[TaylorAlexander]

I guess the issue comes when the whole industry has lost its imagination. Apple comes out with whatever they come out with, everyone follows Apple, and there's no ground shaking new ideas anymore.

You know what I'm interested in? Innovations in radio technology. Why can't I get a phone with built in mesh networking? No some weird bastard wifi hack, but an honest to goodness mesh networking solution maybe with a STANDARD interface? Some way for my phone to talk directly to a friend's phone without any need for a central authority to regulate our communications.

That would be ground breaking.

[runjake]

> Why can't I get a phone with built in mesh networking? No some weird bastard wifi hack, but an honest to goodness mesh networking solution maybe with a STANDARD interface?

Like Bluetooth? Like wifi ad hoc (what's the hack involved)? There are chat/file transfer apps for both of these "mesh" networks on the App Store. They are reasonably popular amongst K12 students when school districts get overzealous with filtering.

What do you realistically want that these don't provide?

[lloyd-christmas]

I'm sure it has come up in product discussions, I bet it's just getting into significant security-concern territory where no one wants to risk being THAT company.

[TaylorAlexander]

Really? I figure the issue is that it would meet significant resistance from carriers, because mesh radio would eat in to their profits.

[lloyd-christmas]

I'd assume they'd be able to manage pricing. 99.9% of people don't root/jailbreak their phones. I'm sure they'd be able to track the data plans/prevent apps that circumvent it.