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A Commodore PET Smartphone?

Kodak and Commodore are zombie brands. People will still recognize their names and (arguably) that might add to the (perception of) value, so there's money in it. But I have to say that I don't like the namespace pollution: When I google for Commdore PET, I expect to see results about the computer, not the phone. Same goes for Kodak and the cameras.

So the world is going to be divided in two: Those who know the old Commodore brand and would like to preserve what it stood for, and those who don't care. Unfortunately the people who buy cheap Chinese cellphones are probably all in the latter category. Most unfortunate.

I guess the good news is that often, the public just doesn't go for it. Remember those Commodore PC's that came out a few years ago? Yeah, didn't think so.

===Jac
 
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Polaroid has managed a post-bankruptcy recovery as a brand label for low cost digital cameras and memory. Nostalgia might make someone buy a product over an equivalent product but it won't convince many to pay more to get less. Would be nice if one of the new users of the Commodore brand had a good solid business model that would work without the Commodore name.
 
As long as the «Commodore» name is kept alive (and known the newest generations) then we should be happy.
 
Oge said:
As long as the «Commodore» name is kept alive (and known the newest generations) then we should be happy.
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I'd say it's being abused rather than kept alive. To the newest generations, they'll see the name as synonymous with overpriced, rebadged generic tat.
 
I bet old fogies reacted the same way when they saw the historic Packard Bell brand name being used on cheap PCs...
 
I really love Commodore, but this feels so much like "Milking" the license. Throw the commodore logo and some emulator onto a chinese phone and BANG - Commodore phone. Would have been cool if they could have made it in the visual design of the C-64 or so, then I'd like it. But as it is it just looks too generic for my taste.
 
I have to question what value a commodore brand has today beyond nostalgia and novelty factor. The current owners are riding the coattails of distant past successes. It's not as if commodore has produced a real home grown product in the last three years after all... The last commodore products were 20 years ago!

It seems to me they would be better off creating a new brand for themselves.
 
simplex said:
I'd say it's being abused rather than kept alive. To the newest generations, they'll see the name as synonymous with overpriced, rebadged generic tat.
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It's really sad/slash/aggrieving when this happens, which is all too often anymore. Possibly the most egregious example I can think of is Schwinn Bicycles. I picked this as the worst because I know *several* senior citizen-age people who were suckered into thinking they were getting a great deal on a "real Schwinn" only to end up with a sub-Huffy-quality disaster that's so buggy and fragile (chains popping off, seats that won't stay adjusted, completely worthless brakes, etc.) that they're actively unsafe. It's pretty much as if Mercedes Benz were to go bankrupt and the name ended up on a cars made out of cotton fiber and recycled buggy parts by Zavstava Automobili in Corruptistan, Central Asia, only it's generally even harder for a layman to tell a decent bicycle from a horrible one just by looks/initial feel alone than it is to do the same with cars.

Perhaps the most *amusing*, outside of Commodore, that is, might have to be Curtis Mathes. The name went from adorning the "most expensive and darn well worth it" TV sets you could buy to being stamped on the most awful cheap Chinese TV sets you could buy from Kmart/Walmart/etc. Apparently they're not even doing that anymore but for some bizarre reason someone's now using the name to sell cheap LED light bulbs. How anyone could think that slapping that name on a *light bulb* 30 years after the premium TV company the brand was built on went bankrupt is beyond me but apparently someone sees value in it.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
It's really sad/slash/aggrieving when this happens, which is all too often anymore. Possibly the most egregious example I can think of is Schwinn Bicycles.
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Yes! Thank you! It is very embarrassing proudly riding my VERY well constructed "Chicago" Schwinn and having people associate it with modern Schwinn-branded junk. It's downright annoying trying to convince the guys in the bike shop that my bike is worth working on.

I've been saying it for a very long time: One of these days Chrysler/Fiat/whoever is going to badge a car "AMX". Well, I suppose it's happened already: You can buy a new Cherokee now, so all Cherokees must be as bad as the new ones.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
How anyone could think that slapping that name on a *light bulb* 30 years after the premium TV company the brand was built on went bankrupt is beyond me but apparently someone sees value in it.
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I had a Westinghouse 17" LCD monitor. It had nothing to do with the company that used to make power plants and light bulbs except the name.

And someone got the bright idea to put the Polaroid brand name on a cheap "plug-and-play" NES-clone video game:

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/419

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vwestlife said:
I had a Westinghouse 17" LCD monitor. It had nothing to do with the company that used to make power plants and light bulbs except the name...
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The RCA and Sylvania brands are being similarly mistreated. (I guess I don't need to remind you of those goofy "Sylvania" Windows CE netbook things they were selling at CVS a few years ago.) That also makes me sad.

Now that Radio Shack has gone down the toilet I fully expect we'll be seeing the name stamped on, I dunno, staplers, toxic drywall, and toilet paper in a few years. Not sure if that's more embarrassing than the years they spent as a bad cell phone store or not.
 
kyodai said:
I really love Commodore, but this feels so much like "Milking" the license. Throw the commodore logo and some emulator onto a chinese phone and BANG - Commodore phone. Would have been cool if they could have made it in the visual design of the C-64 or so, then I'd like it. But as it is it just looks too generic for my taste.
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My thoughts exactly. I would just rather put a generic Commodore named case on the back. Plus I'm getting to old to play games or what not on my phone. I still am amazed how the younger crowd thinks watching a movie on a 5" screen is satisfying.
 
It amazes me that people can't watch TV unless the TV is the size of a billboard.
 
car88fan2 said:
still am amazed how the younger crowd thinks watching a movie on a 5" screen is satisfying.
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I'm pretty sure the screen on my current smartphone has equal-if-not-greater surface area than the one on the Osborne I CP/M luggable I had for a while... which would also make it bigger than the SX-64's built in monitor, come to think of it.
 
That would make it a phablet...

The SX-64's monitor would be great if it was monochrome. I know, heresy...
 
Eudimorphodon said:
I'm pretty sure the screen on my current smartphone has equal-if-not-greater surface area than the one on the Osborne I CP/M luggable I had for a while... which would also make it bigger than the SX-64's built in monitor, come to think of it.
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The smallest size I can handle looking at is my 1084S. My buddy had a SX-64 but almost always had it on a 1701. But yes my TV's at home are no smaller than 50".
 
Out of curiosity, what is the actual "viewable area" of the SX-64? I know it's quoted as a "five inch" screen, but of course with CRTs some of that is lost to overscan/border or covered by the bezel. *if* the SX-64's screen were actually 5" viewable that puts it in the middle of the pack of "phablets", but if it's closer to 4" then most "premium" phones on the market today (screens smaller than 4.something are getting rare in that category) may well edge it out.
 
I'll have to measure it.

I do use mine enough that I'm considering putting a monochrome CRT in it, if I can find one. The dot pitch of the stock CRT is terrible.

On second thought, 4" viewable can't be right, I don't think. That means a vertical viewing area of 2.4". It must be closer to 5", but even that seems small at 3" vertical.

5" might be the diagonal dimension of the non-border part of the VIC-II display; as weird as that seems, it makes the most sense, considering the viewable part of the CRT is taller than two half-height floppy drives.

I've no idea what the newer phones are like. I just measured both the ones I have on me at under 7" sq. At 4" viewable, an NTSC CRT is 7.68" sq. I think one of my other phones is similar, and one *may* be close to 7.7" sq.
 
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I haven't had mine in a long long time, but if memory serves the actual viewable area is considerably less than 5" when accounting for the mainly unusable overscan area.
 
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