Phonebloks!! an idea for a better phone

[shocker]

would you support this...i would...pretty good idea imo

[*KRONIK*]

excellent idea...
i am in support...but i hope it works the way it says it does, and i hope all the components dont fail every 3 months to warrant constant replacement.

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

I'm not sure that will work the way they say it will. To change a screen to a higher resolution takes more than just replacing the screen, it will require upgrades to other parts of the phone such as the video processors, memory, battery and programming, all of which will lie in different parts of the phone. This will negate the concept of this phone IMO

[TRAE]

but its a good start duane,

[sliderz1]

not as easy as they say it is; consider market price and upgrades in terms of their turnover and competition. besides there will be compatibility issues like duane said

[maj. tom]

The problem they want to tackle is electronic waste. I don't think this will solve it in any small way and it will limit design, creativity and power/engineering efficiency of future products.

Can you imagine still sitting behind your 1985 Macintosh 512K computer design on your desktop? They would have never invented smartphone and tablet. With this concept they will never design holographic displays and flexible folding LCD screens in the next 10 years.

One way to fix that electronic waste problem is by charging consumers a recycling tax on every product they buy and then have dedicated international recycling plants for these items and materials. There are so many rare-earth elements they can recycle from electronics. Each government would set up trade agreements to ship their e-waste to recycling countries for fees and incentives.

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

^ the key is recycling

[shocker]

that's true but i would love to see this happening

[dougla_boy]

nice idea! but i dont see this happening as we would expect

[maj. tom]

the idea of upgrades was presented by Samsung at CES 2013 for upgrading their Smart TVs.

check links:
http://www.samsung.com/uk/news/localnews/2013/samsung-unveils-evolution-kit-at-ces-2013-to-complete-an-evolving-smart-tv

http://gigaom.com/2013/01/07/samsung-smart-tv-evolution-kit/

[Gx7]

ill stick to my s4

[ismithx]

then again it's hard to recycle some of our gadgets.. i read an article a while back about the limited amt of gold on this earth and how it is being lost, as it is used in very tiny amounts in electronics, which is hard to recover at the end of the day... i cyah find the article

[JEEZANAGES]

A prototype would be nice though to see in person.....great idea but i dont think all the companies would come together to make it.....each will have their own

[X2]

Sounds like a great idea.... won't work in a consumer driven economy... capitalism demands things like technology be developed, sold, upgraded, replaced.... not to mention manufacturers would never switch to a generic platform, abandoning proprietary technologies.

If that were even remotely possible, we'd all be using the same type of phone charger.

[maj. tom]

25 October 2013 Last updated at 01:53
Phonebloks: The phone you can build like Lego
By William Kremer BBC World Service

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24490331
(a bit too long to copy and paste)

[sonygoup]

This would be awesome but really seeing catch on without major companies taking part this might just be a failure or a really small company trying to do the impossible

[JahSoldi3r]

Boom Bang...Open Source to boot! This will be d best ting to hit mobile comms since mobile comms...i'm onboard 100%!!!!!!!

[black start]

its a great idea but like many prototypes, if it actually comes out, it will most likely be far from what was initially advertised....

[stev]

Xiaomi to Start its Own Modular Phone Called the Magic Cube



If I were to tell you that you could upgrade your phone just like you upgrade a computer, would you be excited? Let’s say you like the size of your screen and don’t want one any bigger or smaller, but your phone is getting a little slow so you’d like to upgrade it and make it fast again. Or how about that low-resolution camera you have on your phone without something cool like Optical Image Stabilization, and now you want to upgrade it to a 16 megapixel one with OIS? All this stuff is possible, and more, with the new concept of modular phones. We first saw this concept back in September when Phonebloks announced their Kickstarter project to build a new phone that does just this. Of course that was an extremely lofty goal, as not just anyone off the street can design and get their own phone manufactured, much less one with the number of parts and complexity of the Phonebloks concept.

Thankfully Motorola came around not long after and announced their own modular project called Project Ara, which had been in development for the past year. Now Motorola isn’t the only one to be working on a modular phone apparently, and Xiaomi, the Chinese manufacturer that former Android VP Hugo Barra left to join back in late summer, is also working on a modular phone as well dubbed the “Magic Cube.”



The images you see above were added to Xiaomi Founder and CEO Lei Jun’s Weibo profile, and have since been removed. While Mr Jun didn’t include much info alongside the images, we can gather quite a bit of info from them. First off it looks curiously quite a bit like Motorola’s Projecct Ara and the Phonebloks concept, which is a fantastic thing. Modular phones are likely going to be huge when they eventually hit the market, and it’ll likely help lessen the stigma that phone upgrades carry with them, and even help with the cost of smartphone ownership as a whole too. A company like Xiaomi working on such a project could help bring this concept to places around the world that Motorola might not normally sell to, and with Xiaomi’s big name in China and the surrounding countries, this concept could really get a big foothold very quickly.

The only downside that can be seen in these images is that this phone is a lot more simple looking than either Project Ara or the Phonebloks concept, as it only has 3 to 4 parts that are able to be switched out, whereas the other modular phone concepts have somewhere around 8 to 10 pieces that can be switched out. This obviously limits the amount of customization possible, however since these images have been pulled from Mr Jun’s Weibo account, there’s no telling exactly how customizable these actually were; this could just be two of many different images showing many more options. Regardless this is pretty exciting stuff, and we’ll be watching this project and the other modular phone projects like a hawk.

http://www.androidheadlines.com/2013/12 ... -cube.html

[stev]

Dennis Woodside Elaborates on Project Ara as well as the Future of MotoMaker



Earlier this afternoon, Motorola Mobility’s CEO, Dennis Woodside sat down with YouTube legend (okay maybe not quite a legend yet) Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, and talked about all kinds of things. In particular they talked about Project Ara and Phonebloks. Phonebloks was a pretty interesting idea, but many of us thought it would never work out. It basically is an idea to allow users to replace components of their smartphones very easily and cheaper. Say for instance you want a better camera, just buy the module and put in your phone. Just that easy.

Woodside said in the interview, that Phonebloks does have a prototype that is “pretty close”, but the problem is the interface to allow the various components to directly speak to the motherboard. At this point, there’s no standards to allow the speaker, camera, etc., to talk directly to the motherboard. But this is an issue that Motorola is working on to fix. Motorola is looking to create an open standard rather than building a proprietary solution. That’s very Google-like, if you ask me.

He did hint that when the product is ready, which is still a ways down the road, that the plan is to offer it through MotoMaker. While in the meantime, MotoMaker will be expanding with new materials offered. It sounds as if it won’t be stopping with wood backs, but no specifics were given today. While Project Ara is in development, users can even sign up with the project’s DScout page to get information, even do some missions for Motorola.

The future of MotoMaker actually sounds really interesting. I’m interested to see if Motorola will add more devices to MotoMaker as well as what other materials we might see pop up in there. What other materials would you like to see in MotoMaker for a new Motorola phone? Let us know in the comments below.

http://www.androidheadlines.com/2013/12 ... maker.html


have a feeling we wont be seeing this type of tech until late 2016....

[pioneer]

no apple no care

[stev]

Google Releases The Module Developers Kit For Ambitious Developers And OEMs



Google just released the Module Developers Kit today so manufacturers can begin to compile all the information they need on how to produce modules for its upcoming Ara device. We know that Google is allegedly getting ready to show the world a working prototype of the Project Ara smartphone in the coming weeks, and there are rumors that Google wants to begin testing a $50 WiFi only version of the device in the near future in emerging markets where WiFi hot spots are common. From the sounds of things, Ara devices will be like the Frankenstien of the smartphone world as module pieces of your RAM, your processor, your screen, your camera etc. can all come different OEMs. We can’t promise we can resist the urge to scream out IT’S ALIVE once we get one of these in our own hands and power it on.

The point of releasing the Module Developers Kit now was to put it ahead of the the virtual conference that Google is holding later this month with the developers that are to be working on Ara modules. Glazing over things beforehand means that they can enter the conference already in the know about certain details that will ultimately come up at some point anyway. The Module Devlopers Kit has a good bit of information for interested manufacturers, with everything from the size of the bases for Ara devices to the specifications of the Power Storage modules. As Google has stated before, there will end up being three Ara base sizes available to consumers, so Ara devices will end up being available as small, medium, or large size phones.

Just like with Google’s requirements for Android design guidelines for apps and the UI, they have a set of design guidelines in place for modules as well, which means there will be a strict rule as to how modules will be able to look, how big they can be and so on. The good things for the developers is that these rules or guidelines will only end up applying to the most common modules like the camera, CPU etc. Less mainstream or otherwise less important or unique modules can be created with a little more freedom it sounds like. With the Module Developers Kit out there for any developers and OEMs to look through everything and get going, things are starting to take an interesting turn and we can’t wait to see what manufacturers, Google, and developers come up with for the future of Ara.

http://www.androidheadlines.com/2014/04 ... -oems.html

http://www.androidheadlines.com/2014/04 ... month.html

[rodfarva]

I'll be buying in.
If only to get the exact specs I want backed by pure android