Phonebloks

I'm sure some have seen this.
Won't fit everybody's taste tough so...
Phone companies love those gadget wars of i have this you don't etc...
This is my pink design, and it looks better than you grey one etc...
But since most of the "major" ones look much alike (iphone)
Something similar could be a good idea in a "better" world...
Now go and ask those big companies to work together haha
Technically speaking i'm not sure if it's doable...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAw7vW7H0c

Engineering disaster... Having to route power and logic signals to different pins, deal with shoddy connections, esd, emi, tech support etc etc etc

Great concept, great video, but the guy is in cloud cookoo land.

/R

I thought it looked like 51X for phones!

Getting the empire to concede to the smaller faster pirate ships has never been a successful endeavor...hate to see a guys dream get crushed by the hard cold facts.

zayance said:

I'm sure some have seen this.
Won't fit everybody's taste tough so...
Phone companies love those gadget wars of i have this you don't etc...
This is my pink design, and it looks better than you grey one etc...
But since most of the "major" ones look much alike (iphone)
Something similar could be a good idea in a "better" world...
Now go and ask those big companies to work together haha
Technically speaking i'm not sure if it's doable...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAw7vW7H0c

Click to expand...

It's a concept created as a senior project by a student at an art/design school, not by an engineer or anyone who has a clue about how to bring a design into production.

-a

Saw this pop up on Reddit a while ago... My first thought was "this guy has no clue how cell phones or computers work, and that concept reflects it."

Cool idea, if only reality weren't...real.

Maybe you've already heard that, but seems like Google is on its way of trying to put this idea into reality.

Google Project Ara, maybe not so undoable, but their assembly seems to be diffeent, but still modular,
now lets wait and see in real life how this will behave, Will be annouced January 2015.


http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/177708-googles-modular-smartphone-project-ara-could-go-on-sale-next-year-for-50

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/google-ara-new-deal/


http://www.projectara.com/


In terms of "less waist" i don't know if this method will help that, i mean small little modules beeing build by millions and by third party afterwards etc....
But nonetheless a nice idea

With 4 pins connect the 'speed' block, I guess ram and CPU, so 2 for supply and the big amount of other 2 pins for bus with the world, I'd like to see it working...

Nice idea, hard to get of course but I've seen some people looking for this.

JS

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/15/5615880/building-blocks-how-project-ara-is-reinventing-the-smartphone

Another.  A few thoughts:

• With the current rate of innovation, you'd still be throwing away the whole phone every two years.  You'd just be doing it in increments.
• In a world that values lightweight smartphones, all of those slots and connectors seem like they would impede that goal.
• Remember when you dropped your phone on the subway and the battery flew out and you had to scramble to pick up all of the pieces?  Imagine that times 10.
• In a world of modern branding, what company is going to develop modules for someone else's phone?
• People like new phones.

geeks. That's who. If the price was right, I'd buy this.You are correct though, it needs to still be compact, or at least enough to compete with the average android. The connectors will need to be be freaking aerospace quality of they're going to work for a decent lifespan in and out of someone's pocket all day long.

Now Google can go from having the most vulnerable software platform to having the most vulnerable hardware too!  I love the idea of unregulated hardware in my phone.....

Yes all your points are correct, it's really a challenge, i was just suprised to know that someone actually
bought the idea and wants to spend millions doing so.

Well as mushy said, people like new phones, and of course companies would love to have the "monopole" of their creation
like the Iphone etc..., it's such a huge market for couple of years before someone steals the thing, that it's worth trying and
why Google is interested.
Or maybe they will just sell the idea, and something that works, and leave the rest to others while still taking something out of it,
but just pushing the idea etc... like Iphone, but without all the prosecutions etc....
Just for having somekind of "better" and "waistless" way of proposing something that everybody wants/use etc...

What i like is, for example, i still use my Galaxy S2, i had the idea of maybe changing lately, but the prices of new phones are too high,
and here in France, it's been two years now that providers have aligned their prices with one competitor and so the contracts you find now are pretty decent in terms of price and service unlimited calls etc... anyway, but they've fitted their loss in the prices of new phones, for example before that change,  i had bought mine for 50Euros for a renewal of my contract, new phone is 450 now with my contract.

My galaxy S2 was getting slow too, and after a couple of drops the back plastic was going bad etc...

The Solution in my case:

Hard reset the phone, and get it to factory settings, this solved the speed of it, all kinds of useless apps were in it before, and so that doesn't help,
now no more useless apps, just what is always needed.
Made sure to save important things in the micro SD card, so still in the phone while doing so, and contacts and all were anyway saved in my email account so perfect...

Found a batterie upgrade on Amazon for about 30Euros, so a 2000mAh battery with a plastic cover beeing a little higher for allowing it to pass, and made by Samsung.
Perfect now my phone can last a little more than a day and a half.

So just to say, beside the fact that i don't like to waist and buy buy buy for no reason, i tought that this modular concept can help still giving people the, "yes i have a new phone kind of
feeling", but without changing it all, just some parts, some color design maybe etc... and voila...
I like that, but i'm not sure, as i said before, if this will really change anything. We are all very different in terms of what we want, even if mostly directed by those companies to choose...
The real problem is the temptation of course, but i'm still very curious of how this will end up.