Phonebloks - the future of phones? - Page 7
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canikizu
4860 Posts
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peacenl
550 Posts
A huge challenge will be getting companies behind the idea, because it will basically mean they have to drop their capitalist attitude. | ||
sumsaR
Sweden1812 Posts
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Jonrock
Germany80 Posts
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. | ||
dmfg
United Kingdom591 Posts
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CorsairHero
Canada9487 Posts
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peacenl
550 Posts
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. | ||
wunsun
Canada622 Posts
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. | ||
semantics
10040 Posts
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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
So about that lack of manufacturer support... Meet Ara. 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. | ||
JieXian
Malaysia4677 Posts
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Rollin
Australia1552 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
On October 29 2013 15:10 Jibba wrote: http://motorola-blog.blogspot.com/2013/10/goodbye-sticky-hello-ara.html So about that lack of manufacturer support... Before anyone jumps on the "OMG THEY STOLE THAT" bandwagon, well... yes and no. As for feasibility... 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. | ||
[Phantom]
Mexico2170 Posts
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. | ||
Disregard
China10252 Posts
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CorsairHero
Canada9487 Posts
On October 30 2013 07:46 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: 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. | ||
Zykor
United States58 Posts
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zul
Germany5427 Posts
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Yurie
11538 Posts
On October 30 2013 08:00 Disregard wrote: From a engineering perspective, its a nightmare. This nightmare is why most car and truck manufacturers are using modular platforms or are moving towards them? This is the same thing... | ||
YourGoodFriend
United States2197 Posts
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. | ||
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