Hello there When I was surfing internet I accidently found something worth to consider:
A phone only lasts a couple of years before it breaks or becomes obsolete. Although it's often just one part which killed it we throw everything away since it's almost impossible to repair or upgrade. visit www.phonebloks.com to show your support and raise your voice.
What you guys think? Do corporations like Apple, Samsung, Sony will accept this new trend?
I personally would love phones created from blocks like this. Any damaged or outdated element can be easily switched for whatever you want.
It is an interesting concept, but it is not technologically feasible right now. Right now a phone is hugely optimized to maximize the space they are working with. Not only in part location, but also in bandwidth for each particular component (the speaker doesnt need the same bandwidth as the cpu, or the camera, or the memory, or the screen, etc). It takes more than just an electrical current for each piece to communicate with each piece.
If you remove the optimizations in phones, you lose all of the efficiency and use more power to do less computations putting you back years in terms of capability.
This thing was thought of by a design student with no technological background.
This reminds me of Lego. What happens if you build out a beautiful piece of machinery, then, you drop it... All your pieces will go everywhere and some one is bound to step on a piece.
On September 13 2013 22:45 ShoCkeyy wrote: This reminds me of Lego. What happens if you build out a beautiful piece of machinery, then, you drop it... All your pieces will go everywhere and some one is bound to step on a piece.
if you actually paid attention, the blocks lock in via 2 screws at the bottom, to prevent exactly that. Do you really think they would create an idea with such a simple flaw?
Interesting idea, not sure if it has any real viability tho.
It's an interesting idea. Doesn't seem plausible though. I'd require a ton of companies to actually design something new and work together instead of working on making themselves more money.
It's completely possible with enough research, raw material and time. Witch means that we would need humans with enough engineering knowledge, the right materials to test and dispose during the research stage and reasonable time. If it's feasible within the next year? VERY unlikely. But, to accomplish something like that, we need to start it somewhere. If there is interest from the companies with enough resources? I don't think it's totally impossible, like some of you here suggested. I can see a lot of ways of profit from this: Patenting the technological advancements found during the research stage and charging some fee to be able to create a compatible device is one of the ways that I see a possible huge return of investment, for example.
Edit: For the Resource Based Economy advocates, it must looks extremely awesome.
For this to work you need the big corporations to accept certain industry standards like mATX for example in computers. Thus it needs backing of the big corporations in order to succeed.
Thats how phones are made today, they choose componets print a circuit board to hook em up and make either a samsung or lg or iphone case around it.
Making phones with changeable components... And then suddenly you need extra circuits/connections in "base". Or the new gen of memory needs other bus. Fact od the matter, companies want you to throw away your phone after 2 years. It has to become obsolete so they can keep producing phones. Also they want you to throw away the complete phone if one component is faulty, to sell a new one. Thats how it is. If you want to change itm make a company yourself and get it to work, dont complain about the other´s success with throwaway electronics.
I like the idea, not just for phones. It's fucking stupid so much shit gets thrown away, just because one part doesn't work anymore. It has frustrated me many times before. Sometimes it's something you can fix yourself, but I've also had times where I had to ask the company for a spare part, and they wouldn't / couldn't give it to me. I can get why, but I still hate it.
The only real solution I see to this problem is simply learning how to fix shit yourselves, even though there could be so many better alternatives.
On September 13 2013 22:55 Jonrock wrote: I don't see this happening either. Making technology more flexible always comes with downsides, be it efficiency, cost or reliability.
Right like making a palm pilot into a phone, that really reduced its efficiency and reliability while making cost go up! I mean we don't ever see smart phones anymore, -.-'
On September 13 2013 23:18 HaRuHi wrote: upgrade the part that makes it faster xD
upgrade to hd display without switching the graphic chip... xD
upgrade storage without upgrading bus XD
I had a good laugh
......... Right except for 1 simple thing....if you already have a graphics card that can handle HD...there is no harm in transitioning to a bigger HD screen.....
Just like I can upgrade my CPU without upgrading my motherboard since there are a RANGE of CPUs available for each socket.....
same thing with storage.....if I have sata 2.0, it doesn't matter what capacity I stick into the sata 2.0 connector as long as it is sata 2.0....
I'm having a good laugh at you.
In theory it can work as long as they can agree on a universal standard for the parts. From my understanding of the video, the part itself is the one doing the thinking while just being transferred across the base which acts like a motherboard....if you think about it, its basically a computer thats a phone.....and to the guy saying computers are going all-in-one form factor, only if you buy pre-built pieces of shit. I'll stick with my current method thanks so much.
On September 13 2013 23:36 gneGne wrote: For this to work you need the big corporations to accept certain industry standards like mATX for example in computers. Thus it needs backing of the big corporations in order to succeed.
Having standards would allow you to swap pieces, but you still have issue of needing more than an electric current to communicate with other devices. Then, using their technical terms, what if you swap your "speed thingy" to a new "speed thingy" but there is not enough bandwidth with the "memory thingy" or other thingies creating a bottleneck making your "speed thingy" upgrade useless?
On September 13 2013 23:36 gneGne wrote: For this to work you need the big corporations to accept certain industry standards like mATX for example in computers. Thus it needs backing of the big corporations in order to succeed.
Having standards would allow you to swap pieces, but you still have issue of needing more than an electric current to communicate with other devices. Then, using their technical terms, what if you swap your "speed thingy" to a new "speed thingy" but there is not enough bandwidth with the "memory thingy" or other thingies creating a bottleneck making your "speed thingy" upgrade useless?
If what you say is a barrier, where are you typing this message? If it's in a computer, it's very likely that you have a motherboard. A MOBO handles exactly this kind of problems that you are suggesting.
On September 13 2013 22:55 Jonrock wrote: I don't see this happening either. Making technology more flexible always comes with downsides, be it efficiency, cost or reliability.
Right like making a palm pilot into a phone, that really reduced its efficiency and reliability while making cost go up! I mean we don't ever see smart phones anymore, -.-'
On September 13 2013 23:18 HaRuHi wrote: upgrade the part that makes it faster xD
upgrade to hd display without switching the graphic chip... xD
upgrade storage without upgrading bus XD
I had a good laugh
......... Right except for 1 simple thing....if you already have a graphics card that can handle HD...there is no harm in transitioning to a bigger HD screen.....
Just like I can upgrade my CPU without upgrading my motherboard since there are a RANGE of CPUs available for each socket.....
same thing with storage.....if I have sata 2.0, it doesn't matter what capacity I stick into the sata 2.0 connector as long as it is sata 2.0....
I'm having a good laugh at you.
In theory it can work as long as they can agree on a universal standard for the parts. From my understanding of the video, the part itself is the one doing the thinking while just being transferred across the base which acts like a motherboard....if you think about it, its basically a computer thats a phone.....and to the guy saying computers are going all-in-one form factor, only if you buy pre-built pieces of shit. I'll stick with my current method thanks so much.
It creates an issue with app development too. If there is a game that runs in HD, and you upgrade to a bigger better HD screen without upgrading the CPU, then suddenly your phone wont be able to handle it while it would've otherwise if you hadnt changed the screen.
On September 13 2013 23:36 gneGne wrote: For this to work you need the big corporations to accept certain industry standards like mATX for example in computers. Thus it needs backing of the big corporations in order to succeed.
Having standards would allow you to swap pieces, but you still have issue of needing more than an electric current to communicate with other devices. Then, using their technical terms, what if you swap your "speed thingy" to a new "speed thingy" but there is not enough bandwidth with the "memory thingy" or other thingies creating a bottleneck making your "speed thingy" upgrade useless?
If what you say is a barrier, where are you typing this message? If it's in a computer, it's very likely that you have a motherboard. A MOBO handles exactly this kind of problems that you are suggesting.
And motherboards are designed with specific components in specific locations. I cant plug my HDD into the PCI slot. I cant put my CPU in the GPU slot. I cant put the wifi card in the CPU socket.
My mobo works with a certain type of CPU that has a certain amount of speed working in unison with a small range of memory speeds.
You will also notice that as you scale down the mobo, you lose flexibility in what you can put in it (look at a full size 17" laptop vs a 11" laptop, though this is also a power contraint issue).
On September 13 2013 22:43 TheRabidDeer wrote: It is an interesting concept, but it is not technologically feasible right now. Right now a phone is hugely optimized to maximize the space they are working with. Not only in part location, but also in bandwidth for each particular component (the speaker doesnt need the same bandwidth as the cpu, or the camera, or the memory, or the screen, etc). It takes more than just an electrical current for each piece to communicate with each piece.
If you remove the optimizations in phones, you lose all of the efficiency and use more power to do less computations putting you back years in terms of capability.
This thing was thought of by a design student with no technological background.
We don't need powerful phones. We need phones with the ability to phone. For other needs, you have cameras, portable consoles, mp3 readers, etc.
I'd rather buy a phone that only phone and texts, but can last more than 1 year buy changing pieces than buy another smartphone, ignore half the functionalities (I always have a computer nearby, don't need them), and pay ten times the price what I really need would cost.
On September 13 2013 22:43 TheRabidDeer wrote: It is an interesting concept, but it is not technologically feasible right now. Right now a phone is hugely optimized to maximize the space they are working with. Not only in part location, but also in bandwidth for each particular component (the speaker doesnt need the same bandwidth as the cpu, or the camera, or the memory, or the screen, etc). It takes more than just an electrical current for each piece to communicate with each piece.
If you remove the optimizations in phones, you lose all of the efficiency and use more power to do less computations putting you back years in terms of capability.
This thing was thought of by a design student with no technological background.
We don't need powerful phones. We need phones with the ability to phone. For other needs, you have cameras, portable consoles, mp3 readers, etc.
I'd rather buy a phone that only phone and texts, but can last more than 1 year buy changing pieces than buy another smartphone, ignore half the functionalities (I always have a computer nearby, don't need them), and pay ten times the price what I really need would cost.
If you need a phone that only phones, you shouldnt ever need to buy a new phone. I have never had a phone die on me. You can use those old nokia phones. In fact, this topic is entirely irrelevant to you because this design is for smartphones, which are much more than phones.
On September 13 2013 22:55 Jonrock wrote: I don't see this happening either. Making technology more flexible always comes with downsides, be it efficiency, cost or reliability.
Right like making a palm pilot into a phone, that really reduced its efficiency and reliability while making cost go up! I mean we don't ever see smart phones anymore, -.-'
On September 13 2013 23:18 HaRuHi wrote: upgrade the part that makes it faster xD
upgrade to hd display without switching the graphic chip... xD
upgrade storage without upgrading bus XD
I had a good laugh
......... Right except for 1 simple thing....if you already have a graphics card that can handle HD...there is no harm in transitioning to a bigger HD screen.....
Just like I can upgrade my CPU without upgrading my motherboard since there are a RANGE of CPUs available for each socket.....
same thing with storage.....if I have sata 2.0, it doesn't matter what capacity I stick into the sata 2.0 connector as long as it is sata 2.0....
I'm having a good laugh at you.
In theory it can work as long as they can agree on a universal standard for the parts. From my understanding of the video, the part itself is the one doing the thinking while just being transferred across the base which acts like a motherboard....if you think about it, its basically a computer thats a phone.....and to the guy saying computers are going all-in-one form factor, only if you buy pre-built pieces of shit. I'll stick with my current method thanks so much.
It creates an issue with app development too. If there is a game that runs in HD, and you upgrade to a bigger better HD screen without upgrading the CPU, then suddenly your phone wont be able to handle it while it would've otherwise if you hadnt changed the screen.
Then apps will have to adapt with settings much like games adapt to various hardware configs across the board. Same thing happens with computers and it all works out fine. Hell how many threads in tech support alone are "i just bought a new display without upgrading my gpu and now x game isn't as smooth". And always the first question asked is "well did you turn down the settings after you turned up the resolution?"
I'm not saying its a smart idea to upgrade your display without a new gpu, but if you know it can handle it I don't see how that is "lol" worthy.
On September 13 2013 22:45 ShoCkeyy wrote: This reminds me of Lego. What happens if you build out a beautiful piece of machinery, then, you drop it... All your pieces will go everywhere and some one is bound to step on a piece.
if you actually paid attention, the blocks lock in via 2 screws at the bottom, to prevent exactly that. Do you really think they would create an idea with such a simple flaw?
Interesting idea, not sure if it has any real viability tho.
You're not thinking enough to be outside of the box; so, let me put it in other words for you. The screws lock it into place of course, but if you've ever owned a phone, things still break. Now what if a pin breaks when you dropped it? The screws hold all the blocks together, but it doesn't hold that one block. If the pin breaks, the block falls off then you have the pieces everywhere with the pins still on the board.
To those guys that says it's impossible. I don't know what kind of barriers are you talking about. It's not like we are creating a quantum computer or a time travel machine. There is absolutely nothing outstanding knew in the concept. The problem of interchangeable components is already solved trough motherboards. The problem of multiple graphics rendering techniques vs different hardware power is already solved trough programming API's like DirectX and OpenGL. There are components that will only work in some kinds of motherboards, but still, changing just the MOBO and the HD to get a bigger bus for example, is better than changing ALL other components in a single time. Ten years ago we couldn't even imagine that would be possible to create a computer with hand size and MORE raw power than old computers. But with enough time and resources, it was accomplished. The problems to accomplish this concept are not technical, they are social: Will a group of people with current hardware knowledge have the motivation (money), time and resources (raw material) to accomplish something like this?
Having changeable parts is a nice idea, but usually doesn't work with technology. If you have all these parts, you're missing out on the economies of scale that producing just one part gives. Have 2-5 different screens? Thats 2-5 assembly lines that need to be built compared to the 1 of a standard phone. Not to mention mobo is usually tailored to cpu, gpu etc. and not other way around.
On September 13 2013 23:56 kemihan wrote: To those guys that says it's impossible. I don't know what kind of barriers are you talking about. It's not like we are creating a quantum computer or a time travel machine. There is absolutely nothing outstanding knew in the concept. The problem of interchangeable components is already solved trough motherboards. The problem of multiple graphics rendering techniques vs different hardware power is already solved trough programming API's like DirectX and OpenGL. There are components that will only work in some kinds of motherboards, but still, changing just the MOBO and the HD to get a bigger bus for example, is better than changing ALL other components in a single time. Ten years ago we couldn't even imagine that would be possible to create a computer with hand size and MORE raw power than old computers. But with enough time and resources, it was accomplished. The problems to accomplish this concept are not technical, they are social: Will a group of people with current hardware knowledge have the motivation (money), time and resources (raw material) to accomplish something like this?
I am not saying it is impossible, I am saying you lose all of the efficiency in phone design.
People upgrade their phones every year. Since you pay less for pieces, they are probably going to upgrade more often, especially when you have an opportunity to make your phone unique instead of buying the latest IPhone or Galaxy like everyone else.
On September 14 2013 00:12 renkin wrote: People upgrade their phones every year. Since you pay less for pieces, they are probably going to upgrade more often, especially when you have an opportunity to make your phone unique instead of buying the latest IPhone or Galaxy like everyone else.
You're probably going to pay more per piece. Apple makes so much more money than samsung because they only have to pay for production lines/support for 5-6 phones while samsung has to build lines and support services for 50-60. Imagine having to build a line for each COMPONENT. packaging, shipping, and offering a support line for each of your hundreds of products. The problem with android as a software is that its fragmented, now you're going to have phones with fragmentation within themselves.
TLDR: phoneblocks phone more expensive than reg mass produced phone. more prone to problems as well.
On September 13 2013 23:56 kemihan wrote: To those guys that says it's impossible. I don't know what kind of barriers are you talking about. It's not like we are creating a quantum computer or a time travel machine. There is absolutely nothing outstanding knew in the concept. The problem of interchangeable components is already solved trough motherboards. The problem of multiple graphics rendering techniques vs different hardware power is already solved trough programming API's like DirectX and OpenGL. There are components that will only work in some kinds of motherboards, but still, changing just the MOBO and the HD to get a bigger bus for example, is better than changing ALL other components in a single time. Ten years ago we couldn't even imagine that would be possible to create a computer with hand size and MORE raw power than old computers. But with enough time and resources, it was accomplished. The problems to accomplish this concept are not technical, they are social: Will a group of people with current hardware knowledge have the motivation (money), time and resources (raw material) to accomplish something like this?
I am not saying it is impossible, I am saying you lose all of the efficiency in phone design.
It's a completely technical point (and a good one, I know). But, is physically impossible to think in alternatives to current tech that would make something like that feasible and with enough efficiency to justify the investments in the research? As a tech geek, I don't think so. Every now and than I see news about new form of materials and information exchanging that are more efficient than today tech.
I am not saying that there aren't difficulties, but that it's probably feasible in a tangible time frame. It's not like something that would only be accomplished in 100 years. If I would guess, in less than 10 years, with enough effort, something like that would be accomplished. But , again: will anyone be willing to invest on this? That's the question.
The biggest, most glaring flaw that proponents of this idea are missing is that technology isn't iteratively evolved. Surely, if you can standardize the connections to the "motherboard" and the communication protocols, we are looking at a two year compatibility life span. Tops. Technology, as I mentioned isn't simply iteratively evolved around a single stack of protocols, but great leaps in performance are done on a generational basis. This will mean that your precious motherboard, and all the blocks that you would like to keep are worth as much as rubbish in roughly the same time frame that you would wear out a regular smartphone anyway.
If you're the type of person that has the resources to switch up your display every month, or want a few hundred MHz of extra power in your CPU before your block motherboard is ready for the dumpster then this is the technology for you.
If you're more of the type of person that is out for generational leaps of power, stick with the pro phone makers for the time being.
And for all the people saying that I'm a hater for having this opinion: Please explain to me how you're going to construct a motherboard that will be able to handle a new CPU or display or GFX that pushes 4x the amount of pixels through the motherboard (going from FullHD to UHD[4K], 2MPix>8MPix) without the added benefit of component miniaturization and wider pipelines/buses.
Cool idea, way too complicated for the average user. Maybe in 100 years or so, it might be more feasible.
Most people don't know what a CPU is, or RAM, or what ghz measures, or anything like that. The second you starting dealing in those terms, their brain goes full retard and they want someone to do it for them. They would rather pay more to have someone make these decisions for them, because learning and thinking is hard.
On September 13 2013 23:56 kemihan wrote: To those guys that says it's impossible. I don't know what kind of barriers are you talking about. It's not like we are creating a quantum computer or a time travel machine. There is absolutely nothing outstanding knew in the concept. The problem of interchangeable components is already solved trough motherboards. The problem of multiple graphics rendering techniques vs different hardware power is already solved trough programming API's like DirectX and OpenGL. There are components that will only work in some kinds of motherboards, but still, changing just the MOBO and the HD to get a bigger bus for example, is better than changing ALL other components in a single time. Ten years ago we couldn't even imagine that would be possible to create a computer with hand size and MORE raw power than old computers. But with enough time and resources, it was accomplished. The problems to accomplish this concept are not technical, they are social: Will a group of people with current hardware knowledge have the motivation (money), time and resources (raw material) to accomplish something like this?
I am not saying it is impossible, I am saying you lose all of the efficiency in phone design.
It's a completely technical point (and a good one, I know). But, is physically impossible to think in alternatives to current tech that would make something like that feasible and with enough efficiency to justify the investments in the research? As a tech geek, I don't think so. Every now and than I see news about new form of materials and information exchanging that are more efficient than today tech.
I am not saying that there aren't difficulties, but that it's probably feasible in a tangible time frame. It's not like something that would only be accomplished in 100 years. If I would guess, in less than 10 years, with enough effort, something like that would be accomplished. But , again: will anyone be willing to invest on this? That's the question.
Optimization is a huge deal.
If you want a comparison on what optimization entails, look no further than consoles for a pinnacle in optimization. Even now, PS3/X360 games look pretty damned great, even though the hardware is 10 years old. Why? Because EVERYTHING is optimized in it. The software coding, the hardware inside, everything.
The mere fact that we have phones that have HD cameras that can record 720p or better VIDEO at 60fps, speakers, internet, bluetooth, wifi, headphones, decent HDD size, giant touch screens and really pretty incredible computing power is insane. Likely, most of that is because of optimized hardware... not only in placement but also in specs.
A very cool idea and probably would be the ultimate dream phone device for consumers who highly value the practical usage of the phone, especially if the device would be durable then i will be a hardcore fan for it. Too bad the companies would be making less money from it (why do you think DIY a desktop is always cheaper/cost-effective than buying a whole desktop from any brand) so it is a no go on the business prospective.
Unless some big companies willing to risk everything just to break the biggest competitor in the same field (like iphone i guess) and make a bold move.
On September 14 2013 00:27 besez wrote: The biggest, most glaring flaw that proponents of this idea are missing is that technology isn't iteratively evolved. Surely, if you can standardize the connections to the "motherboard" and the communication protocols, we are looking at a two year compatibility life span. Tops. Technology, as I mentioned isn't simply iteratively evolved around a single stack of protocols, but great leaps in performance are done on a generational basis. This will mean that your precious motherboard, and all the blocks that you would like to keep are worth as much as rubbish in roughly the same time frame that you would wear out a regular smartphone anyway.
If you're the type of person that has the resources to switch up your display every month, or want a few hundred MHz of extra power in your CPU before your block motherboard is ready for the dumpster then this is the technology for you.
If you're more of the type of person that is out for generational leaps of power, stick with the pro phone makers for the time being.
And for all the people saying that I'm a hater for having this opinion: Please explain to me how you're going to construct a motherboard that will be able to handle a new CPU or display or GFX that pushes 4x the amount of pixels through the motherboard (going from FullHD to UHD[4K], 2MPix>8MPix) without the added benefit of component miniaturization and wider pipelines/buses.
Humbug!
Retro-compatibility between consecutive generations. It's the same way that the current motherboards solve the same problem. You update the motherboard to a more powerfull one, but it will be compatible with all your current devices + have support to new ones. So, if you want to get that knew outsdanding GPU, you change your MOBO, your GPU, but not your RAM, HD, DISPLAY, CPU, etc, etc, etc.
On September 14 2013 00:27 besez wrote: The biggest, most glaring flaw that proponents of this idea are missing is that technology isn't iteratively evolved. Surely, if you can standardize the connections to the "motherboard" and the communication protocols, we are looking at a two year compatibility life span. Tops. Technology, as I mentioned isn't simply iteratively evolved around a single stack of protocols, but great leaps in performance are done on a generational basis. This will mean that your precious motherboard, and all the blocks that you would like to keep are worth as much as rubbish in roughly the same time frame that you would wear out a regular smartphone anyway.
If you're the type of person that has the resources to switch up your display every month, or want a few hundred MHz of extra power in your CPU before your block motherboard is ready for the dumpster then this is the technology for you.
If you're more of the type of person that is out for generational leaps of power, stick with the pro phone makers for the time being.
And for all the people saying that I'm a hater for having this opinion: Please explain to me how you're going to construct a motherboard that will be able to handle a new CPU or display or GFX that pushes 4x the amount of pixels through the motherboard (going from FullHD to UHD[4K], 2MPix>8MPix) without the added benefit of component miniaturization and wider pipelines/buses.
Humbug!
Retro-compatibility between consecutive generations. It's the same way that the current motherboards solve the same problem. You update the motherboard to a more powerfull one, but it will be compatible with all your current devices + have support to new ones. So, if you want to get that knew outsdanding GPU, you change your MOBO, your GPU, but not your RAM, HD, DISPLAY, CPU, etc, etc, etc.
That sounds like a hassle. If you're going to upgrade your mobo so that it now handles beefier parts, why not also upgrade those parts while you're at it? You might as well upgrade everything.
I like this idea in that you should be able to fix one part of your phone that's broken without throwing away the entire phone. As for upgrading, well some people are showing good arguments as to why it's not feasible, both technologically and economically.
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
On September 14 2013 00:27 besez wrote: The biggest, most glaring flaw that proponents of this idea are missing is that technology isn't iteratively evolved. Surely, if you can standardize the connections to the "motherboard" and the communication protocols, we are looking at a two year compatibility life span. Tops. Technology, as I mentioned isn't simply iteratively evolved around a single stack of protocols, but great leaps in performance are done on a generational basis. This will mean that your precious motherboard, and all the blocks that you would like to keep are worth as much as rubbish in roughly the same time frame that you would wear out a regular smartphone anyway.
If you're the type of person that has the resources to switch up your display every month, or want a few hundred MHz of extra power in your CPU before your block motherboard is ready for the dumpster then this is the technology for you.
If you're more of the type of person that is out for generational leaps of power, stick with the pro phone makers for the time being.
And for all the people saying that I'm a hater for having this opinion: Please explain to me how you're going to construct a motherboard that will be able to handle a new CPU or display or GFX that pushes 4x the amount of pixels through the motherboard (going from FullHD to UHD[4K], 2MPix>8MPix) without the added benefit of component miniaturization and wider pipelines/buses.
Humbug!
Retro-compatibility between consecutive generations. It's the same way that the current motherboards solve the same problem. You update the motherboard to a more powerfull one, but it will be compatible with all your current devices + have support to new ones. So, if you want to get that knew outsdanding GPU, you change your MOBO, your GPU, but not your RAM, HD, DISPLAY, CPU, etc, etc, etc.
That sounds like a hassle. If you're going to upgrade your mobo so that it now handles beefier parts, why not also upgrade those parts while you're at it? You might as well upgrade everything.
I like this idea in that you should be able to fix one part of your phone that's broken without throwing away the entire phone. As for upgrading, well some people are showing good arguments as to why it's not feasible, both technologically and economically.
You wouldn't change everything to save money/resources. That's the only reason to implement a solution like that. It's ecologically very efficient.
Sadly, as other pointed out very smartly, in today's economy, planed obsolescence is very profitable. It's a very good example on a bad part of our current financial model. Money > efficient use of earth resources.
Not only is it physically impossible, it also wouldn't make sense economically and be impossible to provide software for among an abundance of other reasons.
As an ECE major: This will never happen. Do you have any idea how long it takes us to agree upon the simplest of standards? Now multiply that by the massive number of different interfaces in this design.
Also, looking at all the ridiculous tech lawsuits do you really think these companies will ever get together and support this one platform? Apple at the very least has time and time again told consumers it doesn't give a shit what we want.
This is one of those cute ideas that just isn't grounded in reality.
Not only is it physically impossible, it also wouldn't make sense economically and be impossible to provide software for among an abundance of other reasons.
Might not be physically impossible. Impractical would probably be better.. I'm sure if a ton of companies put their minds to it and standardized connectors and interfaces and whatnot you could make a semi-modular phone(battery, antenna modules, speakers, storage, and possibly a few others). But these are also the modules that are most easily changed anyways and least important. Fully modular on the scale of a PC is absolutely impractical though. The main computing chips are soldered onto the mainboard for a good reason, fragility, the hundreds or thousands of tiny soldered joints(sub mm spacing) and other things that are straight up impractical to make modular.
On September 14 2013 00:27 besez wrote: The biggest, most glaring flaw that proponents of this idea are missing is that technology isn't iteratively evolved. Surely, if you can standardize the connections to the "motherboard" and the communication protocols, we are looking at a two year compatibility life span. Tops. Technology, as I mentioned isn't simply iteratively evolved around a single stack of protocols, but great leaps in performance are done on a generational basis. This will mean that your precious motherboard, and all the blocks that you would like to keep are worth as much as rubbish in roughly the same time frame that you would wear out a regular smartphone anyway.
If you're the type of person that has the resources to switch up your display every month, or want a few hundred MHz of extra power in your CPU before your block motherboard is ready for the dumpster then this is the technology for you.
If you're more of the type of person that is out for generational leaps of power, stick with the pro phone makers for the time being.
And for all the people saying that I'm a hater for having this opinion: Please explain to me how you're going to construct a motherboard that will be able to handle a new CPU or display or GFX that pushes 4x the amount of pixels through the motherboard (going from FullHD to UHD[4K], 2MPix>8MPix) without the added benefit of component miniaturization and wider pipelines/buses.
Humbug!
Retro-compatibility between consecutive generations. It's the same way that the current motherboards solve the same problem. You update the motherboard to a more powerfull one, but it will be compatible with all your current devices + have support to new ones. So, if you want to get that knew outsdanding GPU, you change your MOBO, your GPU, but not your RAM, HD, DISPLAY, CPU, etc, etc, etc.
That sounds like a hassle. If you're going to upgrade your mobo so that it now handles beefier parts, why not also upgrade those parts while you're at it? You might as well upgrade everything.
I like this idea in that you should be able to fix one part of your phone that's broken without throwing away the entire phone. As for upgrading, well some people are showing good arguments as to why it's not feasible, both technologically and economically.
You wouldn't change everything to save money/resources. That's the only reason to implement a solution like that. It's ecologically very efficient.
Sadly, as other pointed out very smartly, in today's economy, planed obsolescence is very profitable. It's a very good example on a bad part of our current financial model. Money > efficient use of earth resources.
It depends how things played out. You'd be turning a one sku phone into a multi sku phone (the individual modular components) so you could wind up with more resources devoted to packaging, shipping and inventory.
On September 13 2013 22:55 Jonrock wrote: I don't see this happening either. Making technology more flexible always comes with downsides, be it efficiency, cost or reliability.
Right like making a palm pilot into a phone, that really reduced its efficiency and reliability while making cost go up! I mean we don't ever see smart phones anymore, -.-'
On September 13 2013 23:18 HaRuHi wrote: upgrade the part that makes it faster xD
upgrade to hd display without switching the graphic chip... xD
upgrade storage without upgrading bus XD
I had a good laugh
......... Right except for 1 simple thing....if you already have a graphics card that can handle HD...there is no harm in transitioning to a bigger HD screen.....
Just like I can upgrade my CPU without upgrading my motherboard since there are a RANGE of CPUs available for each socket.....
same thing with storage.....if I have sata 2.0, it doesn't matter what capacity I stick into the sata 2.0 connector as long as it is sata 2.0....
I'm having a good laugh at you.
In theory it can work as long as they can agree on a universal standard for the parts. From my understanding of the video, the part itself is the one doing the thinking while just being transferred across the base which acts like a motherboard....if you think about it, its basically a computer thats a phone.....and to the guy saying computers are going all-in-one form factor, only if you buy pre-built pieces of shit. I'll stick with my current method thanks so much.
It creates an issue with app development too. If there is a game that runs in HD, and you upgrade to a bigger better HD screen without upgrading the CPU, then suddenly your phone wont be able to handle it while it would've otherwise if you hadnt changed the screen.
It only creates problems if the developer is lazy... PC games don't have this problem despite the wide variety of screen sizes and computer components/combinations out there.
PC games very much DO have this problem. You can't play games on a 4k monitor with a build that maxes out at 1080p. And there is nothing that software developers can do about it, because it's in no way related to the software.
What makes software development such a pain in the ass would be guaranteeing any form of absolute compatibility which is a practical impossibility.
On September 13 2013 22:55 Jonrock wrote: I don't see this happening either. Making technology more flexible always comes with downsides, be it efficiency, cost or reliability.
Right like making a palm pilot into a phone, that really reduced its efficiency and reliability while making cost go up! I mean we don't ever see smart phones anymore, -.-'
On September 13 2013 23:18 HaRuHi wrote: upgrade the part that makes it faster xD
upgrade to hd display without switching the graphic chip... xD
upgrade storage without upgrading bus XD
I had a good laugh
......... Right except for 1 simple thing....if you already have a graphics card that can handle HD...there is no harm in transitioning to a bigger HD screen.....
Just like I can upgrade my CPU without upgrading my motherboard since there are a RANGE of CPUs available for each socket.....
same thing with storage.....if I have sata 2.0, it doesn't matter what capacity I stick into the sata 2.0 connector as long as it is sata 2.0....
I'm having a good laugh at you.
In theory it can work as long as they can agree on a universal standard for the parts. From my understanding of the video, the part itself is the one doing the thinking while just being transferred across the base which acts like a motherboard....if you think about it, its basically a computer thats a phone.....and to the guy saying computers are going all-in-one form factor, only if you buy pre-built pieces of shit. I'll stick with my current method thanks so much.
It creates an issue with app development too. If there is a game that runs in HD, and you upgrade to a bigger better HD screen without upgrading the CPU, then suddenly your phone wont be able to handle it while it would've otherwise if you hadnt changed the screen.
It only creates problems if the developer is lazy... PC games don't have this problem despite the wide variety of screen sizes and computer components/combinations out there.
The main reason I mentioned this is because I remember an app that was developed here on TL for iPhone, and they said it wouldnt be on droid because of pixel density or something that threw off the aesthetics.
On September 13 2013 22:55 Jonrock wrote: I don't see this happening either. Making technology more flexible always comes with downsides, be it efficiency, cost or reliability.
Right like making a palm pilot into a phone, that really reduced its efficiency and reliability while making cost go up! I mean we don't ever see smart phones anymore, -.-'
On September 13 2013 23:18 HaRuHi wrote: upgrade the part that makes it faster xD
upgrade to hd display without switching the graphic chip... xD
upgrade storage without upgrading bus XD
I had a good laugh
......... Right except for 1 simple thing....if you already have a graphics card that can handle HD...there is no harm in transitioning to a bigger HD screen.....
Just like I can upgrade my CPU without upgrading my motherboard since there are a RANGE of CPUs available for each socket.....
same thing with storage.....if I have sata 2.0, it doesn't matter what capacity I stick into the sata 2.0 connector as long as it is sata 2.0....
I'm having a good laugh at you.
In theory it can work as long as they can agree on a universal standard for the parts. From my understanding of the video, the part itself is the one doing the thinking while just being transferred across the base which acts like a motherboard....if you think about it, its basically a computer thats a phone.....and to the guy saying computers are going all-in-one form factor, only if you buy pre-built pieces of shit. I'll stick with my current method thanks so much.
It creates an issue with app development too. If there is a game that runs in HD, and you upgrade to a bigger better HD screen without upgrading the CPU, then suddenly your phone wont be able to handle it while it would've otherwise if you hadnt changed the screen.
It only creates problems if the developer is lazy... PC games don't have this problem despite the wide variety of screen sizes and computer components/combinations out there.
PC games very much DO have this problem. You can't play games on a 4k monitor with a build that maxes out at 1080p. And there is nothing that software developers can do about it, because it's in no way related to the software.
What makes software development such a pain in the ass would be guaranteeing any form of absolute compatibility which is a practical impossibility.
Wouldn't that actually be a compatibility problem between the high resolution monitor and the system that can only perform up to 1080p? I don't get your argument
This is a pretty neat concept, but phones right now have extremely poor compatibility. All hardware and software developers agreeing on the same standards will not happen in the near future.
This is an awesome and futuristic idea. I agree 100% with the concept, I find it incredibly stupid and wasteful that we throw away so many devices just because one part has become obsolete.
Technologically I'm sure any initial problems these kind of phones have, would be resolved in the following years by advances in the technology that comes into them, including better and better optimization and refinement of the hardware.
The only thing that makes me skeptical regarding this tech is how it will be received by consumers and businesses. The big companies like Apple and Samsung make an obscene amount of money from people buying their most expensive phones and then throwing them away a year or 2 later in favor of a newer more expensive phone. I doubt even these big tech giants can produce enough new parts regularly, to create a need for constant upgrading, also the price of a single part would most certainly never reach the price of an entire phone. Lastly with a trend more geared to optimization and customization you might even have people that stop upgrading their phone until a really big need for it arises, thus reducing the revenues further for the big companies.
As much a good idea as this is, I doubt it will be put into practice, and the reason is quite simply, human greed. Of course, as soon as one of the big companies finds a way to monetize this idea, they will probably jump on it though, but I don't expect it ti happen very soon.
On September 14 2013 03:09 King[Neikos] wrote: Its far more profitable to sell new complete phones with price increases every year, than to sell "cheap" upgrades. So it ain't gonna happen.
The modular upgrade model could be more profitable for component makers.
On September 14 2013 03:09 King[Neikos] wrote: Its far more profitable to sell new complete phones with price increases every year, than to sell "cheap" upgrades. So it ain't gonna happen.
The modular upgrade model could be more profitable for component makers.
It would be more profitable for cell providers. Imagine not having to subsidize $400 on half the phones people buy, but still allowing them the freedom to upgrade "cheaply."
On September 14 2013 03:09 King[Neikos] wrote: Its far more profitable to sell new complete phones with price increases every year, than to sell "cheap" upgrades. So it ain't gonna happen.
The modular upgrade model could be more profitable for component makers.
It would be more profitable for cell providers. Imagine not having to subsidize $400 on half the phones people buy, but still allowing them the freedom to upgrade "cheaply."
I saw this yesterday on Dnews or something. It's a kickstarter thing they want everyone to tweet it etc on a date. Its a bright idea but I don't think electronics would work so cut and dry that way (just all the pieces being able to be assembled like legos on the back). Aside from the physical limitation of the idea, there is like no way a company, that isn't just starting out, is going to adopt this when their current business model works so well at screwing people for money on new phones all the time.
On September 14 2013 01:30 C[h]ili wrote: Why would it be worth having something like this when we can instead focus on better recycling for the phones we throw away.
The 3 Rs are in order of importance: Reduce Reuse Recycle
omgAbsurd idea. As you can see in the video, different components can completely take the slot of another, so theoretically one might fuck up and put all cameras on his base, would it run? Of course not. It would still need to be specific and standardized locations for each component, if every component was free to be put on any location on the 'base' the base's wiring would fuck up and send different signals to different components. Unless they can make a magical base that identifies and controls the different components, I don't think this would be that successful.
How would you also be able to comply with some people's needs? What if someone wants to attach a keyboard to the phone? Where would it be located? On the back? Also there would still be tons of outdated bloks just like how many outdated computer components we have, Despite their idea that "you're not throwing garbage away because you get to replace the faulty part!" This is just delay, all the components on your current phone will be thrown out and replaced eventually, much like having a new phone.
On September 14 2013 00:31 HardlyNever wrote: Cool idea, way too complicated for the average user. Maybe in 100 years or so, it might be more feasible.
Most people don't know what a CPU is, or RAM, or what ghz measures, or anything like that. The second you starting dealing in those terms, their brain goes full retard and they want someone to do it for them. They would rather pay more to have someone make these decisions for them, because learning and thinking is hard.
Another good point, people who are technology illiterate immediately think: "omg what to do... ok i'll go find someone who actually has the fucking effort and time put in to learn this shit"
This would add quite a lot to size, weight, cost, and overall efficiency of the device. That's the main reason that makes this non-viable unless specific governments get involved (totalitarian-communist and such)
I personally love the idea regardless, But it would probably cost way too much for me to actually get one.
On September 14 2013 03:09 King[Neikos] wrote: Its far more profitable to sell new complete phones with price increases every year, than to sell "cheap" upgrades. So it ain't gonna happen.
The modular upgrade model could be more profitable for component makers.
It would be more profitable for cell providers. Imagine not having to subsidize $400 on half the phones people buy, but still allowing them the freedom to upgrade "cheaply."
This isn't exactly related to that chain of comments, but overall I see these phones as like the Linux/open-source/GNU of the phone industry — It won't be particularly effective commercially due to the lack of control businesses will have over their consumers. Generally it seems that the more shackles you put on a customer the more money you will be able to make from them. Giving them all sorts of freedom would make it harder to earn money. It wouldn't be impossible, but because of it's difficulty it might not get up off the ground due to the competition.
The kicker is that most consumers are perfectly fine with being shackled up as much as possible, all you need is a bit of marketing — just take Apple for example.
On September 14 2013 04:12 DinosaurPoop wrote: omgAbsurd idea. As you can see in the video, different components can completely take the slot of another, so theoretically one might fuck up and put all cameras on his base, would it run? Of course not. It would still need to be specific and standardized locations for each component, if every component was free to be put on any location on the 'base' the base's wiring would fuck up and send different signals to different components. Unless they can make a magical base that identifies and controls the different components, I don't think this would be that successful.
How would you also be able to comply with some people's needs? What if someone wants to attach a keyboard to the phone? Where would it be located? On the back? Also there would still be tons of outdated bloks just like how many outdated computer components we have, Despite their idea that "you're not throwing garbage away because you get to replace the faulty part!" This is just delay, all the components on your current phone will be thrown out and replaced eventually, much like having a new phone.
This is nonsense. It's obviously a conceptual model and not the final product. If there is need to limit which components are put where, that can easily be done. It should also be obvious that there is a difference between eventually replacing everything when it's outdated and replacing everything everytime one thing is outdated.
On September 13 2013 23:56 kemihan wrote: To those guys that says it's impossible. I don't know what kind of barriers are you talking about. It's not like we are creating a quantum computer or a time travel machine. There is absolutely nothing outstanding knew in the concept. The problem of interchangeable components is already solved trough motherboards. The problem of multiple graphics rendering techniques vs different hardware power is already solved trough programming API's like DirectX and OpenGL. There are components that will only work in some kinds of motherboards, but still, changing just the MOBO and the HD to get a bigger bus for example, is better than changing ALL other components in a single time. Ten years ago we couldn't even imagine that would be possible to create a computer with hand size and MORE raw power than old computers. But with enough time and resources, it was accomplished. The problems to accomplish this concept are not technical, they are social: Will a group of people with current hardware knowledge have the motivation (money), time and resources (raw material) to accomplish something like this?
I am not saying it is impossible, I am saying you lose all of the efficiency in phone design.
It's a completely technical point (and a good one, I know). But, is physically impossible to think in alternatives to current tech that would make something like that feasible and with enough efficiency to justify the investments in the research? As a tech geek, I don't think so. Every now and than I see news about new form of materials and information exchanging that are more efficient than today tech.
I am not saying that there aren't difficulties, but that it's probably feasible in a tangible time frame. It's not like something that would only be accomplished in 100 years. If I would guess, in less than 10 years, with enough effort, something like that would be accomplished. But , again: will anyone be willing to invest on this? That's the question.
Optimization is a huge deal.
If you want a comparison on what optimization entails, look no further than consoles for a pinnacle in optimization. Even now, PS3/X360 games look pretty damned great, even though the hardware is 10 years old. Why? Because EVERYTHING is optimized in it. The software coding, the hardware inside, everything.
The mere fact that we have phones that have HD cameras that can record 720p or better VIDEO at 60fps, speakers, internet, bluetooth, wifi, headphones, decent HDD size, giant touch screens and really pretty incredible computing power is insane. Likely, most of that is because of optimized hardware... not only in placement but also in specs.
This is the actual thing that would probably make it unfeasable. People simply have no idea how much optimization can improve performance and reduce power consumption. If you just took all the components needed to build a phone and put them together it would be a mess.
if what their doing was feasible from the start then they won't even have to make a promotional video to gather supporters. they did. these kinds of things are annoying as fuck. Might as well make a video on something impossible like utopia and convince people for shit
I love all of the supporters here, who have little to no understanding of both the engineering and software aspects of things, but have maybe once put together a computer of their own once, and instantly think this is both financially and physically possible. It's a great idea, but it just won't work.
On September 14 2013 08:51 Kazeyonoma wrote: I love all of the supporters here, who have little to no understanding of both the engineering and software aspects of things, but have maybe once put together a computer of their own once, and instantly think this is both financially and physically possible. It's a great idea, but it just won't work.
It's patently false to say it can't work. It is, however, correct to say that the vast majority of posts thus far in this thread are widely off the mark in terms of the technical hurdles, the opposition that would ensue from certain parties, and the so-called "trends" of various industries.
To be clear, it is absolutely probable that there will be certain corporations who will try to squash such an undertaking, but there would very likely be others (likely the smaller or newer ones) who would embrace such a thing to gain an edge in the marketplace. Similarly, there would be difficulties in being able to modularize components, but to say it can't be done just entirely ignores the history of computers. Even claims that you hurt efficiency by removing some possible optimizations can be dealt with by simply pointing to the natural progression of computational growth and the way in which any shortcomings will be increasingly better dealt with the more the problem is worked.
Simply put, once someone with the resources and drive to make this happen comes around, it will happen, even if it takes several years of R&D and general technological growth.
This strangely gave off the same vibe as the Kony2013 campaign hahaha not sure what to feel about the phone itself. It sounds like a great idea but from the people in this thread it seems like it doesn't seem possible anytime soon. I for one will like a customizable phone where i can upgrade the speed and the screen quality and what not. Really cool!
That phone is either going to be really fat, really expensive, really fragile, really slow, or all of the above. With the tools and technology we have right now, you don't need an engineer to tell you that this is not feasible.
Maybe someone will figure out how to do this in 10-20 years. But not right now.
cool idea .. just not gonna happen i think .. it will have go through problems like .. "insert company here" made this phone block and also "insert company here" made the same phone block
Wow, that's really cool. But I dont think the time is right. I think this might take off as phones get better and more capable. People will start wanting choice and stuff.
it's ok, however if you think abt PCs, it supported the same model forever. And most of the time, purchasing a new PC is still a better option compared to upgrading components.
It really is troubling that we throw away so much good stuff because one component breaks. I hear its even the same in some cars!
I hope instead this 'thunderclap' focuses more on developing a better phone recycling program as it has already been explained by many experts that this guy's idea isn't that feasible.
My understanding is this isn't really feasible with current technologies because you need a lot more connections between the various parts than this for it to work. To make up for that, the interface would have to be simplified within each component, so basically every component would need its own little motherboard which would be able to function with a power input and a data input/output.
Naturally, having multiple motherboards and their own little cases and contact connectors that can be handled by hand takes up a lot of space. So this phone would either be huge and ridiculously heavy due to inefficient usage of space, or it would be similar to that concept design but would cost thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars because that's some NASA turbo space travel shit.
But all the engineers scoffing at it and rolling their eyes saying it's not possible is part of the reason people don't exactly like engineers. The guy is a designer, designers do the designing and the engineers do the.. well, doing. They need each other. If everybody immediately dropped an idea because it wasn't technologically possible at the time, I'm pretty sure we'd still be riding horses around and living in grass huts.
Don't write it off forever, just maybe put it on hold. It would be brilliant if it worked.
Idea is brilliant imo. Being able to replace just the one damaged component or upgrade another would be fantastic and would save the consumer. From what I've read, it doesn't sound like the idea is currently feasible but possibly in the near future. Also, I don't think companies would be keen on it, mostly because they want you to buy a new phone every several years. Imagine if for whatever reason apple went this route, I doubt they would have the profits that they currently do because their phone changes are incremental that someone can just switch some components and have a similar phone(minus screen and being a bit slower etc...). Anyways, hope that this comes to fruition one day!
Too much from a designer's point of view. It will not be economically feasible for corporations, maybe it will be for small companies that customize your phone.
I'd say it can certainly be done. Many parts of the phones are already linked relatively inefficiently... Even google glass isn't that strangely interfaced, and it's super optimised. (ie. the various components each have their own communication controller to talk to the other parts of the glasses.)
Companies would be fine with this IMO, if it could be feasible, they would just spin it by saying "look it's the last phone you'll ever need" and 1 year later they'll sell a better base platform and one other year after that the new components/modules will be incompatible with the initial model.
At best it'll slightly lengthen the life cycle of a cell phone because the manufacturers would sell us the hardware equivalents of DLC. Still, they'll find way to make them obsolete through software or physical interface changes like "sockets". They'll make up excuses and shit.
On September 14 2013 12:19 VeryAverage wrote: Could we make this with current technology? No.
But all the engineers scoffing at it and rolling their eyes saying it's not possible is part of the reason people don't exactly like engineers. The guy is a designer, designers do the designing and the engineers do the.. well, doing. They need each other. If everybody immediately dropped an idea because it wasn't technologically possible at the time, I'm pretty sure we'd still be riding horses around and living in grass huts.
Don't write it off forever, just maybe put it on hold. It would be brilliant if it worked.
People don't like engineers? When did that happen?
Designers can come up with the ideas, they can then talk to engineers and try to figure out a compromise of some sort. Or the designer can at least educate himself on what he is planning to design to come up with a reasonable idea on if itll work with the current realm. If not, come up with some possible solutions for the roadblocks.
I am not an engineer, or a designer. Yet I still know enough about technology to know that his idea can't work exactly as he has it planned out. The reason I dont like this designer is because he is pushing it out without a second thought onto every single tech company out there by releasing this dreamlike CGI design. He is blaming them for a problem without coming up with any real solutions. He has ONE idea, when it takes dozens if not hundreds of ideas to put that ONE idea together.
To give another possibly more related example of what hes done: He comes up with a concept car. It looks awesome, and he says itll go 0-60 in 2 seconds and can hit 300mph because it has 4,000HP and itll cost less than $100k to buy. It SOUNDS awesome, but is it realistic? Not really... you have to deal with how to fit that much HP into an engine that fits into the car, materials to handle the torque, aerodynamics to keep the car on the ground and drivable yet still able to somehow let all of the air pass by etc etc.
what if I dropped the phone onto the ground and the parts just fell out lol while it is a super cool concept, I just can't see it getting too big. I don't think consumers are just going to switch to this product just because it is more eco friendly but I will just give it a support to see if it really works out or not :D
People don't like engineers? When did that happen?
Designers can come up with the ideas, they can then talk to engineers and try to figure out a compromise of some sort. Or the designer can at least educate himself on what he is planning to design to come up with a reasonable idea on if itll work with the current realm. If not, come up with some possible solutions for the roadblocks.
I am not an engineer, or a designer. Yet I still know enough about technology to know that his idea can't work exactly as he has it planned out. The reason I dont like this designer is because he is pushing it out without a second thought onto every single tech company out there by releasing this dreamlike CGI design. He is blaming them for a problem without coming up with any real solutions. He has ONE idea, when it takes dozens if not hundreds of ideas to put that ONE idea together.
To give another possibly more related example of what hes done: He comes up with a concept car. It looks awesome, and he says itll go 0-60 in 2 seconds and can hit 300mph because it has 4,000HP and itll cost less than $100k to buy. It SOUNDS awesome, but is it realistic? Not really... you have to deal with how to fit that much HP into an engine that fits into the car, materials to handle the torque, aerodynamics to keep the car on the ground and drivable yet still able to somehow let all of the air pass by etc etc.
The 2015 Nismo GTR said to clock in at 0-60 in 2.0 seconds.. Heck, the 2013 GTR can hit in in 2.7 seconds. Some cars hit in the 250-260 MPH range. Price tag? That 2013 GTR is just a touch over 100k (although only gets to about 190MPH). Technology is advancing rapidly. Like I said, it's not possible right now, but it's a very interesting design and could very easily be possible within a decade or so.
Rather than saying "This won't work," people should say "Why can't this work and how can we make it work?"
Awesome idea. Could easily do this with our current technology. It does not realy seem economically viable/neccesarely though. Phones are already dirt cheap to make like anny electronic device. There goes way more monney in the advertising,employe costs for assembling,transport and all then in the bare electronic parts wich cost maybe like 10$ or less a phone. Safing on parts wich this model/idea basicly does by re-using older parts does not realy seem that important,nor would it safe alot of monney on a complete phone as all the blocks need be advertised and shipped and all, so thoose costs wich make up the biggest part of a phones price will still be there and might even increase!
Smart-phones will become dirt cheap to buy as well within a few years annyway i think. Take a dvd player for example, also lots of complicated parts like laser inside. Costed like 1000$ 10 years ago,200$ a few years ago and now you can buy a dvd player for 25$,and most of that 25 goes into transport,packing and secondary sales activities i guess. Phones will go the same way as soon as inovation stops, (wich will be the end of apples glory days,so now is a great time for the company to buy back shares at record high prices lol) 20m pixel camera? why the f would i need that in my phone:s It now is innovation for the sake of it and for the sake of comming with something new,not because we need it.It barely adds value for the user.
Very interesting but probably be killed in it's crib as chip makers, telecoms hold a monopoly on mobile devices and this would be a nightmare for them.
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
People don't like engineers? When did that happen?
Designers can come up with the ideas, they can then talk to engineers and try to figure out a compromise of some sort. Or the designer can at least educate himself on what he is planning to design to come up with a reasonable idea on if itll work with the current realm. If not, come up with some possible solutions for the roadblocks.
I am not an engineer, or a designer. Yet I still know enough about technology to know that his idea can't work exactly as he has it planned out. The reason I dont like this designer is because he is pushing it out without a second thought onto every single tech company out there by releasing this dreamlike CGI design. He is blaming them for a problem without coming up with any real solutions. He has ONE idea, when it takes dozens if not hundreds of ideas to put that ONE idea together.
To give another possibly more related example of what hes done: He comes up with a concept car. It looks awesome, and he says itll go 0-60 in 2 seconds and can hit 300mph because it has 4,000HP and itll cost less than $100k to buy. It SOUNDS awesome, but is it realistic? Not really... you have to deal with how to fit that much HP into an engine that fits into the car, materials to handle the torque, aerodynamics to keep the car on the ground and drivable yet still able to somehow let all of the air pass by etc etc.
The 2015 Nismo GTR said to clock in at 0-60 in 2.0 seconds.. Heck, the 2013 GTR can hit in in 2.7 seconds. Some cars hit in the 250-260 MPH range. Price tag? That 2013 GTR is just a touch over 100k (although only gets to about 190MPH). Technology is advancing rapidly. Like I said, it's not possible right now, but it's a very interesting design and could very easily be possible within a decade or so.
Rather than saying "This won't work," people should say "Why can't this work and how can we make it work?"
I gave a list for a reason. It has to do ALL of those things. Aside from that, 0-60 in 2 seconds is unconfirmed. Considering 2014's does it in 2.7 (and the 1700+whp does it in 1.7) thatd be a pretty significant jump. Also, 250-260 is an entirely different league than 300.
Also, I agree that people should say how can we make this work. However, the designer didnt. He made a video and said "if we shout loud enough something will happen"
On September 14 2013 00:42 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
Yep....from a hardware perspective, how are all the pins and buses suppose to fit perfectly and interchangeably when going from a single core to quad core cpu as an example
And to answer the OP, no I don't think anyone will adopt it. Hardware vendors would be heavily against it.
People don't like engineers? When did that happen?
Designers can come up with the ideas, they can then talk to engineers and try to figure out a compromise of some sort. Or the designer can at least educate himself on what he is planning to design to come up with a reasonable idea on if itll work with the current realm. If not, come up with some possible solutions for the roadblocks.
I am not an engineer, or a designer. Yet I still know enough about technology to know that his idea can't work exactly as he has it planned out. The reason I dont like this designer is because he is pushing it out without a second thought onto every single tech company out there by releasing this dreamlike CGI design. He is blaming them for a problem without coming up with any real solutions. He has ONE idea, when it takes dozens if not hundreds of ideas to put that ONE idea together.
To give another possibly more related example of what hes done: He comes up with a concept car. It looks awesome, and he says itll go 0-60 in 2 seconds and can hit 300mph because it has 4,000HP and itll cost less than $100k to buy. It SOUNDS awesome, but is it realistic? Not really... you have to deal with how to fit that much HP into an engine that fits into the car, materials to handle the torque, aerodynamics to keep the car on the ground and drivable yet still able to somehow let all of the air pass by etc etc.
The 2015 Nismo GTR said to clock in at 0-60 in 2.0 seconds.. Heck, the 2013 GTR can hit in in 2.7 seconds. Some cars hit in the 250-260 MPH range. Price tag? That 2013 GTR is just a touch over 100k (although only gets to about 190MPH). Technology is advancing rapidly. Like I said, it's not possible right now, but it's a very interesting design and could very easily be possible within a decade or so.
Rather than saying "This won't work," people should say "Why can't this work and how can we make it work?"
I gave a list for a reason. It has to do ALL of those things. Aside from that, 0-60 in 2 seconds is unconfirmed. Considering 2014's does it in 2.7 (and the 1700+whp does it in 1.7) thatd be a pretty significant jump. Also, 250-260 is an entirely different league than 300.
Also, I agree that people should say how can we make this work. However, the designer didnt. He made a video and said "if we shout loud enough something will happen"
Wow 250 mph car, awesome. Isnt the speed limit 60 mph in the usa though? If only we could drive 250 mph with an efficiency of 50+ miles/gallon. 180-200mph is still the limit for most normal sports cars,only a few verry exotic moddels can go over that. and 180-200 mph is a speed wich the top sports cars from the 70,s could do as well, And in the 50,s sports cars could do like 160. Cars are improving mostly in dafety and comfort, not in the area of top speed,nor in fuel efficiency.
People don't like engineers? When did that happen?
Designers can come up with the ideas, they can then talk to engineers and try to figure out a compromise of some sort. Or the designer can at least educate himself on what he is planning to design to come up with a reasonable idea on if itll work with the current realm. If not, come up with some possible solutions for the roadblocks.
I am not an engineer, or a designer. Yet I still know enough about technology to know that his idea can't work exactly as he has it planned out. The reason I dont like this designer is because he is pushing it out without a second thought onto every single tech company out there by releasing this dreamlike CGI design. He is blaming them for a problem without coming up with any real solutions. He has ONE idea, when it takes dozens if not hundreds of ideas to put that ONE idea together.
To give another possibly more related example of what hes done: He comes up with a concept car. It looks awesome, and he says itll go 0-60 in 2 seconds and can hit 300mph because it has 4,000HP and itll cost less than $100k to buy. It SOUNDS awesome, but is it realistic? Not really... you have to deal with how to fit that much HP into an engine that fits into the car, materials to handle the torque, aerodynamics to keep the car on the ground and drivable yet still able to somehow let all of the air pass by etc etc.
The 2015 Nismo GTR said to clock in at 0-60 in 2.0 seconds.. Heck, the 2013 GTR can hit in in 2.7 seconds. Some cars hit in the 250-260 MPH range. Price tag? That 2013 GTR is just a touch over 100k (although only gets to about 190MPH). Technology is advancing rapidly. Like I said, it's not possible right now, but it's a very interesting design and could very easily be possible within a decade or so.
Rather than saying "This won't work," people should say "Why can't this work and how can we make it work?"
I gave a list for a reason. It has to do ALL of those things. Aside from that, 0-60 in 2 seconds is unconfirmed. Considering 2014's does it in 2.7 (and the 1700+whp does it in 1.7) thatd be a pretty significant jump. Also, 250-260 is an entirely different league than 300.
Also, I agree that people should say how can we make this work. However, the designer didnt. He made a video and said "if we shout loud enough something will happen"
Wow 250 mph car, awesome. Isnt the speed limit 60 mph in the usa though? If only we could drive 250 mph with an efficiency of 50+ miles/gallon. 180-200mph is still the limit for most normal sports cars,only a few verry exotic moddels can go over that. and 180-200 mph is a speed wich the top sports cars from the 70,s could do as well, And in the 50,s sports cars could do like 160. Cars are improving but not in the area of top speed.
I think the entire point of my post went completely over your head.
People don't like engineers? When did that happen?
Designers can come up with the ideas, they can then talk to engineers and try to figure out a compromise of some sort. Or the designer can at least educate himself on what he is planning to design to come up with a reasonable idea on if itll work with the current realm. If not, come up with some possible solutions for the roadblocks.
I am not an engineer, or a designer. Yet I still know enough about technology to know that his idea can't work exactly as he has it planned out. The reason I dont like this designer is because he is pushing it out without a second thought onto every single tech company out there by releasing this dreamlike CGI design. He is blaming them for a problem without coming up with any real solutions. He has ONE idea, when it takes dozens if not hundreds of ideas to put that ONE idea together.
To give another possibly more related example of what hes done: He comes up with a concept car. It looks awesome, and he says itll go 0-60 in 2 seconds and can hit 300mph because it has 4,000HP and itll cost less than $100k to buy. It SOUNDS awesome, but is it realistic? Not really... you have to deal with how to fit that much HP into an engine that fits into the car, materials to handle the torque, aerodynamics to keep the car on the ground and drivable yet still able to somehow let all of the air pass by etc etc.
The 2015 Nismo GTR said to clock in at 0-60 in 2.0 seconds.. Heck, the 2013 GTR can hit in in 2.7 seconds. Some cars hit in the 250-260 MPH range. Price tag? That 2013 GTR is just a touch over 100k (although only gets to about 190MPH). Technology is advancing rapidly. Like I said, it's not possible right now, but it's a very interesting design and could very easily be possible within a decade or so.
Rather than saying "This won't work," people should say "Why can't this work and how can we make it work?"
I gave a list for a reason. It has to do ALL of those things. Aside from that, 0-60 in 2 seconds is unconfirmed. Considering 2014's does it in 2.7 (and the 1700+whp does it in 1.7) thatd be a pretty significant jump. Also, 250-260 is an entirely different league than 300.
Also, I agree that people should say how can we make this work. However, the designer didnt. He made a video and said "if we shout loud enough something will happen"
I can't comment much but for your last part, isn't a designer supposed to well, design? Come up with a concept and present it to the engineer and then the engineer plays a role in talking about feasibility then they make a decision? So while you are right in your statement, I dunno if this designer would've been able to mention how will it all work.
Well care to explain what the point of your post was? your remark about cars and the point of it is unclear to me, i dont mind to admit that
The point of my post was just a comment to illustrate that cares are not realy improving annymore and are at their technological ceiling when it comes to their engines (at least for now till a truly revolutionary engine will be developped) Something that will happen to phones as well relativly soon imo though they cant be compared to cars at all. I would never have made a comment on cars in this thread if someone didnt mention them but since they where, i thought i might as well give a comment on it.
Its a great idea but getting it to market would take a shitload of work. Most companies wouldn't go for it because it would cut into profits to not have people replacing their whole phone every year or 2. The only way I could see it coming to be, assuming engineers could even make it work, is it would have to be a labor of love type of thing. Maybe eventually you'll build up a massive market share but for a while you're going to be scraping by selling some $50 components here and there. I'd be all about it if they ever saw the light of day though.
People don't like engineers? When did that happen?
Designers can come up with the ideas, they can then talk to engineers and try to figure out a compromise of some sort. Or the designer can at least educate himself on what he is planning to design to come up with a reasonable idea on if itll work with the current realm. If not, come up with some possible solutions for the roadblocks.
I am not an engineer, or a designer. Yet I still know enough about technology to know that his idea can't work exactly as he has it planned out. The reason I dont like this designer is because he is pushing it out without a second thought onto every single tech company out there by releasing this dreamlike CGI design. He is blaming them for a problem without coming up with any real solutions. He has ONE idea, when it takes dozens if not hundreds of ideas to put that ONE idea together.
To give another possibly more related example of what hes done: He comes up with a concept car. It looks awesome, and he says itll go 0-60 in 2 seconds and can hit 300mph because it has 4,000HP and itll cost less than $100k to buy. It SOUNDS awesome, but is it realistic? Not really... you have to deal with how to fit that much HP into an engine that fits into the car, materials to handle the torque, aerodynamics to keep the car on the ground and drivable yet still able to somehow let all of the air pass by etc etc.
The 2015 Nismo GTR said to clock in at 0-60 in 2.0 seconds.. Heck, the 2013 GTR can hit in in 2.7 seconds. Some cars hit in the 250-260 MPH range. Price tag? That 2013 GTR is just a touch over 100k (although only gets to about 190MPH). Technology is advancing rapidly. Like I said, it's not possible right now, but it's a very interesting design and could very easily be possible within a decade or so.
Rather than saying "This won't work," people should say "Why can't this work and how can we make it work?"
I gave a list for a reason. It has to do ALL of those things. Aside from that, 0-60 in 2 seconds is unconfirmed. Considering 2014's does it in 2.7 (and the 1700+whp does it in 1.7) thatd be a pretty significant jump. Also, 250-260 is an entirely different league than 300.
Also, I agree that people should say how can we make this work. However, the designer didnt. He made a video and said "if we shout loud enough something will happen"
I can't comment much but for your last part, isn't a designer supposed to well, design? Come up with a concept and present it to the engineer and then the engineer plays a role in talking about feasibility then they make a decision? So while you are right in your statement, I dunno if this designer would've been able to mention how will it all work.
I dont know exactly how the design field works, but I imagine you have a specialty field of design. So a designer much focus in clothes, or maybe automobiles, or maybe electronics. This is so they can come up with ideas based on reality. A quick google search showed this: http://www.design-skills.org/design_process.html "This implies a lot of research, observation and analysis in order to understand a business, its customers and trigger inspiration. This process goes through 4 stages: understanding, observation, visualisation and appraisal. Although each stage involves specific procedures, they are dependant on one another."
It seems like this particular designer skipped the understanding and observation process and went straight to visualization. He had his concept in mind from the beginning. There is probably also interaction between designers and engineers so that the designer can be informed of any possible issues that would immediately come to mind.
On September 14 2013 15:13 Rassy wrote: Well care to explain what the point of your post was? your remark about cars and the point of it is unclear to me, i dont mind to admit that
The point of my post was just a comment to illustrate that cares are not realy improving annymore and are at their technological ceiling when it comes to their engines (at least for now till a truly revolutionary engine will be developped) Something that will happen to phones as well relativly soon imo though they cant be compared to cars at all. I would never have made a comment on cars in this thread if someone didnt mention them but since they where, i thought i might as well give a comment on it.
The point behind the cars part is that it is a designer with no background or idea on how the field works makes a pretty looking concept that sounds great but isnt based in reality. He makes promises with nothing to back it up. I am saying that this imaginary car designer did the same thing that this designer did with the phone.
Yes i see it now after reading your first post where you did mention this and i have to agree with it, at least when it comes to cars.I am not sure this would aply to this particular phone idea but it could, have not realy thought about that. (my problem with this phone idea is more economically, not technical in nature.) Sry for misunderstanding you.
On September 14 2013 00:42 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
Well I'm an engineer, I don't scoff at it at all. I don't see why other engineers would. I mean lets be clear here, this is not something that is technically beyond us atm. It is something we could easily design, yeah, without further development and optimisation it would be a vastly inferior product to existing smartphones, but it's not nearly infeasible enough that we couldn't do it.
Noting its current technical drawbacks, questioning it's overall marketability and profitability is completely different from scoffing it off. Marketability and profitability is also not generally an engineer's professional opinion, since that's not really our job.
I'm sure if the commercial and economic factors were taken out of the equation, most engineers would love to be involved in building/designing the device. We are, after all, mostly just tech geeks who like to mess around with technology.
Modularity is great, and at least personally, whether or not it is particularly marketable as an end product, I find it at the very least an interesting engineering challenge. The problem is the people who pay us, are going to ask for a feasibility assessment, and we aren't going to flat out lie to them.
Making near future technology into current technology is a part of what engineers do. So just because something is slightly out of the technical reach of big industry at the moment doesn't mean engineers will automatically dismiss it. On the other hand someone has to pay for the development process and often those people aren't actually engineers and their decision is not based on what's technically interesting but what is commercially viable, we just given them a (mostly) objective assessment on how reasonable it will be. the people dismissing it are almost always people who look after the money and not the technology. The engineers I know are happy to work on anything they think is possible so long as someone wants to pay for it, and often for free as a hobby if it isn't too costly.
But yes, please tell me why my profession would scoff at it. You haven't really provided any reasons other than the unbased insistence that we would. I may be biased in that I have a foot in the field of embedded systems, so this is technically intriguing to me, but it would greatly surprise me if the entire engineering industry would as a whole, or even mostly 'scoff it off'. Given that most engineering professionals don't personally care about the commercial/marketing side of development, and are happy to develop away at something that will never sell so long as someone is paying the bills.
On September 14 2013 00:42 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
Well I'm an engineer, I don't scoff at it at all. I don't see why other engineers would. I mean lets be clear here, this is not something that is technically beyond us atm. It is something we could easily design, yeah, without further development and optimisation it would be a vastly inferior product to existing smartphones, but it's not nearly infeasible enough that we couldn't do it.
Noting its current technical drawbacks, questioning it's overall marketability and profitability is completely different from scoffing it off. Marketability and profitability is also not generally an engineer's professional opinion, since that's not really our job.
I'm sure if the commercial and economic factors were taken out of the equation, most engineers would love to be involved in building/designing the device. We are, after all, mostly just tech geeks who like to mess around with technology.
Modularity is great, and at least personally, whether or not it is particularly marketable as an end product, I find it at the very least an interesting engineering challenge. The problem is the people who pay us, are going to ask for a feasibility assessment, and we aren't going to flat out lie to them.
Making near future technology into current technology is a part of what engineers do. So just because something is slightly out of the technical reach of big industry at the moment doesn't mean engineers will automatically dismiss it. On the other hand someone has to pay for the development process and often those people aren't actually engineers and their decision is not based on what's technically interesting but what is commercially viable, we just given them a (mostly) objective assessment on how reasonable it will be. the people dismissing it are almost always people who look after the money and not the technology. The engineers I know are happy to work on anything they think is possible so long as someone wants to pay for it, and often for free as a hobby if it isn't too costly.
But yes, please tell me why my profession would scoff at it. You haven't really provided any reasons other than the unbased insistence that we would. I may be biased in that I have a foot in the field of embedded systems, so this is technically intriguing to me, but it would greatly surprise me if the entire engineering industry would as a whole, or even mostly 'scoff it off'. Given that most engineering professionals don't personally care about the commercial/marketing side of development, and are happy to develop away at something that will never sell so long as someone is paying the bills.
Well, sir, I too am an engineer, and I scoff at it the most!
On September 14 2013 00:42 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
Well I'm an engineer, I don't scoff at it at all. I don't see why other engineers would. I mean lets be clear here, this is not something that is technically beyond us atm. It is something we could easily design, yeah, without further development and optimisation it would be a vastly inferior product to existing smartphones, but it's not nearly infeasible enough that we couldn't do it.
Noting its current technical drawbacks, questioning it's overall marketability and profitability is completely different from scoffing it off. Marketability and profitability is also not generally an engineer's professional opinion, since that's not really our job.
I'm sure if the commercial and economic factors were taken out of the equation, most engineers would love to be involved in building/designing the device. We are, after all, mostly just tech geeks who like to mess around with technology.
Modularity is great, and at least personally, whether or not it is particularly marketable as an end product, I find it at the very least an interesting engineering challenge. The problem is the people who pay us, are going to ask for a feasibility assessment, and we aren't going to flat out lie to them.
Making near future technology into current technology is a part of what engineers do. So just because something is slightly out of the technical reach of big industry at the moment doesn't mean engineers will automatically dismiss it. On the other hand someone has to pay for the development process and often those people aren't actually engineers and their decision is not based on what's technically interesting but what is commercially viable, we just given them a (mostly) objective assessment on how reasonable it will be. the people dismissing it are almost always people who look after the money and not the technology. The engineers I know are happy to work on anything they think is possible so long as someone wants to pay for it, and often for free as a hobby if it isn't too costly.
But yes, please tell me why my profession would scoff at it. You haven't really provided any reasons other than the unbased insistence that we would. I may be biased in that I have a foot in the field of embedded systems, so this is technically intriguing to me, but it would greatly surprise me if the entire engineering industry would as a whole, or even mostly 'scoff it off'. Given that most engineering professionals don't personally care about the commercial/marketing side of development, and are happy to develop away at something that will never sell so long as someone is paying the bills.
I respect your opinion, and I value it; you're an engineer and I'm not.
However, allow me to share from a layman's point of view. Say for computers; how I see it is: Base block = motherboard. A regular motherboard would be able to accept a few iterations of upgrades, so long they pin number is compatible (along with the other parts like the bridges, RAM, etc). However, sooner or later, in order to accommodate an upgrade, even the motherboard will have to be changed entirely. So yes, perhaps this could work; but for how many generations of upgrades before the "base block" itself has to be upgraded (it's practically getting a new phone)? I guess this would still lead to some cost-savings, but I think you get my point.
Also, different components have different inputs. In my computer, my graphics card goes into my PCI-Express slot. My RAM goes into my RAM slots. Etc. I believe that it would be extremely difficult to be able to remove a large battery and use the same pin input to accommodate a different part like say, a wifi chip. Perhaps its possible, but to make it look as elegant as it does in the video such that it still fits in our palms? I'm not so sure.
Manufacturers spend insane resources on coming up with an elegant form factor for their mobile phones. To me, this modular interface proposed is quite an insult to these manufacturers who put so much effort into cramming powerful parts into a small form factor, while maintaining an elegant and pragmatic design.
Don't get my wrong; I would love for this to work out. However, it's mostly a pipe dream at the moment.
On September 14 2013 15:36 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 14 2013 14:53 theBALLS wrote:
On September 14 2013 00:42 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
Well I'm an engineer, I don't scoff at it at all. I don't see why other engineers would. I mean lets be clear here, this is not something that is technically beyond us atm. It is something we could easily design, yeah, without further development and optimisation it would be a vastly inferior product to existing smartphones, but it's not nearly infeasible enough that we couldn't do it.
Noting its current technical drawbacks, questioning it's overall marketability and profitability is completely different from scoffing it off. Marketability and profitability is also not generally an engineer's professional opinion, since that's not really our job.
I'm sure if the commercial and economic factors were taken out of the equation, most engineers would love to be involved in building/designing the device. We are, after all, mostly just tech geeks who like to mess around with technology.
Modularity is great, and at least personally, whether or not it is particularly marketable as an end product, I find it at the very least an interesting engineering challenge. The problem is the people who pay us, are going to ask for a feasibility assessment, and we aren't going to flat out lie to them.
Making near future technology into current technology is a part of what engineers do. So just because something is slightly out of the technical reach of big industry at the moment doesn't mean engineers will automatically dismiss it. On the other hand someone has to pay for the development process and often those people aren't actually engineers and their decision is not based on what's technically interesting but what is commercially viable, we just given them a (mostly) objective assessment on how reasonable it will be. the people dismissing it are almost always people who look after the money and not the technology. The engineers I know are happy to work on anything they think is possible so long as someone wants to pay for it, and often for free as a hobby if it isn't too costly.
But yes, please tell me why my profession would scoff at it. You haven't really provided any reasons other than the unbased insistence that we would. I may be biased in that I have a foot in the field of embedded systems, so this is technically intriguing to me, but it would greatly surprise me if the entire engineering industry would as a whole, or even mostly 'scoff it off'. Given that most engineering professionals don't personally care about the commercial/marketing side of development, and are happy to develop away at something that will never sell so long as someone is paying the bills.
I respect your opinion, and I value it; you're an engineer and I'm not.
However, allow me to share from a layman's point of view. Say for computers; how I see it is: Base block = motherboard. A regular motherboard would be able to accept a few iterations of upgrades, so long they pin number is compatible (along with the other parts like the bridges, RAM, etc). However, sooner or later, in order to accommodate an upgrade, even the motherboard will have to be changed entirely. So yes, perhaps this could work; but for how many generations of upgrades before the "base block" itself has to be upgraded (it's practically getting a new phone)? I guess this would still lead to some cost-savings, but I think you get my point.
Also, different components have different inputs. In my computer, my graphics card goes into my PCI-Express slot. My RAM goes into my RAM slots. Etc. I believe that it would be extremely difficult to be able to remove a large battery and use the same pin input to accommodate a different part like say, a wifi chip. Perhaps its possible, but to make it look as elegant as it does in the video such that it still fits in our palms? I'm not so sure.
Manufacturers spend insane resources on coming up with an elegant form factor for their mobile phones. To me, this modular interface proposed is quite an insult to these manufacturers who put so much effort into cramming powerful parts into a small form factor, while maintaining an elegant and pragmatic design.
Don't get my wrong; I would love for this to work out. However, it's mostly a pipe dream at the moment.
You are wrong comparing the base with a motherboard. It does not have any devices on it unlike a motherboard. This base as presented in the video just connects the blocks electrically. Basically, the base is just wires. The blocks communicate with each other by themselves.
On September 14 2013 15:36 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 14 2013 14:53 theBALLS wrote:
On September 14 2013 00:42 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
Well I'm an engineer, I don't scoff at it at all. I don't see why other engineers would. I mean lets be clear here, this is not something that is technically beyond us atm. It is something we could easily design, yeah, without further development and optimisation it would be a vastly inferior product to existing smartphones, but it's not nearly infeasible enough that we couldn't do it.
Noting its current technical drawbacks, questioning it's overall marketability and profitability is completely different from scoffing it off. Marketability and profitability is also not generally an engineer's professional opinion, since that's not really our job.
I'm sure if the commercial and economic factors were taken out of the equation, most engineers would love to be involved in building/designing the device. We are, after all, mostly just tech geeks who like to mess around with technology.
Modularity is great, and at least personally, whether or not it is particularly marketable as an end product, I find it at the very least an interesting engineering challenge. The problem is the people who pay us, are going to ask for a feasibility assessment, and we aren't going to flat out lie to them.
Making near future technology into current technology is a part of what engineers do. So just because something is slightly out of the technical reach of big industry at the moment doesn't mean engineers will automatically dismiss it. On the other hand someone has to pay for the development process and often those people aren't actually engineers and their decision is not based on what's technically interesting but what is commercially viable, we just given them a (mostly) objective assessment on how reasonable it will be. the people dismissing it are almost always people who look after the money and not the technology. The engineers I know are happy to work on anything they think is possible so long as someone wants to pay for it, and often for free as a hobby if it isn't too costly.
But yes, please tell me why my profession would scoff at it. You haven't really provided any reasons other than the unbased insistence that we would. I may be biased in that I have a foot in the field of embedded systems, so this is technically intriguing to me, but it would greatly surprise me if the entire engineering industry would as a whole, or even mostly 'scoff it off'. Given that most engineering professionals don't personally care about the commercial/marketing side of development, and are happy to develop away at something that will never sell so long as someone is paying the bills.
I respect your opinion, and I value it; you're an engineer and I'm not.
However, allow me to share from a layman's point of view. Say for computers; how I see it is: Base block = motherboard. A regular motherboard would be able to accept a few iterations of upgrades, so long they pin number is compatible (along with the other parts like the bridges, RAM, etc). However, sooner or later, in order to accommodate an upgrade, even the motherboard will have to be changed entirely. So yes, perhaps this could work; but for how many generations of upgrades before the "base block" itself has to be upgraded (it's practically getting a new phone)? I guess this would still lead to some cost-savings, but I think you get my point.
Also, different components have different inputs. In my computer, my graphics card goes into my PCI-Express slot. My RAM goes into my RAM slots. Etc. I believe that it would be extremely difficult to be able to remove a large battery and use the same pin input to accommodate a different part like say, a wifi chip. Perhaps its possible, but to make it look as elegant as it does in the video such that it still fits in our palms? I'm not so sure.
Manufacturers spend insane resources on coming up with an elegant form factor for their mobile phones. To me, this modular interface proposed is quite an insult to these manufacturers who put so much effort into cramming powerful parts into a small form factor, while maintaining an elegant and pragmatic design.
Don't get my wrong; I would love for this to work out. However, it's mostly a pipe dream at the moment.
You are wrong comparing the base with a motherboard. It does not have any devices on it unlike a motherboard. This base as presented in the video just connects the blocks electrically. Basically, the base is just wires. The blocks communicate with each other by themselves.
If that's the case you might as well have the base just be the power distribution grid and run a localized ultra low latency(sub-ns) wireless network and have the parts communicate that way(not currently possible to the best of my knowledge). Would be easier than trying to create all the traces to make something work.
On September 14 2013 15:36 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 14 2013 14:53 theBALLS wrote:
On September 14 2013 00:42 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
Well I'm an engineer, I don't scoff at it at all. I don't see why other engineers would. I mean lets be clear here, this is not something that is technically beyond us atm. It is something we could easily design, yeah, without further development and optimisation it would be a vastly inferior product to existing smartphones, but it's not nearly infeasible enough that we couldn't do it.
Noting its current technical drawbacks, questioning it's overall marketability and profitability is completely different from scoffing it off. Marketability and profitability is also not generally an engineer's professional opinion, since that's not really our job.
I'm sure if the commercial and economic factors were taken out of the equation, most engineers would love to be involved in building/designing the device. We are, after all, mostly just tech geeks who like to mess around with technology.
Modularity is great, and at least personally, whether or not it is particularly marketable as an end product, I find it at the very least an interesting engineering challenge. The problem is the people who pay us, are going to ask for a feasibility assessment, and we aren't going to flat out lie to them.
Making near future technology into current technology is a part of what engineers do. So just because something is slightly out of the technical reach of big industry at the moment doesn't mean engineers will automatically dismiss it. On the other hand someone has to pay for the development process and often those people aren't actually engineers and their decision is not based on what's technically interesting but what is commercially viable, we just given them a (mostly) objective assessment on how reasonable it will be. the people dismissing it are almost always people who look after the money and not the technology. The engineers I know are happy to work on anything they think is possible so long as someone wants to pay for it, and often for free as a hobby if it isn't too costly.
But yes, please tell me why my profession would scoff at it. You haven't really provided any reasons other than the unbased insistence that we would. I may be biased in that I have a foot in the field of embedded systems, so this is technically intriguing to me, but it would greatly surprise me if the entire engineering industry would as a whole, or even mostly 'scoff it off'. Given that most engineering professionals don't personally care about the commercial/marketing side of development, and are happy to develop away at something that will never sell so long as someone is paying the bills.
I respect your opinion, and I value it; you're an engineer and I'm not.
However, allow me to share from a layman's point of view. Say for computers; how I see it is: Base block = motherboard. A regular motherboard would be able to accept a few iterations of upgrades, so long they pin number is compatible (along with the other parts like the bridges, RAM, etc). However, sooner or later, in order to accommodate an upgrade, even the motherboard will have to be changed entirely. So yes, perhaps this could work; but for how many generations of upgrades before the "base block" itself has to be upgraded (it's practically getting a new phone)? I guess this would still lead to some cost-savings, but I think you get my point.
Also, different components have different inputs. In my computer, my graphics card goes into my PCI-Express slot. My RAM goes into my RAM slots. Etc. I believe that it would be extremely difficult to be able to remove a large battery and use the same pin input to accommodate a different part like say, a wifi chip. Perhaps its possible, but to make it look as elegant as it does in the video such that it still fits in our palms? I'm not so sure.
Manufacturers spend insane resources on coming up with an elegant form factor for their mobile phones. To me, this modular interface proposed is quite an insult to these manufacturers who put so much effort into cramming powerful parts into a small form factor, while maintaining an elegant and pragmatic design.
Don't get my wrong; I would love for this to work out. However, it's mostly a pipe dream at the moment.
You are wrong comparing the base with a motherboard. It does not have any devices on it unlike a motherboard. This base as presented in the video just connects the blocks electrically. Basically, the base is just wires. The blocks communicate with each other by themselves.
If that's the case you might as well have the base just be the power distribution grid and run a localized ultra low latency(sub-ns) wireless network and have the parts communicate that way(not currently possible to the best of my knowledge). Would be easier than trying to create all the traces to make something work.
You need traces for power anyways, and communication does not have to be a lot of traces. Do you remember token ring? It was just one coax cable going from PC to PC and you could have a room full of PCs on a crappy network.
Even if it is not feasible, which I think, as an engineer, it is. This is still one of the most viral campaigns I have ever seen. It's all over the web now, after only 2 days.
Im my opinion, the people discussing the feasibility of the product exactly as presented on the video are missing the point. Just like a concept car is not meant to be produced, this phone is not meant to as well.
This is a concept phone. The designer's plan is to show the big companies (primarily samsumg and apple) how the public's dream phone looks like. And hopefully give them the idea on the way the innovation should go. Since recent news shows that it's going the exact opposite way, at least when we are talking about th iphone.
On September 14 2013 15:36 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 14 2013 14:53 theBALLS wrote:
On September 14 2013 00:42 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
Well I'm an engineer, I don't scoff at it at all. I don't see why other engineers would. I mean lets be clear here, this is not something that is technically beyond us atm. It is something we could easily design, yeah, without further development and optimisation it would be a vastly inferior product to existing smartphones, but it's not nearly infeasible enough that we couldn't do it.
Noting its current technical drawbacks, questioning it's overall marketability and profitability is completely different from scoffing it off. Marketability and profitability is also not generally an engineer's professional opinion, since that's not really our job.
I'm sure if the commercial and economic factors were taken out of the equation, most engineers would love to be involved in building/designing the device. We are, after all, mostly just tech geeks who like to mess around with technology.
Modularity is great, and at least personally, whether or not it is particularly marketable as an end product, I find it at the very least an interesting engineering challenge. The problem is the people who pay us, are going to ask for a feasibility assessment, and we aren't going to flat out lie to them.
Making near future technology into current technology is a part of what engineers do. So just because something is slightly out of the technical reach of big industry at the moment doesn't mean engineers will automatically dismiss it. On the other hand someone has to pay for the development process and often those people aren't actually engineers and their decision is not based on what's technically interesting but what is commercially viable, we just given them a (mostly) objective assessment on how reasonable it will be. the people dismissing it are almost always people who look after the money and not the technology. The engineers I know are happy to work on anything they think is possible so long as someone wants to pay for it, and often for free as a hobby if it isn't too costly.
But yes, please tell me why my profession would scoff at it. You haven't really provided any reasons other than the unbased insistence that we would. I may be biased in that I have a foot in the field of embedded systems, so this is technically intriguing to me, but it would greatly surprise me if the entire engineering industry would as a whole, or even mostly 'scoff it off'. Given that most engineering professionals don't personally care about the commercial/marketing side of development, and are happy to develop away at something that will never sell so long as someone is paying the bills.
I respect your opinion, and I value it; you're an engineer and I'm not.
However, allow me to share from a layman's point of view. Say for computers; how I see it is: Base block = motherboard. A regular motherboard would be able to accept a few iterations of upgrades, so long they pin number is compatible (along with the other parts like the bridges, RAM, etc). However, sooner or later, in order to accommodate an upgrade, even the motherboard will have to be changed entirely. So yes, perhaps this could work; but for how many generations of upgrades before the "base block" itself has to be upgraded (it's practically getting a new phone)? I guess this would still lead to some cost-savings, but I think you get my point.
Also, different components have different inputs. In my computer, my graphics card goes into my PCI-Express slot. My RAM goes into my RAM slots. Etc. I believe that it would be extremely difficult to be able to remove a large battery and use the same pin input to accommodate a different part like say, a wifi chip. Perhaps its possible, but to make it look as elegant as it does in the video such that it still fits in our palms? I'm not so sure.
Manufacturers spend insane resources on coming up with an elegant form factor for their mobile phones. To me, this modular interface proposed is quite an insult to these manufacturers who put so much effort into cramming powerful parts into a small form factor, while maintaining an elegant and pragmatic design.
Don't get my wrong; I would love for this to work out. However, it's mostly a pipe dream at the moment.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'd be for this idea either, nor can I speak on behalf of all engineers. I'm only saying that there is no particular reason for engineers to dislike the idea more than the general public, eg there is no particular engineering reason why professionally, engineers would be disproportionately adverse to the concept.
If anything, I'd have thought that engineers would be more open to the idea, because many of the drawbacks might be less relevant to an engineer than the layman, and some of the potential might only be relevant to someone with more in depth technical needs.
I mean being fidgety and requiring assembly, is not something that's going to bother most engineers, it can and does bother the average consumer, whereas being able to customise your phone, especially when there might be exotic options isn't really going to benefit the layman too much but might make the device far more versatile for someone who is in a position to make use of unusual functionality.
Just personally, I still keep a clamshell 'dumb' phone for making phone calls, because I think it is a vastly superior form factor as a phone, and since I don't spend more than a couple of hours at a time out of spitting distance from a PC the rest of a smartphone's functionality is pretty much wasted on me. So I don't personally mind if a phone is going to be bulky, or fiddly, since I'm not that enamoured with the form factor of a smartphone anyway, as efficiently optimised as I'm sure it is, the possibility of having unconventional functionality (say a multimeter, or oscilloscope) is going to be far more attractive of a prospect to me than just having a sleeker more computationally powerful phone.
I mean lets be forthright here, the whole concept is full of problems. As ropid pointed out, the base just looks like it's just an electrical connector, more like a breadboard than a motherboard. So it's modularity, looks at least in theory, to be feasible, assuming you are willing to suffer the performance penalties over a similarly advanced non-modular phone. You would effectively need to replace the whole thing eventually, we need to do that with PCs too, the 'phone worth keeping' part is just bullshit. But overall from a technical standpoint, while achievable, it would be technically challenging. But that's what engineers are for, it's not something that should professionally bother us, because, frankly, that's what we are paid to do.
However the non-technical problems seem to be somewhat overwhelming. For one thing, getting all those large corporations to agree to standard connections is a pipe dream, Apple for instance, sure as fuck aren't going to co-operate, this whole concept is diametrically opposite of their design principle. The best you could hope for was each manufacturer producing compatible blocks for their own brand, maybe a few brands being compatible with each other.
For another, all those little inconveniences that might not bother engineers so much, dear god the average consumer will give them hell. Most people do not put together their own PC, despite it being cheaper, and usually yields better performance that what you could buy off the market. Furthermore most people don't use Linux, despite it's superior customizability because of all the software incompatibilities and overall fidgitiness. How much of the home computer market share do you suppose puts together their own PC and then runs Linux? I bet it's not much, perhaps a negligible share of the market. Well fiddly, customizable, may have compatibility issues is exactly what the 2 things have in common. These are the exact problems that would spell commercial death for Phonebloks. If anything the average consumer is less likely to like the idea than engineers.
This is just amazing. I would buy this without any hesitation !
Shame that it's not going to happen anytime soon.. Because I just don't see big companies working together on one excellent phone, when they can just burst out shitloads of medicore ones and make much more profit out of it..
On September 14 2013 15:36 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 14 2013 14:53 theBALLS wrote:
On September 14 2013 00:42 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
Well I'm an engineer, I don't scoff at it at all. I don't see why other engineers would. I mean lets be clear here, this is not something that is technically beyond us atm. It is something we could easily design, yeah, without further development and optimisation it would be a vastly inferior product to existing smartphones, but it's not nearly infeasible enough that we couldn't do it.
Noting its current technical drawbacks, questioning it's overall marketability and profitability is completely different from scoffing it off. Marketability and profitability is also not generally an engineer's professional opinion, since that's not really our job.
I'm sure if the commercial and economic factors were taken out of the equation, most engineers would love to be involved in building/designing the device. We are, after all, mostly just tech geeks who like to mess around with technology.
Modularity is great, and at least personally, whether or not it is particularly marketable as an end product, I find it at the very least an interesting engineering challenge. The problem is the people who pay us, are going to ask for a feasibility assessment, and we aren't going to flat out lie to them.
Making near future technology into current technology is a part of what engineers do. So just because something is slightly out of the technical reach of big industry at the moment doesn't mean engineers will automatically dismiss it. On the other hand someone has to pay for the development process and often those people aren't actually engineers and their decision is not based on what's technically interesting but what is commercially viable, we just given them a (mostly) objective assessment on how reasonable it will be. the people dismissing it are almost always people who look after the money and not the technology. The engineers I know are happy to work on anything they think is possible so long as someone wants to pay for it, and often for free as a hobby if it isn't too costly.
But yes, please tell me why my profession would scoff at it. You haven't really provided any reasons other than the unbased insistence that we would. I may be biased in that I have a foot in the field of embedded systems, so this is technically intriguing to me, but it would greatly surprise me if the entire engineering industry would as a whole, or even mostly 'scoff it off'. Given that most engineering professionals don't personally care about the commercial/marketing side of development, and are happy to develop away at something that will never sell so long as someone is paying the bills.
I respect your opinion, and I value it; you're an engineer and I'm not.
However, allow me to share from a layman's point of view. Say for computers; how I see it is: Base block = motherboard. A regular motherboard would be able to accept a few iterations of upgrades, so long they pin number is compatible (along with the other parts like the bridges, RAM, etc). However, sooner or later, in order to accommodate an upgrade, even the motherboard will have to be changed entirely. So yes, perhaps this could work; but for how many generations of upgrades before the "base block" itself has to be upgraded (it's practically getting a new phone)? I guess this would still lead to some cost-savings, but I think you get my point.
Also, different components have different inputs. In my computer, my graphics card goes into my PCI-Express slot. My RAM goes into my RAM slots. Etc. I believe that it would be extremely difficult to be able to remove a large battery and use the same pin input to accommodate a different part like say, a wifi chip. Perhaps its possible, but to make it look as elegant as it does in the video such that it still fits in our palms? I'm not so sure.
Manufacturers spend insane resources on coming up with an elegant form factor for their mobile phones. To me, this modular interface proposed is quite an insult to these manufacturers who put so much effort into cramming powerful parts into a small form factor, while maintaining an elegant and pragmatic design.
Don't get my wrong; I would love for this to work out. However, it's mostly a pipe dream at the moment.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'd be for this idea either, nor can I speak on behalf of all engineers. I'm only saying that there is no particular reason for engineers to dislike the idea more than the general public, eg there is no particular engineering reason why professionally, engineers would be disproportionately adverse to the concept.
....
Yes there is. the general public doesn't understand the engineering feasibility of this concept idea.
People don't like engineers? When did that happen?
Designers can come up with the ideas, they can then talk to engineers and try to figure out a compromise of some sort. Or the designer can at least educate himself on what he is planning to design to come up with a reasonable idea on if itll work with the current realm. If not, come up with some possible solutions for the roadblocks.
I am not an engineer, or a designer. Yet I still know enough about technology to know that his idea can't work exactly as he has it planned out. The reason I dont like this designer is because he is pushing it out without a second thought onto every single tech company out there by releasing this dreamlike CGI design. He is blaming them for a problem without coming up with any real solutions. He has ONE idea, when it takes dozens if not hundreds of ideas to put that ONE idea together.
To give another possibly more related example of what hes done: He comes up with a concept car. It looks awesome, and he says itll go 0-60 in 2 seconds and can hit 300mph because it has 4,000HP and itll cost less than $100k to buy. It SOUNDS awesome, but is it realistic? Not really... you have to deal with how to fit that much HP into an engine that fits into the car, materials to handle the torque, aerodynamics to keep the car on the ground and drivable yet still able to somehow let all of the air pass by etc etc.
The 2015 Nismo GTR said to clock in at 0-60 in 2.0 seconds.. Heck, the 2013 GTR can hit in in 2.7 seconds. Some cars hit in the 250-260 MPH range. Price tag? That 2013 GTR is just a touch over 100k (although only gets to about 190MPH). Technology is advancing rapidly. Like I said, it's not possible right now, but it's a very interesting design and could very easily be possible within a decade or so.
Rather than saying "This won't work," people should say "Why can't this work and how can we make it work?"
I gave a list for a reason. It has to do ALL of those things. Aside from that, 0-60 in 2 seconds is unconfirmed. Considering 2014's does it in 2.7 (and the 1700+whp does it in 1.7) thatd be a pretty significant jump. Also, 250-260 is an entirely different league than 300.
Also, I agree that people should say how can we make this work. However, the designer didnt. He made a video and said "if we shout loud enough something will happen"
I can't comment much but for your last part, isn't a designer supposed to well, design? Come up with a concept and present it to the engineer and then the engineer plays a role in talking about feasibility then they make a decision? So while you are right in your statement, I dunno if this designer would've been able to mention how will it all work.
The engineer is part of the design team, along with marketing and (ideally) everyone else involved in producing/handling/supporting the product. Occasionally you'll have a particular technology pushed by a patent owner (like a VP) but that's not the case here since there isn't a patent, plus those types of pet projects often turn out horribly. The problem is getting too locked into feasibility arguments and current technologies is a good way to get your ass kicked. Even in some R&D groups, which should be the least susceptible to it, they get locked into paradigms regarding technology and implementation and fail to see the big picture or emerging alternatives.
The smart phone market, given its youth and speed, might not be that mature yet, but ideally Samsung would be looking further than the Galaxy S5 and 6.
The bigger question is what customer needs does it address and are they worth addressing. I mean, the implementation will vary but it's absolutely possible for the spirit of moddability to eventually emerge, the exact same way it exists with any computer. But you don't just make products because you have a neat idea. You need to understand what customer needs it actually benefits.
Is expandability that big of a need anymore? The vocal minority clamor for SD card slots, but most users stream content from Pandora/Google/Spotify and upcoming iTunes Radio, and automatically store pictures online. If you had Phonebloks, how often do you think you'd actually make additions to it? Are the environmental benefits legitimate and actually meaningful to people? How strong is the pride and other emotions caused by custom-choosing/tinkering with your own device?
On September 14 2013 15:36 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 14 2013 14:53 theBALLS wrote:
On September 14 2013 00:42 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off.
Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux.
The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it.
Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to.
The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable.
These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell.
No, my friend. Engineers would scoff it off. At least for now.
Well I'm an engineer, I don't scoff at it at all. I don't see why other engineers would. I mean lets be clear here, this is not something that is technically beyond us atm. It is something we could easily design, yeah, without further development and optimisation it would be a vastly inferior product to existing smartphones, but it's not nearly infeasible enough that we couldn't do it.
Noting its current technical drawbacks, questioning it's overall marketability and profitability is completely different from scoffing it off. Marketability and profitability is also not generally an engineer's professional opinion, since that's not really our job.
I'm sure if the commercial and economic factors were taken out of the equation, most engineers would love to be involved in building/designing the device. We are, after all, mostly just tech geeks who like to mess around with technology.
Modularity is great, and at least personally, whether or not it is particularly marketable as an end product, I find it at the very least an interesting engineering challenge. The problem is the people who pay us, are going to ask for a feasibility assessment, and we aren't going to flat out lie to them.
Making near future technology into current technology is a part of what engineers do. So just because something is slightly out of the technical reach of big industry at the moment doesn't mean engineers will automatically dismiss it. On the other hand someone has to pay for the development process and often those people aren't actually engineers and their decision is not based on what's technically interesting but what is commercially viable, we just given them a (mostly) objective assessment on how reasonable it will be. the people dismissing it are almost always people who look after the money and not the technology. The engineers I know are happy to work on anything they think is possible so long as someone wants to pay for it, and often for free as a hobby if it isn't too costly.
But yes, please tell me why my profession would scoff at it. You haven't really provided any reasons other than the unbased insistence that we would. I may be biased in that I have a foot in the field of embedded systems, so this is technically intriguing to me, but it would greatly surprise me if the entire engineering industry would as a whole, or even mostly 'scoff it off'. Given that most engineering professionals don't personally care about the commercial/marketing side of development, and are happy to develop away at something that will never sell so long as someone is paying the bills.
I respect your opinion, and I value it; you're an engineer and I'm not.
However, allow me to share from a layman's point of view. Say for computers; how I see it is: Base block = motherboard. A regular motherboard would be able to accept a few iterations of upgrades, so long they pin number is compatible (along with the other parts like the bridges, RAM, etc). However, sooner or later, in order to accommodate an upgrade, even the motherboard will have to be changed entirely. So yes, perhaps this could work; but for how many generations of upgrades before the "base block" itself has to be upgraded (it's practically getting a new phone)? I guess this would still lead to some cost-savings, but I think you get my point.
Also, different components have different inputs. In my computer, my graphics card goes into my PCI-Express slot. My RAM goes into my RAM slots. Etc. I believe that it would be extremely difficult to be able to remove a large battery and use the same pin input to accommodate a different part like say, a wifi chip. Perhaps its possible, but to make it look as elegant as it does in the video such that it still fits in our palms? I'm not so sure.
Manufacturers spend insane resources on coming up with an elegant form factor for their mobile phones. To me, this modular interface proposed is quite an insult to these manufacturers who put so much effort into cramming powerful parts into a small form factor, while maintaining an elegant and pragmatic design.
Don't get my wrong; I would love for this to work out. However, it's mostly a pipe dream at the moment.
You are wrong comparing the base with a motherboard. It does not have any devices on it unlike a motherboard. This base as presented in the video just connects the blocks electrically. Basically, the base is just wires. The blocks communicate with each other by themselves.
It's interesting to see that so many try to debunk a mockup design which is created by an industrial engineer. Let's be clear here: there's absolutely no use in debunking the design itself, because it's only an idea which still has to be researched and developed. And feasibility? Come on, all of a sudden we are all experts? Because for some of us 5 years ago you didn't think the stuff would be possible that we have now. Of course there are basic principles in every phone that exists today, but that doesn't mean they can't be rethought by companies if enough people are going to buy it.
A huge challenge will be getting companies behind the idea, because it will basically mean they have to drop their capitalist attitude.
If companies designing smart phones really cared about making them more ecological I think there would be better approaches for them. For instance they might stop glueing all the stuff together to actually allow for repairs. They might design their phones in a way that makes it easy for a repair service to replace parts that tend to break the fastest. Things like this could help alot while not forcing all the companies to agree to one utopian standard.
But at the time Im pretty sure they actually intend (or at least dont mind) the phones to have a rather short lifespan with not much possibilities of repair. This is to some degree understandable since it makes them more money.
So the crucial question in my eyes is less 'How can a phone be designed in an ecological way' and more 'How can a phone company be motivated to design their phones in an ecological way'. The intention of this twitter campaign is good, but I think drop the whole phonebloks design for now and be more open for other solutions.
It's a nice idea, but style/design is such a big thing in consumer electronics that I don't think there'd be much of a market for a phone that looks like a square lego toy, no matter how green or cost effective it may be 5 years down the line.
One thing the design hasn't pointed out is how thick the phone will be. Most phones that are designed to be optimized for thinness ( < 9 mm) because that is what the consumer wants. The most iconic phone, the Iphone has never had a removable battery or additional flash memory and yet 10's millions of people still buy it not giving a shit about the scalability/modularity aspect.
On September 14 2013 20:09 Jonrock wrote: If companies designing smart phones really cared about making them more ecological I think there would be better approaches for them. For instance they might stop glueing all the stuff together to actually allow for repairs. They might design their phones in a way that makes it easy for a repair service to replace parts that tend to break the fastest. Things like this could help alot while not forcing all the companies to agree to one utopian standard.
But at the time Im pretty sure they actually intend (or at least dont mind) the phones to have a rather short lifespan with not much possibilities of repair. This is to some degree understandable since it makes them more money.
So the crucial question in my eyes is less 'How can a phone be designed in an ecological way' and more 'How can a phone company be motivated to design their phones in an ecological way'. The intention of this twitter campaign is good, but I think drop the whole phonebloks design for now and be more open for other solutions.
There's a widespread rumor that companies create items with a certain lifespan on purpose. But consider the fact that making a phone repairable is very costly, and that competitors use the cheapest labor and materials possible while getting the most of their specs. Our whole economy is focused on making products as cheap as possible, it's a given that electronics quickly break down and can hardly be repaired because of their complexity.
Even for the companies that build them, repairing costs more (even if it was completely focussed on being modulair) perhaps even more expensive than building a new one. For example microprocessors that can be detached or memory chips that can be removed, cost a lot more to build. If they do it, a competitor will not do it and build cheaper phones.
I would imagine a huge upset in the mobile market as people can not be pushed into 24 month contracts anymore and pushing technological advancement is slightly contrained by the fact that it doesn't necessarily sell phones anymore.
I am an engineer, thought not in the electrical field but in mechanical.
I think this is a worthwhile idea, however, I do not believe that we are at the point where we can do this and meet the current demands of the customer base. Can this be built? I think so. Can we achieve the current, or even close to current performance characteristics of today's phones? I don't think so. This whole phone is made to be versatile, but by making it versatile, we lose a lot of performance that we are getting.
For an example, the base plate is a lot of connectors to support the versatility of the different blocks. However, a lot of the connectors are not required once the phone is 'built'. Those connectors though have to transfer power and signals. A lot of the optimization that is used in a typical phone is lost due to the OS/base plate having to support that many connectors.
Those screws concern me as well. The only way I can think of it working is that the fact is that the screws activate a latch system, locking the blocks in through the connectors. This concerns me cause a phone dropping will just shear off those connectors leaving connectors blocking the base plate and the blocks scattering on the floor.
It is a neat idea, I just don't we are there yet or it is as thought out as the developer thinks it is.
The ambiguity in executed leads to potential issues and altough a common platform would make it closer to a desktop computer there are clear limitations in design when it comes to that. Which can matter when you try to shrink everything down into a thin light device. Repair-ability in portable devices has always been shit something like this can very well work for tablets but not so much for phones just due to size considerations. Hell i already don't like the size and bulk attributed to modern smart phones. The phone can deferentially be done but i don't think many people would like it, plus phones are "cheap" as they are sold in combo with contracts without that people would be paying closer to the price of phones which is a couple hundred dollars even without markups.
Led by Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara is developing a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines.
Our goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones. To give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it’s made of, how much it costs, and how long you’ll keep it.
Before anyone jumps on the "OMG THEY STOLE THAT" bandwagon, well... yes and no.
We’ve been working on Project Ara for over a year. Recently, we met Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks. Turns out we share a common vision: to develop a phone platform that is modular, open, customizable, and made for the entire world. We’ve done deep technical work. Dave created a community. The power of open requires both. So we will be working on Project Ara in the open, engaging with the Phonebloks community throughout our development process, as well as asking questions to our Project Ara research scouts (volunteers interested in helping us learn about how people make choices). In a few months, we will also send an invitation to developers to start creating modules for the Ara platform (to spice it up a bit, there might be prizes!).
As for feasibility...
We anticipate an alpha release of the Module Developer’s Kit (MDK) sometime this winter.
WOW NICE! I'm interested to see how customizable it'll be, and I'd assume it won't be as crazy as phonebloks, but rather specified slots for specified things, like memory, ram etc, which is very plausible
If they're reasonably priced (<$100 or so for a low end configuration) I think I'll be getting one to replace my current shitty phone. Of course, it's more likely they'll be as overpriced as most "smartphones" these days, but one can only hope.
Led by Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara is developing a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines.
Our goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones. To give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it’s made of, how much it costs, and how long you’ll keep it.
Before anyone jumps on the "OMG THEY STOLE THAT" bandwagon, well... yes and no.
We’ve been working on Project Ara for over a year. Recently, we met Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks. Turns out we share a common vision: to develop a phone platform that is modular, open, customizable, and made for the entire world. We’ve done deep technical work. Dave created a community. The power of open requires both. So we will be working on Project Ara in the open, engaging with the Phonebloks community throughout our development process, as well as asking questions to our Project Ara research scouts (volunteers interested in helping us learn about how people make choices). In a few months, we will also send an invitation to developers to start creating modules for the Ara platform (to spice it up a bit, there might be prizes!).
Well i think the idea is that motorola (remeber that it is now a google company) will create "the android of hardware" an "open source hardware plataform" that everyone will be able to use.
Thats the idea at least.
I could see Samsung and LG helping the project because they make all the components of their smarthphones, so maybe they'll jump in.
I seriusly hope they will go this way and not the way of "LG blocks are only compatible with LG devices".
Anyway this is a great idea and i think motorola (google) was really the best thing that could have happened to this project, and even if you can just use motorola blocks in motorola phones (wich is not their idea) and samsung blocks in samsung phones, it is still going to change how the smarthphone market works.
Thought of this thread last night when I read about this. Makes me wonder what other companies will do in order to market their own versions.
Nothing imo. Apple has already developed a product that has shown to be the most successful: thin, non removable back panel/bettery/sd card. Making things modular adds to hardware design complexity which leads to a thicker device and possible compatibility issues with next gen hardware. Even the Nexus device has non removable memory. This is only happening because of Google.
On October 30 2013 08:00 Disregard wrote: From a engineering perspective, its a nightmare.
Not really, think about it from the perspective of all other electronics. It will be similar to building your own desktop, some things are not going to be compatible but it forces companies to design in the "messaging" approach. The hardware doesn't care who it is talking to it only receives a certain set of information and only sends a certain set. (Obviously I am super simplifying it)
but its the same as true OO (Object Oriented) design. You should be able to call bits of your code by convention with out much or any configuration.
I am really glad to see Moto (google) jumping on this and trying to push the envelop.
On September 13 2013 23:39 plgElwood wrote: Thats how phones are made today, they choose componets print a circuit board to hook em up and make either a samsung or lg or iphone case around it.
Making phones with changeable components... And then suddenly you need extra circuits/connections in "base". Or the new gen of memory needs other bus. Fact od the matter, companies want you to throw away your phone after 2 years. It has to become obsolete so they can keep producing phones. Also they want you to throw away the complete phone if one component is faulty, to sell a new one. Thats how it is. If you want to change itm make a company yourself and get it to work, dont complain about the other´s success with throwaway electronics.
In the end this is no different from how PCs have worked for ages. Sure, you can tweak your old PC a bit by swapping in a bigger HDD, plug in more memory or buy a faster CPU or graphics card. However, for a serious upgrade you need a new mainboard, which means you need to replace about 90% of the expensive things inside (and in some cases the case/PSU as well). You could extend the life of your PC, but you'd still end up buying a new one every 5 years or so.
Phone technology is moving faster, so your phone is outdated after 2 years. You may be able to stretch that with such a modular approach, but it won't stretch that far either; especially as it'll be less optimized than it is now due to the modular approach (compare the way an iMac and iOS can get away with lower clockspeeds than a PC can, because everything is optimized to run on THAT hardware and nothing else).
And that's assuming you can get the major manufacturers to agree to something like this in the first place.
As a designer, id like to know if they are taking care with phone's planned obsolescence ????
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time.
Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor who might also rely on planned obsolescence.
For an industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging purchasers to buy sooner if they still want a functioning product. Planned obsolescence is common in many different products, including wheeled can openers, screws, ear protectors, sunglasses, headphones, shoes, book bindings, automobile batteries, and bicycle tires.
There is however the potential backlash of consumers who learn that the manufacturer invested money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers might turn to a producer (if any exists) that offers a more durable alternative. Estimates of planned obsolescence can influence a company's decisions about product engineering. Therefore, the company can use the least expensive components that satisfy product lifetime projections. Such decisions are part of a broader discipline known as value engineering.
sounds great but cant happen because everyone wants ur $$$. When the company buys all of the gear to make a phone . .(a fucking lot) they realise that over time they can make that phone for barely anything at all and charge us through the fucking nose . . .and sell millions of them. Their whole set up would have cost a few million. A fucking load of millions - a few million = loads of millions left over. (revenue-costs=profit for you business guys out there!)I however think this concept is excellent and just how i want it . . . . im so sad my brain is way too optimistic for the human race and live in the hope one day money wont be the root of all the evil
another issue that hasn't been mentioned is the thermal issue using only passive cooling (no fan). With such an enclosed area, hardware design and optimization are an important part of the phones design. How thick of a phone are you willing to carry?
Yea this is a bad idea for so many reasons, even if they make it and it becomes popular it'll never be as good as the latest samsung galaxy or nexus or w/e
On November 02 2013 05:22 StatixEx wrote: sounds great but cant happen because everyone wants ur $$$. When the company buys all of the gear to make a phone . .(a fucking lot) they realise that over time they can make that phone for barely anything at all and charge us through the fucking nose . . .and sell millions of them. Their whole set up would have cost a few million. A fucking load of millions - a few million = loads of millions left over. (revenue-costs=profit for you business guys out there!)I however think this concept is excellent and just how i want it . . . . im so sad my brain is way too optimistic for the human race and live in the hope one day money wont be the root of all the evil
On November 02 2013 05:22 StatixEx wrote: sounds great but cant happen because everyone wants ur $$$. When the company buys all of the gear to make a phone . .(a fucking lot) they realise that over time they can make that phone for barely anything at all and charge us through the fucking nose . . .and sell millions of them. Their whole set up would have cost a few million. A fucking load of millions - a few million = loads of millions left over. (revenue-costs=profit for you business guys out there!)I however think this concept is excellent and just how i want it . . . . im so sad my brain is way too optimistic for the human race and live in the hope one day money wont be the root of all the evil
In theory if a company is making you pay through the nose then another company will seek to perform a better service for less, thereby taking all of the former company's customers and forcing them to offer a fair deal. The only thing that could really prevent this is if the costs to start up a company are prohibitively high and you need a strong manufacturing base to really make it work. I think that's really the problem, the market just doesn't "self-correct". Like in Canada Bell and Rogers basically own all the high-speed networks and maintain them...no one can really do much else except buy the leftovers because starting up their own network is expensive and way too time consuming.
Don't worry though people will have enough of it eventually and things will get better. It'll probably be some simple common sense government policies like what I've been reading in the US politics thread . After all that its not really money that's evil; we just need to learn how to create a healthy competitive model
On November 02 2013 04:55 QUECOSA wrote: As a designer, id like to know if they are taking care with phone's planned obsolescence ????
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time.
Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor who might also rely on planned obsolescence.
For an industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging purchasers to buy sooner if they still want a functioning product. Planned obsolescence is common in many different products, including wheeled can openers, screws, ear protectors, sunglasses, headphones, shoes, book bindings, automobile batteries, and bicycle tires.
There is however the potential backlash of consumers who learn that the manufacturer invested money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers might turn to a producer (if any exists) that offers a more durable alternative. Estimates of planned obsolescence can influence a company's decisions about product engineering. Therefore, the company can use the least expensive components that satisfy product lifetime projections. Such decisions are part of a broader discipline known as value engineering.
Text from Wikkipedia
The problem is when one producer jumps ship and everyone else is left behind.
Xerox's old business model used to be based on planned obsolescence and repairs, and then Canon destroyed them with a reliable copier.
agreed with above we hope competition exists but if you look at it, they only undercut by a small bit, i used to work as a programmer and the memory sticks were given to us by a manufacturer, they give us a box load of them (it was a big box 2x as big as a shoe box i would say) and charge us £50, each stick would have been sold for 39.99, depending on the rebrand they went through . . there were 100 - 250 sticks in this box. . so. . . going off this rl experience i begin to wonder just how much profit they made from the £50 . . scares me really
Like lots of people must have been saying, it'll be really really difficult to get this to take hold because modern industry and/or technology is fundamentally built on planned obsolescence.
On November 02 2013 05:22 StatixEx wrote: sounds great but cant happen because everyone wants ur $$$. When the company buys all of the gear to make a phone . .(a fucking lot) they realise that over time they can make that phone for barely anything at all and charge us through the fucking nose . . .and sell millions of them. Their whole set up would have cost a few million. A fucking load of millions - a few million = loads of millions left over. (revenue-costs=profit for you business guys out there!)I however think this concept is excellent and just how i want it . . . . im so sad my brain is way too optimistic for the human race and live in the hope one day money wont be the root of all the evil
In theory if a company is making you pay through the nose then another company will seek to perform a better service for less, thereby taking all of the former company's customers and forcing them to offer a fair deal. The only thing that could really prevent this is if the costs to start up a company are prohibitively high and you need a strong manufacturing base to really make it work. I think that's really the problem, the market just doesn't "self-correct". Like in Canada Bell and Rogers basically own all the high-speed networks and maintain them...no one can really do much else except buy the leftovers because starting up their own network is expensive and way too time consuming.
Well if no company wants to start their own high speed network, it's mostly because you cant actually make money out of it, the prices are already low enough.
A company could still start its own network in a local area and grow later... That's how it's working in France actually, with Free ISP during the beginning of the high speed internet, and with Ovh investing to become an ISP too.
On November 02 2013 05:22 StatixEx wrote: sounds great but cant happen because everyone wants ur $$$. When the company buys all of the gear to make a phone . .(a fucking lot) they realise that over time they can make that phone for barely anything at all and charge us through the fucking nose . . .and sell millions of them. Their whole set up would have cost a few million. A fucking load of millions - a few million = loads of millions left over. (revenue-costs=profit for you business guys out there!)I however think this concept is excellent and just how i want it . . . . im so sad my brain is way too optimistic for the human race and live in the hope one day money wont be the root of all the evil
For the longest time, apple was the only one making profit on these things. samsung is doing well now, but htc is just about break even I think. And ya, components of a phone may only cost ~100$, but money is also spent on development, marketing, not to mention profit needs to cover for flops. And you should include the companies that fail, remember palm? blackberry? Apple may make large margins, but that's because they took a risk and won, just as blackberry is being sold because they took a risk and lost.
On November 02 2013 08:41 StatixEx wrote: agreed with above we hope competition exists but if you look at it, they only undercut by a small bit, i used to work as a programmer and the memory sticks were given to us by a manufacturer, they give us a box load of them (it was a big box 2x as big as a shoe box i would say) and charge us £50, each stick would have been sold for 39.99, depending on the rebrand they went through . . there were 100 - 250 sticks in this box. . so. . . going off this rl experience i begin to wonder just how much profit they made from the £50 . . scares me really
direct from manufacturer is cheap, microcenter gets good processor deals because of it. But remember that not all this 39.99 would go to manufacturer if it were sold in a store. A bit goes to the store, a bit to wholesaler (maybe), and a bit goes to commission (maybe).
People keep saying it can't be done, it's too hard, it's not possible, it'll never sell. Every great innovation has these people, it's best to just ignore them. I am looking forward to what could be done with something like this. It could fail this is true, but it's a good idea and good ideas tend to happen sooner or later. I'd actually purchase a smart phone if I could design it how I'd want. I think most people would as well.
Yeah none of the obstacles are insurmountable. for example the planned obsolescence as a business practice will only remain the prevalent one as long as consumers don't demand better products. Smart Phones are still relatively new. Phone development have been very fast, people will catch up, eventually. If this does break through (which it might since Motorola seems to be investing quite a bit into it) it just take a few other companies to jump on-board for it to be a thriving platform. And we are becoming more aware of our personal impact on the earth. If more people are made aware of the appalling conditions with which we extract the rare earths from the few known deposits of them around the globe which are crucial to making our smart phones and if people knew the horrendous way that the electronic waste is "recycled" to try and regain some of the precious metals that are not design with a seconds thought to recycling.... yeah ... then they might be more aware that they should demand products which don't break after 2 years. Demand products that has components that can be recycled and re-used. If you have these kinds of divices perhaps some part company can produce a component that they will then buy back from you once it is no longer useful to you and use a machine similar to their assemblyline to disassemble the component into it's various different parts, reuse the ones that will work again, recycle the ones which it can't.
The problem of upgrades, and such, to non techsavy people, as long as you just design it into the concept making it easy for people to check possible upgrades, benefits and costs to them, having cellphone stores close by where they can upgrade their phones during a lunch break etc, it will be done by enough phone stores, cause they want to sell phones and upgrades and peripherals, the more often a costumer comes to them the better.
The problem of manufacturing scale, that for a phone you just have 1 factory producing 1 display, instead of having to have 2-5 different models. However this 1 factory producing 1 display will go into 1 phone. These 2-5 factories producing 2-5 displays will go into a huge variety of set-ups so if there's 10 different part types IIRC it'll be (n^9)/4 which is then 128 to ~500 000. (9 instead of 10 to remove the options where they just use one type of part, and a whole of other non realistic occurrences, divided by four is so it removes the mirrored and rotated set-ups which are identical)
The problem of compatibility etc., this can be controlled better by having a good database structure in place to handle compatibility queries to see how you can make a phone and how you can upgrade a phone you already have and which parts don't work with which. Sure that's a really difficult thing, getting every part tested with every other part in every configuration that has ever existed. But this is also where smaller companies will come in to make prefabricated set-ups. just like with PCs...
On November 02 2013 17:59 salle wrote: Yeah none of the obstacles are insurmountable. for example the planned obsolescence as a business practice will only remain the prevalent one as long as consumers don't demand better products. Smart Phones are still relatively new. Phone development have been very fast, people will catch up, eventually. If this does break through (which it might since Motorola seems to be investing quite a bit into it) it just take a few other companies to jump on-board for it to be a thriving platform. And we are becoming more aware of our personal impact on the earth. If more people are made aware of the appalling conditions with which we extract the rare earths from the few known deposits of them around the globe which are crucial to making our smart phones and if people knew the horrendous way that the electronic waste is "recycled" to try and regain some of the precious metals that are not design with a seconds thought to recycling.... yeah ... then they might be more aware that they should demand products which don't break after 2 years. Demand products that has components that can be recycled and re-used. If you have these kinds of divices perhaps some part company can produce a component that they will then buy back from you once it is no longer useful to you and use a machine similar to their assemblyline to disassemble the component into it's various different parts, reuse the ones that will work again, recycle the ones which it can't.
The problem of upgrades, and such, to non techsavy people, as long as you just design it into the concept making it easy for people to check possible upgrades, benefits and costs to them, having cellphone stores close by where they can upgrade their phones during a lunch break etc, it will be done by enough phone stores, cause they want to sell phones and upgrades and peripherals, the more often a costumer comes to them the better.
The problem of manufacturing scale, that for a phone you just have 1 factory producing 1 display, instead of having to have 2-5 different models. However this 1 factory producing 1 display will go into 1 phone. These 2-5 factories producing 2-5 displays will go into a huge variety of set-ups so if there's 10 different part types IIRC it'll be (n^9)/4 which is then 128 to ~500 000. (9 instead of 10 to remove the options where they just use one type of part, and a whole of other non realistic occurrences, divided by four is so it removes the mirrored and rotated set-ups which are identical)
The problem of compatibility etc., this can be controlled better by having a good database structure in place to handle compatibility queries to see how you can make a phone and how you can upgrade a phone you already have and which parts don't work with which. Sure that's a really difficult thing, getting every part tested with every other part in every configuration that has ever existed. But this is also where smaller companies will come in to make prefabricated set-ups. just like with PCs...
Here here! What Salle said. It won't be easy but I think it will work
Given that this kind of business model works fine for desktop computers I could see it being fine also for a phone design. I always figured that portable electronics (laptops, tablets, phones) would never really be as modular as a desktop due to size constraints, but hopefully I was wrong.
Cool idea but its not gonna happen. Phones now are fashion items, you cant go and display the brick in the video. People are looking towards transparent phones, curved phones, phones covered in gold and diamonds etc and what we have here is just something geared towards the geeks and to people who have some tech knowledge and prefer function over form. Secondly none of the big phone companies will do something like this. Look at Apple for example, you cant even change the batteries on their laptops by yourself as opposed to other brands. Another example from Apple is their phones, they make small upgrades and charge you $700+ each time, easy money.
On December 10 2013 03:24 Blazinghand wrote: Given that this kind of business model works fine for desktop computers I could see it being fine also for a phone design. I always figured that portable electronics (laptops, tablets, phones) would never really be as modular as a desktop due to size constraints, but hopefully I was wrong.
Phone producers can't even agree on a standardized plug for the power chord... I don't think any standards like ATX are going to hold up for phones.
On December 10 2013 03:24 Blazinghand wrote: Given that this kind of business model works fine for desktop computers I could see it being fine also for a phone design. I always figured that portable electronics (laptops, tablets, phones) would never really be as modular as a desktop due to size constraints, but hopefully I was wrong.
Phone producers can't even agree on a standardized plug for the power chord... I don't think any standards like ATX are going to hold up for phones.
Everyone minus one bratty company uses a micro USB... That's quite standardized.
With the introduction of LTE and LTE-A we'll see some interresting stuff with cloud computing based phone / computers. Probably still a bit futuristic, but in office enviroments we already start to see just a screen, and then you run all the power through a huge mainframe server. Then you can pretty much design your own computer, and no need to update individual stuff etc.
To this day, you can't build a laptop with standardized parts. What makes you think you can do it for a phone considering that there's a lot less space to work with.
On December 12 2013 01:25 Kanaz wrote: With the introduction of LTE and LTE-A we'll see some interresting stuff with cloud computing based phone / computers. Probably still a bit futuristic, but in office enviroments we already start to see just a screen, and then you run all the power through a huge mainframe server. Then you can pretty much design your own computer, and no need to update individual stuff etc.
Even now, there are limits on bandwidth. There's not enough bandwidth to make it possible. Then there's the problem of latency.