rest is
> VAT, shipping/logistics, paying for everyone who works in all the
> companies involved, and maybe a little bit of profit for each company
> along the way.

Interesting. And here I was thinking the metal is expensive. ;-)

>> Sure, but you don't *make* the switch yourself, surely? You buy an
>> off-the-shelf microswitch,
>
> Someone else needs to make it though, my point was for their size/weight
> switches are much more expensive than a sheet of bent metal because the
> assembly costs are higher (whoever does it).

Well, I guess.

Now you're typical calculator has one of those rubber keypads. I have 
personally assembled those; it's a sheet of rubber, and there's some 
wiggly traces under it. Presumably that's cheaper than a microswitch? 
(Especially given a calculator has, like, *a dozen* buttons...)

> You might be interested in something like this, it gives a detailed
> breakdown of the costs of the parts in the latest iPhone (if you didn't
> know this is a very high-end phone that is expected to sell in high
> volumes):
>
> http://www.techinsights.com/teardown.com/apple-iphone-6/
>
> So that's $242 (or £157) for the parts. You can buy one on amazon for £450.

This is interesting on several levels.

1. I didn't know you could buy Apple hardware for under £1,000.

2. I didn't know this kind of disassembly was legal. I thought Apple 
would try to sue you for distributing trade-secret information.

3. As expected, the display is the most expensive bit. (Then again, 
isn't the iPhone kind of renound for having a particularly high-quality 
screen?)

4. The next most expensive bit is the CPU, like you'd expect. The RAM 
looks surprisingly cheap tho. (No idea how big it is, mind you!) I 
wonder what kind of CPU... it... er... oh right, it's a custom ARM SoC.

5. I expected the battery to be way, way more expensive than that. 
(Considering that battery life is extremely critical to product success, 
you'd expect the best performance part that can possible fit in the space.)

6. I have no idea WTF "BB+XCR" is.

7. I enjoy that "Other" is nearly as expensive as the CPU.

8. Qualcomm manufactured my lawn mower. They make silicon too? WTF?

Post a reply to this message

>> OK. Again, that's not nearly as much as I thought. Makes me wonder why
>> you can't just buy a little £6 thing that plugs into a Raspberry Pi and
>> makes it a high-colour touch-screen device...
>
> There's this one for £22.

Actually, the Raspberry Pi is kind of interesting...



When I first heard about it, it was billed as the BBC Micro for the 21st 
century. It's supposed to be a disposable-priced computer that will get 
kids interested in computer programming.

...expect that you can realistically write bare-metal code for an 8-bit 
PC with nothing more than a list of I/O register memory addresses and a 
weak knowledge of binary. I actually did this as a 10 year old child on 
my dad's Commodore 64. I wrote a tiny machine code program with pencil 
and paper. (We couldn't afford an assembler program, but I had an opcode 
table, and no friends or social life.)

By stark contrast, you can't do that on a Raspberry Pi. I mean, you 
*literally* can't do that; the hardware specs for the GPU are propriety. 
You can only look at them if you sign an NDA. Even Raspbian has to use a 
closed-source binary blob to drive the video hardware. If the Linux 
gurus of the Internet can't do this stuff, a kid has *no* chance! :-P

Yeah, it's kinda cool that you have this little circuit board that's 
super-easy to hook up to your computer, and to control other stuff with. 
But are kids really going to be that interested? Probably not.



Having looked around, it appears that the Raspberry Pi has actually 
spawned an entire new market sector of imitators. There is now the 
Orange Pi and the Banana Pi. (No, I'm not making this up!) Both made by 
companies completely unrelated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation. There's 
the utterly unpronounceable Arduino. There's the BeagleBoard and 
BeagleBone. Indeed, it seems that single-board computers are a "thing" 
now. Everybody wants a piece of the pie!

The specifications of some of these devices look amazing! For example, 
while the most powerful Raspberry Pi system has a single-core 700MHz CPU 
and 0.5GB of RAM, the Banana Pi has a dual-core 1GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM. 
And the Orange Pi has a quad-core 1.6GHz CPU!

...and then you look at the price tag. And you realise why. The original 
Raspberry Pi might have been designed to be a low-cost, disposable 
component, but some of the more powerful boards are priced at *hundreds* 
of dollars. You could buy an *actual* computer for that! (Although it 
would be way bigger, obviously.) Just because it's a naked circuit board 
with no case, doesn't automatically mean it's cheap. ;-)



Due to my boss existing, I've started reading Hackaday. I was amused the 
other day to see that somebody is trying to build an open-source mobile 
phone out of a Raspberry Pi. So... you're taking a SoC originally 
designed for the mobile phone industry, and trying to make a mobile 
phone out of it? What a rebel. LOL!

Still, the other day I found myself vaguely toying with the idea of 
getting a small tablet, just so I can sit in the corner coding when 
we're in a deserted forest or something. But why bother paying several 
hundred pounds for a tablet if you can actually buy a Raspberry Pi and a 
touchscreen for less than the cost of a pub meal?

Mind you... I've yet to actually *see* a Raspberry Pi on sale anywhere 
for the reputed price of $15. :-P For example, Maplin want to charge you 
£80. Which kind of defeats the point. No thanks!

(Oh, I'm sure the packet contains way more than just the circuit board. 
But that's the only bit I actually *want*...)

Post a reply to this message

On 10/13/2015 8:17 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> [Rant] I remember when Maplin used to sell electronics. Now they're just
> a white-box shifting company. You used to be able to go in and just
> *buy* a string of 30 resistors or something. Now they're all like "oh,
> you want 10? Ooo, we'll have to order those in specially. We only have 4
> in stock." WTF?

Funnily enough, I went into Maplins yesterday and bought 10 of 20 mm 
6.3ma slow blow fuses, off the shelf. (As an after thought)

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 11/10/2015 08:43 PM, nemesis wrote:
> > orchid, do you ever submit your lengthy rants to
> >
> > http://thedailywtf.com
> >
> > ? :)
>
> Why? Do you think I should? :-P

sure, why limit your reading audience to the tiny povray newsgroups?

your rants are often amusing...

Post a reply to this message

Am 13.10.2015 um 21:17 schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:

> OK. So what's the difference between the silver ones and the purple ones?

The colour ;)

No, seriously - the silver ones are the "reflective" type, designed to
use ambient light for illumination (sometimes exclusively, sometimes
with an optional "backlight" for situations where ambient light is too
low), while the purple ones are of the "transmissive" type, designed to
be always used with a backlight (usually dot matrix with active-white
pixels).

> 2. I didn't know this kind of disassembly was legal. I thought Apple
> would try to sue you for distributing trade-secret information.

The whole idea of trade secrets is that you keep them secret /because/
you can't sue anyone if the information gets out into the wild.

Also, there is no way you can prohibit anyone from reverse-engineering
your inventions unless you make them sign a non-disclosure agreement.
For instance, once you have legally obtained a copy of a piece of
software, you can freely reverse-engineer it as long as you don't accept
the EULA (which in most cases means you can't install it, so you'll need
to reverse-engineer the installer as well).

What you often /can/ prohibit is the /use/ of the intellectual property
someone has reverse-engineered from your product.


> 8. Qualcomm manufactured my lawn mower. They make silicon too? WTF?

I didn't know they made lawn mowers.

Post a reply to this message

Am 13.10.2015 um 21:44 schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:

> Mind you... I've yet to actually *see* a Raspberry Pi on sale anywhere
> for the reputed price of $15. :-P For example, Maplin want to charge you
> £80. Which kind of defeats the point. No thanks!

Might be a different model. AFAIK there are four models by now: The
original A and B models, and the 2nd generation A and B.

Post a reply to this message

> OK. So what's the difference between the silver ones and the purple ones?

No idea (we only made colour active matrix LCDs) - although I guess it 
might have something to do with the silver ones being reflective and the 
purple ones being transmissive (having a backlight)?

> [Rant] I remember when Maplin used to sell electronics. Now they're just
> a white-box shifting company. You used to be able to go in and just
> *buy* a string of 30 resistors or something. Now they're all like "oh,
> you want 10? Ooo, we'll have to order those in specially. We only have 4
> in stock." WTF?

- Plan in advance and buy from ebay
- Buy one of those 1000 piece packs of resistors of various values for a 
few pounds
- Get a job somewhere that has a ready supply of electronic components :-)

> Yeah, I thought that might be the case.

Interestingly even if a person goes through all the strictest clean room 
processes and clothing requirements the yield still drops noticeably 
when they go into the production area (and for some time after they have 
left). For this reason usually nobody is allowed in there unless for a 
very good reason.

> Interesting. I thought all the extra faff of assembling it was the
> expensive part.

Even a whole minute of additional manual assembly time (which is a lot) 
is surely cheaper than Atmel slapping a $0.50 premium on their latest 
design. IIRC a few years ago they were still charging around $5-$10 (at 
volume quantities) for the controller ICs, it's probably cheaper now 
with patents expiring, much higher volumes and more competition etc.

> Interesting. And here I was thinking the metal is expensive. ;-)

It is compared to plastic :-)

> 6. I have no idea WTF "BB+XCR" is.

BB is baseband (the phone/radio bit that nobody actually uses anymore), 
no idea what XCR is.

> 7. I enjoy that "Other" is nearly as expensive as the CPU.

That probably means a whole host of things like the PCB itself, various 
connectors, screws, cables etc.

Post a reply to this message

>> Mind you... I've yet to actually *see* a Raspberry Pi on sale anywhere
>> for the reputed price of $15. :-P For example, Maplin want to charge you
>> £80. Which kind of defeats the point. No thanks!
>
> Might be a different model. AFAIK there are four models by now: The
> original A and B models, and the 2nd generation A and B.

A quick look on amazon uk shows prices between £18 and £30 for the 
various pi's. I think Andrew is looking at those starter kits that 
contain PSUs, USB hubs, cases, SD cards etc, and from Maplin which is 
probably double the price of amazon by default.

Post a reply to this message

On 14/10/2015 11:50 AM, scott wrote:
>>> Mind you... I've yet to actually *see* a Raspberry Pi on sale anywhere
>>> for the reputed price of $15. :-P For example, Maplin want to charge you
>>> £80. Which kind of defeats the point. No thanks!
>>
>> Might be a different model. AFAIK there are four models by now: The
>> original A and B models, and the 2nd generation A and B.
>
> A quick look on amazon uk shows prices between £18 and £30 for the
> various pi's. I think Andrew is looking at those starter kits that
> contain PSUs, USB hubs, cases, SD cards etc, and from Maplin which is
> probably double the price of amazon by default.

Yeah, I think their "kit" contains a large hard-back tutorial book, a 
nice enclosure, a butt-load of peripherals and more. It might actually 
be *worth* £80 (you can pay that just for a book at some places), but I 
don't actually *want* any of that stuff. I just want the device.

Post a reply to this message

On 13/10/2015 09:04 PM, Stephen wrote:
> On 10/13/2015 8:17 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> [Rant] I remember when Maplin used to sell electronics. Now they're just
>> a white-box shifting company. You used to be able to go in and just
>> *buy* a string of 30 resistors or something. Now they're all like "oh,
>> you want 10? Ooo, we'll have to order those in specially. We only have 4
>> in stock." WTF?
>
> Funnily enough, I went into Maplins yesterday and bought 10 of 20 mm
> 6.3ma slow blow fuses, off the shelf. (As an after thought)

A while ago, I wanted a set of 10 LEDs. They could only sell me 4 of the 
same type, or a bag of 20 randomly assorted LEDs (all different sizes 
shapes, colours, power ratings...)

I guess most people probably just buy that stuff online now, so there's 
little incentive for Maplin to actually stock it. (I'm not sure who the 
big names in online component shopping are, however...)

Post a reply to this message

On 14/10/2015 11:26 AM, clipka wrote:
> Am 13.10.2015 um 21:17 schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
>
>> OK. So what's the difference between the silver ones and the purple ones?
>
> The colour ;)

Oh good. :-}

> The whole idea of trade secrets is that you keep them secret /because/
> you can't sue anyone if the information gets out into the wild.
>
> Also, there is no way you can prohibit anyone from reverse-engineering
> your inventions unless you make them sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Really? So the DMCA doesn't apply? Seriously, I thought that *all* 
reverse engineering is 100% illegal. (Unless you can prove that you're 
doing it for anticompetitive purposes, which is impossible.)

> What you often /can/ prohibit is the /use/ of the intellectual property
> someone has reverse-engineered from your product.

Well, I guess that makes sense.

>> 8. Qualcomm manufactured my lawn mower. They make silicon too? WTF?
>
> I didn't know they made lawn mowers.

I didn't know they made anything else. As in, I'd never heard of them 
before I saw this lawnmower. And it was the cheapest, lowest quality one 
in the shop.

Post a reply to this message

On 10/14/2015 6:04 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 13/10/2015 09:04 PM, Stephen wrote:

>>
>> Funnily enough, I went into Maplins yesterday and bought 10 of 20 mm
>> 6.3ma slow blow fuses, off the shelf. (As an after thought)
>
> A while ago, I wanted a set of 10 LEDs. They could only sell me 4 of the
> same type, or a bag of 20 randomly assorted LEDs (all different sizes
> shapes, colours, power ratings...)
>

Hmm! That sounds about right.
Not the best in customer service. There is one branch on the Queensway 
that will sell individual components but they are quite a bige one with 
its own counter for those things.


> I guess most people probably just buy that stuff online now, so there's
> little incentive for Maplin to actually stock it. (I'm not sure who the
> big names in online component shopping are, however...)

I've used cpc.co.uk who are a supplier for Farnell.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On 14/10/2015 07:18 PM, Stephen wrote:
> On 10/14/2015 6:04 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> A while ago, I wanted a set of 10 LEDs. They could only sell me 4 of the
>> same type, or a bag of 20 randomly assorted LEDs (all different sizes
>> shapes, colours, power ratings...)
>
> Hmm! That sounds about right.
> Not the best in customer service.

That's the thing, though. Years ago, I used to only shop at Maplin, 
specifically because of their excellent customer service. Now it seems 
to be staffed by a bunch of minimum wage twats who just want to sell 
white boxes.

> I've used cpc.co.uk who are a supplier for Farnell.

OK...

Post a reply to this message

On 10/14/2015 9:26 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 14/10/2015 07:18 PM, Stephen wrote:
>> On 10/14/2015 6:04 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> A while ago, I wanted a set of 10 LEDs. They could only sell me 4 of the
>>> same type, or a bag of 20 randomly assorted LEDs (all different sizes
>>> shapes, colours, power ratings...)
>>
>> Hmm! That sounds about right.
>> Not the best in customer service.
>
> That's the thing, though. Years ago, I used to only shop at Maplin,
> specifically because of their excellent customer service. Now it seems
> to be staffed by a bunch of minimum wage twats who just want to sell
> white boxes.
>

When I worked for a living. I never used Maplin only Farnell or RS, Euch!
Now I use Maplin because it is local and I don't like waiting for the post.

>> I've used cpc.co.uk who are a supplier for Farnell.
>
> OK...

Be careful which boxes you tick. It seems like every week or two I get 
spammed by snail mail catalogues. :-)


-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Le 2015-10-12 13:10, Orchid Win7 v1 a écrit :
>
> So essentially you're saying it has nothing to do with the manufacturing
> costs at all, and it's all about what it will cost to design the thing
> versus what they can sell it for. (?)
>

You've heard the expression "supply and demand" before, right?

If customers are only willing to pay X for your widget, you have to 
manage to make it profitable at price point X, or invest in an expensive 
marketing campaign to convince your customers that it really is worth 
2X, and the really cool people don't mind paying 2X for it because look 
at all the chicks they get!

This works a lot better in the cell phone business than the treadmill 
business, where in fact, a 1080p touch screen might even be seen as a 
flimsly doodad that will stop working the minute it's been splashed with 
sweat (or that antibacterial spray you're supposed to use once you're 
done) and actually be detrimental to your marketing campaign.

Unless, of couse, it's cloud-enabled.  Then it's a sure win.  Everything 
has to be cloud-aware nowadays.  The Internet-Of-Things is upon us!
-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

Post a reply to this message

On 10/15/2015 5:30 AM, Francois Labreque wrote:
> Le 2015-10-12 13:10, Orchid Win7 v1 a écrit :
>>
>> So essentially you're saying it has nothing to do with the manufacturing
>> costs at all, and it's all about what it will cost to design the thing
>> versus what they can sell it for. (?)
>>
>
> You've heard the expression "supply and demand" before, right?
>
> If customers are only willing to pay X for your widget, you have to
> manage to make it profitable at price point X, or invest in an expensive
> marketing campaign to convince your customers that it really is worth
> 2X, and the really cool people don't mind paying 2X for it because look
> at all the chicks they get!
>
> This works a lot better in the cell phone business than the treadmill
> business, where in fact, a 1080p touch screen might even be seen as a
> flimsly doodad that will stop working the minute it's been splashed with
> sweat (or that antibacterial spray you're supposed to use once you're
> done) and actually be detrimental to your marketing campaign.
>
> Unless, of couse, it's cloud-enabled.  Then it's a sure win.  Everything
> has to be cloud-aware nowadays.  The Internet-Of-Things is upon us!

Its, sadly, worse than that even. There are often multiple price points. 
There is the, "everyone can buy one", point, the, "everyone will buy 
one", point and the, "we make huge profits at this price point, even 
though it places it out of the range of many people.", one. I would also 
argue that we suffer a lot from the delusional, "I am making huge 
profits at this price point, so I can't imagine why people complain its 
too expensive!", one as well, in far too many companies - all of which 
presume that, as long as they are making a profit, they *have* the right 
price point.

Its a bloody mess, and only made worse by the other end of the coin - "I 
pay enough so they can buy this right? They only had to save money for a 
whole year for it after all!"

-- 
Commander Vimes: "You take a bunch of people who don't seem any 
different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get 
this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem."

Post a reply to this message

> (3) mobile phones have
> mind-bogglingly fast development cycles, and adapting an existing
> hardware design to use a different display is a routine process; also,
> serving a volume market, development teams can be large, possibly even
> with a dedicated expert for display technology;

In my old job we used to develop displays for Nokia (back when they were 
#1) and they had several entire departments dedicated for display 
technology. The staff were all display experts. The way it worked is 
that you "sold" your capability to one of the platform display teams 
within Nokia, they then marketed it on your behalf to the rest of the 
business that was actually developing the handsets. You might start off 
with 4 handsets planning to use your display, then it would go up or 
down during development depending on the demand. Occasionally it would 
go down to zero and the project would be stopped. Having to provide 
several thousand prototype displays within 3-4 months of the project 
starting was quite normal though, total project time from nothing to 
full mass production was usually about 18 months.

There was also another whole department for future display technology, 
they demanded to see every 6 months your prototypes for what was going 
to be possible in the next 2-4 years. Things like touch screens and 
ultra high ppi screens started off in these meetings, but they were 
convinced there was no need for these and instead concentrated on trying 
to push OLED displays. Then Apple brought out the iPhone...

Post a reply to this message

> "we make huge profits at this price point, even
> though it places it out of the range of many people.",

The genius is to make people pay for a $1000 handset over 24 months, 
then they get it FREE!!!

Post a reply to this message

On 15/10/2015 03:25 PM, scott wrote:
> In my old job we used to develop displays for Nokia (back when they were
> #1)

o_O

They aren't still?!

Oh... Right... I keep forgetting the iPhone.

> The way it worked is
> that you "sold" your capability to one of the platform display teams
> within Nokia, they then marketed it on your behalf to the rest of the
> business that was actually developing the handsets.

Wow. That sounds crazy. They had an entire department who's only purpose 
was to evangelise stuff to the departments who actually make stuff?

> Things like touch screens and
> ultra high ppi screens started off in these meetings, but they were
> convinced there was no need for these and instead concentrated on trying
> to push OLED displays. Then Apple brought out the iPhone...

Heh. When one company can actually change the direction of an entire 
industry. Or create a whole new one. Like the Raspberry Pi seems to have 
done...

Whatever happened to OLED anyway? And flexible displays? The world seems 
to have stopped caring...

Post a reply to this message

On 10/15/2015 6:44 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Whatever happened to OLED anyway? And flexible displays? The world seems
> to have stopped caring...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED#Manufacturers_and_commercial_uses

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 15 Oct 2015 18:44:33 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> Whatever happened to OLED anyway? And flexible displays? The world seems
> to have stopped caring...

OLED is still around, and I see things about flexible displays every once 
in a while.

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
.......
>
>>> 8. Qualcomm manufactured my lawn mower. They make silicon too? WTF?
>>
>> I didn't know they made lawn mowers.
>
> I didn't know they made anything else. As in, I'd never heard of them
> before I saw this lawnmower. And it was the cheapest, lowest quality one
> in the shop.

When I realized that I absolutely couldn't stand it any longer, I went 
to Google, put in "lawn mower," and very slowly started typing:

q [pause]
u [pause]
a [pause]
l [pause]
c [pause]

and finally this came up as a suggestion:

http://www.homebase.co.uk/en/static/qualcast

Now I can sleep tonight.

--Sherry Shaw

-- 
#macro T(E,N)sphere{x,.4rotate z*E*60translate y*N pigment{wrinkles scale
.3}finish{ambient 1}}#end#local I=0;#while(I<5)T(I,1)T(1-I,-1)#local I=I+
1;#end camera{location-5*z}plane{z,37 pigment{granite color_map{[.7rgb 0]
[1rgb 1]}}finish{ambient 2}}//                                   TenMoons

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 14 Oct 2015 19:06:30 +0200, Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

>>> 8. Qualcomm manufactured my lawn mower. They make silicon too? WTF?
>>
>> I didn't know they made lawn mowers.
>
> I didn't know they made anything else. As in, I'd never heard of them  
> before I saw this lawnmower. And it was the cheapest, lowest quality one  
> in the shop.

Qualcomm, not Qualcast.

You are obviously not into cellphone specs. Until recently most  
smart-phones used Qualcomm processors.

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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Am 15.10.2015 um 16:17 schrieb Patrick Elliott:

> I would also
> argue that we suffer a lot from the delusional, "I am making huge
> profits at this price point, so I can't imagine why people complain its
> too expensive!", one as well, in far too many companies - all of which
> presume that, as long as they are making a profit, they *have* the right
> price point.

It's not delusional at all. It's us consumers who are delusional if we
think just complaining about something being too expensive has any
effect on price tags. It's only when we cease to /buy/ stuff that we'll
see an effect.

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Am 15.10.2015 um 16:25 schrieb scott:

> In my old job we used to develop displays for Nokia (back when they were
> #1)

So we may have been colleagues in a sense, for some time. I did work for
Nokia on handsfree kits and headsets in the mid-00s.

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Am 15.10.2015 um 19:44 schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
> On 15/10/2015 03:25 PM, scott wrote:
>> In my old job we used to develop displays for Nokia (back when they were
>> #1)
> 
> o_O
> 
> They aren't still?!
> 
> Oh... Right... I keep forgetting the iPhone.

... and Samsung and LG and whatnot.

And the fact that they sold their mobile phone business to Microsoft
last year.

So no, they aren't any longer.

>> The way it worked is
>> that you "sold" your capability to one of the platform display teams
>> within Nokia, they then marketed it on your behalf to the rest of the
>> business that was actually developing the handsets.
> 
> Wow. That sounds crazy. They had an entire department who's only purpose
> was to evangelise stuff to the departments who actually make stuff?

Not really. The evangelizing was only a side effect of Nokia having had
multiple teams doing similar stuff (like the "platform display teams"
scott mentioned), so there was quite some competition going on within Nokia.

> Whatever happened to OLED anyway? And flexible displays? The world seems
> to have stopped caring...

Or maybe /you/ have stopped caring for a while?

OLED technology has been alive and roundhouse-kicking in the realm of
small displays since you last looked. Oculus uses OLED technology since
DK2 of their Rift, for instance.

As for flexible displays, I think people have found little real use for
them so far, except from gimmicks like the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge.

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Am 16.10.2015 um 03:26 schrieb Sherry K. Shaw:
> Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> .......
>>
>>>> 8. Qualcomm manufactured my lawn mower. They make silicon too? WTF?
>>>
>>> I didn't know they made lawn mowers.
>>
>> I didn't know they made anything else. As in, I'd never heard of them
>> before I saw this lawnmower. And it was the cheapest, lowest quality one
>> in the shop.
> 
> When I realized that I absolutely couldn't stand it any longer, I went
> to Google, put in "lawn mower," and very slowly started typing:
> 
> q [pause]
> u [pause]
> a [pause]
> l [pause]
> c [pause]
> 
> and finally this came up as a suggestion:
> 
> http://www.homebase.co.uk/en/static/qualcast
> 
> Now I can sleep tonight.

Thanks Sherry - that makes a lot more sense.

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On 16/10/2015 08:23 AM, clipka wrote:
> Am 15.10.2015 um 19:44 schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
>> On 15/10/2015 03:25 PM, scott wrote:
>>> In my old job we used to develop displays for Nokia (back when they were
>>> #1)
>>
>> o_O
>>
>> They aren't still?!
>>
>> Oh... Right... I keep forgetting the iPhone.
>
> ... and Samsung and LG and whatnot.
>
> And the fact that they sold their mobile phone business to Microsoft
> last year.
>
> So no, they aren't any longer.

I've had a couple of mobile phones. And I quickly discovered that all 
the phones that aren't Nokia are terrible.

Like, at one point I had a Motorola phone, and when you compose a text 
message, if you hit the menu key, the first menu option is... 
reconfigure the text size? WTF? You're going to set that how you want it 
*once*, when you get the phone, and then never change it again! On the 
other hand, "send" was the 7th option. You have to scroll to the next 
page to even see it. Again, WTF?

Back then, it seemed that only Nokia phones have software that even 
remotely makes any semblance of sense. Today, I guess all phones run 
Andriod, and are thus identical in every respect... (The odd one out 
being the iPhone, of course.)

> As for flexible displays, I think people have found little real use for
> them so far, except from gimmicks like the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge.

Yeah, the idea of a flexible display *sounds* really cool, but... what 
the hell would that even be *useful* for? The only thing I can think of 
is that it takes up much less space when you fold it up. But surely 
that's going to damage it?

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On 10/16/2015 8:34 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Today, I guess all phones run Andriod, and are thus identical in every
> respect... (The odd one out being the iPhone, of course.)

Never, ever take up gambling for a living. :-P
Each manufacturer has their own GUI and controls. And if you root the 
device you can customise it even more.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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> Whatever happened to OLED anyway? And flexible displays? The world seems
> to have stopped caring...

OLED was used in the Samsung Galaxy S2 for example. I think it's turned 
out not to be the killer of LCD for a few reasons: it uses more power 
than LCD, it struggled to keep up with the high ppi achievable with LCD, 
and the visual quality gap between OLED and LCD closed up a lot faster 
than people expected.

A lot of cool stuff is possible with displays, it's just nowadays 
everyone seems more concerned with price rather than cool features. For 
example BMW used to use a "transflective" LCD in their cars, where each 
pixel is divided into a reflective and transmissive part. This means 
even in direct sunlight the display looks just a good as in darkness. 
However they stopped using those because they were too expensive (many 
more steps in making the glass, plus a much stronger backlight), and in 
their eyes so long as the screen looks good in the showroom (where there 
is no sun) it doesn't matter how it looks out on the road. They saved 
their 20 euro on their 30000 euro car and they were happy.

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>> In my old job we used to develop displays for Nokia (back when they were
>> #1)
>
> So we may have been colleagues in a sense, for some time. I did work for
> Nokia on handsfree kits and headsets in the mid-00s.

Yes maybe :-) It must have been from about 03-06 that I was working on 
those projects, mainly working with the Nokia team in Copenhagen. 
Although I did manage a few trips to Finland, all during winter though 
unfortunately, so my memories of Finland are all very dark and cold!

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On Fri, 16 Oct 2015 08:45:38 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 10/16/2015 8:34 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> Today, I guess all phones run Andriod, and are thus identical in every
>> respect... (The odd one out being the iPhone, of course.)
> 
> Never, ever take up gambling for a living. :-P Each manufacturer has
> their own GUI and controls. And if you root the device you can customise
> it even more.

Ah, Stephen, you forget that Andy's the youngest luddite on the planet. ;)

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 10/16/2015 5:22 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Ah, Stephen, you forget that Andy's the youngest luddite on the planet.;)

How could I forget? ;-)

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On 16/10/2015 08:45 AM, Stephen wrote:
> On 10/16/2015 8:34 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> Today, I guess all phones run Andriod, and are thus identical in every
>> respect... (The odd one out being the iPhone, of course.)
>
> Never, ever take up gambling for a living. :-P

You are kidding? That's not a "living"! :-P

> Each manufacturer has their own GUI and controls.

...and now I'm thinking about all the crapwhere that gets installed on 
big-name PCs. Usually stuff like "this special toolbar allows you to 
open the Internet with just one click, in case you're too retarded to 
know how to open a web browser all by yourself". Man, that doesn't sound 
fun...

> And if you root the device you can customise it even more.

Presumably only a tiny proportion of people actually do that though.

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On 16/10/2015 05:22 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Ah, Stephen, you forget that Andy's the youngest luddite on the planet. ;)

As somebody who's been addicted to computer technology for decades, I do 
find this rather odd...

I keep looking at Twitter and screaming "why the **** do you EXIST?!" I 
have no idea why anybody would pay $90 for the Wolfram Alpha web-app 
when you can just surf to the site itself for $0. (But then, Wolfram 
Alpha itself seems to be a solution desperately searching for a 
problem... But at least it makes sense!) I can't imagine why you would 
pay money for a Crazy Frog ringtone. (Fortunately that one at least 
seems to have died...)

...and now I sound like somebody's dad. What the hell is going on?!

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On Fri, 16 Oct 2015 18:03:34 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> On 16/10/2015 05:22 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Ah, Stephen, you forget that Andy's the youngest luddite on the planet.
>> ;)
> 
> As somebody who's been addicted to computer technology for decades, I do
> find this rather odd...

Just a joke. :)

> I keep looking at Twitter and screaming "why the **** do you EXIST?!" I
> have no idea why anybody would pay $90 for the Wolfram Alpha web-app
> when you can just surf to the site itself for $0. (But then, Wolfram
> Alpha itself seems to be a solution desperately searching for a
> problem... But at least it makes sense!) I can't imagine why you would
> pay money for a Crazy Frog ringtone. (Fortunately that one at least
> seems to have died...)
> 
> ...and now I sound like somebody's dad. What the hell is going on?!

The question is, whose dad do you sound like? :)

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 10/16/2015 5:57 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 16/10/2015 08:45 AM, Stephen wrote:
>> On 10/16/2015 8:34 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> Today, I guess all phones run Andriod, and are thus identical in every
>>> respect... (The odd one out being the iPhone, of course.)
>>
>> Never, ever take up gambling for a living. :-P
>
> You are kidding? That's not a "living"! :-P
>

It can be for some people. But if not a living it can be a source of 
additional income.
Personally I never gamble with anything as trivial as money.

>> Each manufacturer has their own GUI and controls.
>
> ....and now I'm thinking about all the crapwhere that gets installed on
> big-name PCs. Usually stuff like "this special toolbar allows you to
> open the Internet with just one click, in case you're too retarded to
> know how to open a web browser all by yourself". Man, that doesn't sound
> fun...
>

I don't think anyone on this newsgroup is qualified to complain about 
crapware (I prefer my spelling :-) ). I know quite a few people who need 
a F1 key to go to the toilet with a computer.

>> And if you root the device you can customise it even more.
>
> Presumably only a tiny proportion of people actually do that though.

Have a look on some forums. You might be surprised.
I rooted my last phone when it was having battery problems and 
need/wanted to install an App to monitor and shut down unwanted 
programs. Some people root their phones just because they can.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Am 16.10.2015 um 10:32 schrieb scott:
>>> In my old job we used to develop displays for Nokia (back when they were
>>> #1)
>>
>> So we may have been colleagues in a sense, for some time. I did work for
>> Nokia on handsfree kits and headsets in the mid-00s.
> 
> Yes maybe :-) It must have been from about 03-06 that I was working on
> those projects, mainly working with the Nokia team in Copenhagen.
> Although I did manage a few trips to Finland, all during winter though
> unfortunately, so my memories of Finland are all very dark and cold!

I've only seen Finland myself once. It was Bochum (Germany) for me,
until they closed down the mobile phone business there. I continued to
work at the very same office for a company then-newly founded to
continue Nokia Bochum's handsfree kit business, but after a few months
of seeing working conditions and payment deteriorate I decided that it
was time for me to get the hell out of Dodge.

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