Modular Phone?

[Zul Y]

Phonebloks

Along the same design philosophy as RED. Interesting!

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Interesting indeed.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

The idea is interesting though I'm not sure about this strategy, instead of building the phone himself he wants everyone else to pitch the idea to phone manufacturers for him and I'm not even really convinced any manufacturers would be interested in a phone which could have bits and pieces of it swapped out for their rivals product.

 

[Kwan Khan]

NIce

 

[Jason Comparetto]

nice "idea", but in reality these phones would be quite large and heavy. making things plug/unplug adds dimension and weight to a phone. making it future-proof also adds weight, as the connections would have to be made quite robust to accommodate the future needs of faster processors. also, people like me enjoy the benefits of fully-integrated phones where the camera/email/gps are all part of the same phone and can talk to one another. once you break it apart, its kind of a step backwards in terms of compatibility and stability.

while i'm a big fan of the smartphone movement, people need to understand that its not going to replace everything. it kind of reminds me of the 80's when computers were starting to do interesting things. people thought "well if the computer can do my homework and compose a song, it should also be able to make a blonde supermodel with an english accent and it can turn a mentally challenged person into a super god". and then we have movies like "weird science" and "lawnmower man". 20 years later we find that computers will probably never be able to accomplish those things by themselves.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

The main problem I see with this idea, is that most lay-people don't understand well enough the interactions and reliances between components. Easy example: if I want to go from a "normal" screen to a "retina-like" screen, all I do is swap out the screen, right? Hmm why is my framerate abysmal now . . . oh, because I didn't swap the processor, and there's just not enough brute force to handle the screen at the intended framerate.

That's an easy, logical example. But there's loads of them. There are so many shortcuts and benefits you get from controlling, integrating, and specifically designing for a specific set of hardware.

 

[Jason Comparetto]

The main problem I see with this idea, is that most lay-people don't understand well enough the interactions and reliances between components. Easy example: if I want to go from a "normal" screen to a "retina-like" screen, all I do is swap out the screen, right? Hmm why is my framerate abysmal now . . . oh, because I didn't swap the processor, and there's just not enough brute force to handle the screen at the intended framerate.

That's an easy, logical example. But there's loads of them. There are so many shortcuts and benefits you get from controlling, integrating, and specifically designing for a specific set of hardware.

That's a good example of why this sort of thing won't work. Come to think of it, the idea kind of seems half-baked. If modular devices were beneficial, we'd probably see more of them in consumer's hands. at the moment, i can't really think of anything that's really taken off. i think Ridgid power tools tried to do something like that with their 18v line, but not sure if it was a commercial success.

 

[BrendanLeahy]

people thought "well if the computer can do my homework and compose a song, it should also be able to make a blonde supermodel with an english accent

And behold, 3D printers were born

 

[Petr Dvorak]

For me its the design and ergonomics of the GUI maybe more important than hardware itself.

 

[ericyoung]

Looks like Google are running with the concept!
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/google-project-ara/?mbid=social_twitter

 

[Wayne Morellini]

I posted on this on a couple of threads before with good reasons it can be desirable

Motorola was onboard.