by schlafen on Sun Sep 25, 2022 2:43 pm
[/quote]
And most of those hardware changes to make it a better head unit would make it a worse phone, which would mean less sales because the market for bicycle head units is super small compared to the market for phones.
As for crashes. They're inevitable if you ride. It's a matter of when not if you crash. If you're racing the frequency of crashes is going to be higher compared to if you don't race. Also bikes, even carbon ones, do survive crashes quite well unless your bike gets ridden over by someone or it hits something.
[/quote]
There's no money in racing by itself, if that was the case, wahoo and the like would still be unknown companies for the average rider. It's the consumer, the enthusiast, the average, that spends the loot. They give the stuff away for free to most pros even spend their own money to fund races.
People buy race wheels all the time, if one is willing to sped 4k on a set of wheels, £250 is a drop in the bucked to have as a race dedicated wahoo unit. No need for that daily. Don't kid yourself, 99% are average on this forum have never, are not, and will never race. Don;t blame them one bit, thrashing 10k equipment racing makes one pucker.
I put about 9000 miles on the bike every year and have only crashed once in the last 5 years and that was a minor spill that resulted in a non destructive crash. I also don't race, only 'races' I do are long distance audax races.
Again, the crashes you are expressing here seem to be either your poor ride skills or your riding environment, not happening all the time and everywhere like you think.
As far as phone capability, depends what you expect a phone to do, if you want a computer then the iphone 14 ultra brick is your best bet, don't strap it to a bike cause it's heavy, carry it in your pocket cause it's lighter, lol. I hope you get the chance to pay for the features you want.
I want to use it as a phone (hence the name), 4G data is fine (data speed is not the issue nowadays, coverage is the problem), GPS/BLE/WiFi/NFC connectivity, touchscreen (we're not savages), android, basic apps (Strava, Garmin connect and the lot) camera (if non protrouding, otherwise can do without) batteries have come a long way too and be iPhone 5S sized (which is roughly karoo sized, less than half the thickness).
I don't need the thing to be able to drive my car and make me pancakes, I would also like the option to NOT pay for useless features like 5 cameras and a purse just to be able to lug the brick around. My requirements are not out of this world, everything exists already, it only needs to be repackaged and priced accordingly. I expect them to sell absolutely loads of them to non cyclists. But if they do that, who's going to buy the bricks?