Reply to post: This is probably naieve, but..

This is probably naieve, but..

I'd prefer to be able to buy a phone as just hardware onto which I could install whatever phone software I wish/can afford. My preference would be a form of Linux designed for phones, but that's just me. I'd love to be able to have a phone that did just the following: text, email, voice, ad if it has a camera built in, take pics too. I dont want answerphone, or the internet , ta very. And I want a proper physical button keyboard.

OK, so that's just me, but others could choose just the services they want too, and many/most would no doubt want the full-fat internetty stuff too - great, they can just install the stuff they want, If hardware makers were just hardware makers, then folk could choose to go with the latest and greatest, or the most reliable/logest lasting as they see fit. And if the phone OS's were created by companes that were not the same as the companies that provide the hardware then again, users could have choice.

Before anyone makes the point about installing an OS not being most peoples cup of tea, if there was a a lockable slot such that a storage device could be easily inserted and removed from which the device would boot, then OS makers could simply sell their wares on suitable storage devices, so it'd be a case of choose which hardware you like, choose the OS, insert the later into the former, charge up and you;re good to go.

As for security in that scenario, perhaps I'm missing something (probably - you lot know far more than I do about relevant matters!) but in the scenario I posit, the phone becomes much the same as the desktop PC aside from being rather more portable, and security issues should be much the same, for much the same reasons. Except I'd get to have a phone that ISNT full of junk I have no interest in, and others would be able to customise the sftware n their phones to please their needs/wants too.

But then I'm thinking of mobile phones as useful devices that a user chooses to buy and use as they wish, rather than a deliberately disposable method of parting consumers from their money for the benefit of company directors and shareholders somewhere. Silly me...