If we want HTC to do something special, we should suggest things that would have broader market appeal, where added features are at a minimal expense. It's all well and good to ask for RUIM-specific equipment, but wouldn't it be more effective to ask for a phone that has an ESN, but that can be overridden by using a RUIM? If you use a RUIM, then all looks normal, but if you don't have a RUIM, the phone should fall back to the onboard ESN. It would then work ini India and other RUIM areas, as well as North America, where ESN is king.
The phone I've been covetting for as long as it's been announced has been the Touch Pro 2. With some carriers (Sprint, Verizon, Telus), it has both GSM (possibly HSPA) and CDMA hardware. If there's already a SIM slot, RUIM support should be a no-incremental-cost add-on. Once the initial development is done, there's no extra manufacturing cost, and it could be sold world-wide, only needing the right charging plug to be tossed into the box.
It seems that Android is the big phone flavour of the week. Android is not encumbered by a heavy liscensing fee, so having it available is another no manufacturing cost item. It can easily fit in a 1GB flash card, that could be dropped in the box, along with the manual, or made available as a separate "Android Upgrade"
The other side of the coin is Windows Phone Edition. There is a charge for each handset that includes it, but other than that, everything above applies, except that if it's made available as a separate "Windows Upgrade", the cost could be passed on to the customers who actually want Windows on their phone.
Smartphones can have ravenous data appetites. WiFi in such a phone is almost a given these days. There's a related technology, WiMAX, which is being called a 4G phone standard. Clearwire offers WiMAX service in both the US and parts of Europe. In Canada, the three largest phone carriers (Bell, Rogers, and Telus) are running WiMAX services, and in the US, Sprint is using Clearwire for their 4G phone service. Since about 2004, there have been combined WiFi/WiMAX chips. If one of these made it into HTC's next Global Phone, it would be able to handle both WiFi and WiMAX, and be useable on more telecom networks, without needing changes from one carrier to another.
Of course, each little item adds a bit to the total cost, but by reducing the number of different models, the added costs can be balanced against the cost of developing each different model. So we could end up with more capable phones, that cost less because they are selling so many more of them.
And if a Handset that is good for INDIA is good for the rest of the world too, it will be even better for the companies selling it.
