OpenFrame: 'The iPhone of home phones'
Posted Jan 8th 2008 9:46PM by
Christopher Grant
Filed under:
Household
With data integration in mobile handsets, it's no wonder home telephones haven't been able to keep up. But what happens when you're using a service like Verizon's
FiOS and all of a sudden that boring handset has broadband data piped right into it? One example could be OpenFrame – a new home phone envisioned by John Sculley, former Apple CEO – that maybe-a-little resembles Apple's iPhone. The various devices are built on Freescale MX31 processors "with two 600-MHz ARM11 chips doing the heavy lifting" for features like streaming video, music, web surfing, and more. According to the manufacturer's chief executive, the heavily subsidized phones could be shipping out in four or five months straight from the carriers (no retail presence here). Though the phone was built specifically for services like FiOS, they're not yet saying if it's coming to FiOS. Why so shy, fellas?