Do you remember the Simpsons episode when Homer got to design his dream car? That's how I imagine some company building the geek phone will end up.

But if we Geeks ourselves build one, it'll be beautiful:

Haha, yes, that's exactly what I was thinking.

Yes, but risk is amplified when running an operation on a shoestring budget.

Executive management's. Some are gone, some mysteriously retained...

There are some of us in the community with Serious Product Design Skills.

Just hypothetically, how many units may a manufacturer expect to sell if he would decide to make a true geeks phone? And, being a geeks phone, I'd say it doesn't need more than an online store, right?

I would buy this phone but it doesn't have a HWKB!

I have.

I own a 2007 Volvo V50 which I bought because I needed something that could hold my a baby stoller. In the Volvo V50 I own, there's no bluetooth. There's also no way to replace the car stereo, because it's integrated into the centre console, which stands a piece of obsolete aluminium art. There is no easy way to get integrated bluetooth without hacking in between the head unit and the amp, which the Volvo dealer neither knows how to do, or is willing to do.

Using the FM transmitter both to send music (instead of using a MP3 cd) and to send voice to the car radio was not as easy as having the car stereo automatically connect to the phone, but it was an great backup alternative for all the cars in the world where bluetooth is not an option.

By the way, in my previous car, I DID have bluetooth. A2DP from both the N810 and the N900 to a Pioneer DEH-P9800 was more troublesome than FM transmitting. The FM transmitter were even better sounding, since A2DP would break up.

Of course, it's not a perfect solution, it's just a fallback technology. If I could find a review gave a GPS with a DLNA renderer good reviews as a hands free and media streamer, I would use that to upgrade my Volvo. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell they're all piss when it comes to audio streaming.

I am working on a way to use the N810 as a DLNA renderer for my Android phone, but unfortunately I can't get that working as a handsfree, so I'm still out of luck.

The FM transmitter option, I would like back. That option died when my N900 took a bath. When you argue against the FM transmitter, to me it feels like arguing against including Edge technology because Super 3G is better. Well, yeah, but you can get Edge bandwidth in a lot of places where 3G receiption is spotty. You can use integrated bluetooth in a few cars but there's a lot of cars where you'd have to use some external Parrot kit, and for mine I can't even get that easily.

Oh, wait. I am a geek. Well, I am a geek outside of this group, nowadays.

If a company invests in a project and by the completion of the project they only get their cost back, then they'd better off just putting said amount of cash in the bank and collect on the guaranteed interest.

If you consider this to be an investment for the future somehow (image building, step 4 of x, marketing exercise, etc), then there's gotta be a clear potential income from that whole venture in the future.

And they've gotta consider and calculate all the risks involved to really assess whether it's worth doing or not. They ain't charitiy for sure...

For a run of 100 units, I'd reckon the unit price would have to be at least $50k or up.
Even Vertu runs much larger batches than 100.

The company has to be run by charitable/idealist geeks as well; because this market segment is flush with profit at the moment. It would be foolish for them to sell at below market price if it's run as a normal 'business'.

There are two things, the size of the market and the price. Such a device will be pricey, and that limits the market even further. Another thing is that most of you don't want such a device after all, you are only constantly whining because your wet dreams of market domination by open devices get shattered - again and again. Unless you (the potential market for such a device) sober up, there will be no devices for you.

Nevertheless, I am convinced that a profitable market do in fact exist, but all manufacturers are too blinded by market shares and dreams of world domination to notice.