Beginning some time in the 2000s decade (and seemingly pretty early within the decade at that), the mainstream cellular phone industry came up with a marketing distinction which I (Mother Mychaela) fundamentally oppose: the perverted idea of low-end vs high-end phones. Under this doctrine, in order for a phone to be considered high-end (and thus built to a high standard of quality), it has to be loaded with non-telephony features: camera, music player, handheld web browser, PDA and so forth — functions that have absolutely nothing to do with the primary purpose of a cellular mobile telephone, i.e., making and receiving phone calls on a Public Land Mobile Network. In contrast, cellular mobile telephone units that do stick to this core function became classified as low-end or burner phones — and from mid-2000s onward, became available only in burner quality grade in terms of design, implementation and physical build.

I (Mother Mychaela) fiercely oppose this industry-wide policy doctrine: I desire a GSM cellphone whose sole functionality revolves around acting as a GSM Mobile Station (making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving SMS, supplementary services, receiving cell broadcast, acting as an AT command modem for CSD), without any camera, music, mobile web etc functions — but I also want it to be built to a Rolls-Royce standard of quality, the far opposite of a burner phone! Yet what I seek is anathema to the mainstream cellular phone industry, going against the very grain of their low-end vs high-end axis, and it is not a new problem — the issue goes back to mid-2000s at least.

The newest GSM phones I am aware of that were built according to my philosophy date from late 1990s — a perfect example is Ericsson I888. This phone was very high-end in its day, a top of the line model, yet it has absolutely zero non-GSM, non-telephony features! It supports CSD, fittingly for a high-end GSM phone — but only as an AT command modem for a connected computer, not as a back end for a built-in WAP browser or whatnot — exactly per my philosophy.

One of my goals in FreeCalypso project is to build a new GSM phone (based on my beloved TI Calypso chipset) that follows the philosophy I just outlined — and I still hope to get to it some day.