Phonebloks

This isn’t exploration. This is how things currently exist and will continue to organically grow across brands and across platforms. Also did a lot of work on this at frog. It will be brand agnostic and will continue to grow out of how users are life hacking their own solutions. Those solutions are easy to observe in software and then to eventually institutionalize. It tends to happen at a pace we don’t notice. I see it in my world by the continued demands on connectivity.

Vaporware. It’s kinda like asking why we don’t repair our TVs when they break. Manufacturing is so efficient that repair can’t compete on price. Stores are already squeezed on floor space. A store isn’t giving 4’ to the phone blok when they could give it to 8 different cel phones that reach 8 different types of clients.

And all this modularity ensures compatibility over 10 years time, right? Right.

Physical mating went out with the 30 pin.

One of my favorite iterations of this popular modular trope in the CE realm is Bug Labs concept they did a few years ago. Love the neo-bauhaus approach.
I don’t see why it would be hard, they could just use standard PCB wire connectors as the plugs between modules.

Just don’t get it damp…

That’s exactly what makes it hard. Board to board connectors are either extremely fragile, or extremely large. Larger connectors begin to have issues with shielding, impedance control, drop reliability, electrostatic discharge, let alone sealing.

The basic logic is also flawed - for example you want to connect to a display: Every mobile display has different power requirements, input pin locations, total #'s of pins, etc. If someone comes out with a new display technology in 3 years and you want to upgrade your LED backlit display with the hot new AMOLED hotness, suddenly now you’re no longer sending the right signals to the right places. Either you redefine a supply chain because traditional “integrated” phones would never go away, even in Phonebloks perfect world), or now you have to create intermediate boards which reconfigure the voltage, pinouts, etc. More cost, more redundant hardware, more failure points.

We take for granted the fact that most of our phones have taken some pretty gnarly spills, and we pick it up and it’s fine. We got there because 99% of your phone lives on a single PCB. Our speed and power improvements occur because we only have to send power a very short distance. This is what really helped birth the SoC (system on a chip) paradigm which is why our phones now last longer, run faster, and still support more features and antenna bands.

The RF engineering alone is insane. Remember how people got really REALLY mad at Apple when they found out bridging the gap ruined the RF performance? Imagine what happens when you find out that putting your new Bluetooth 5 chip next to your old camera module makes it not work any more.

Again, all these challenges can be overcome IF the customer was willing to accept a much more expensive solution that no longer fits in your pocket. Picture a Rasberry Pi or mini PC with a bunch of components strapped to it.

Now the next argument is “Technology will be so much smaller in 10 years” is also true…but I guarantee by the time we get to that point the smart phone as a platform may be totally irrelevant.

“OK Glass submit post”

For every technical design flaw or hurdle that exists in this concept, the fundamental hurdle lies at the end of the chain, the consumer or even society.

I am sitting in a train station in communist China, I look around and over 80% of the people are holding a phone in one hand. People dressed like construction workers have a banged up candybar format phone. Slightly out of date schoolgirls have small iphones. A little less than half have a medium format HTC type slab, and the people that will eventually board the train into cars with wider seats and more leg room are sporting giant Samsung slabs. The mobile phone is an aspirational device, it is a reflector of status. It also changes dramatically here with fashion.

Consumerism, which we are all part of, exists on change and exists on generating the new. Society and technology are in motion. We designers read that motion and make new products in an attempt to meet the consumers needs. We are part of the machine that generates desire, generates need. There are no dark rooms with shadowy figures plotting the end of life cycles of products. There are brightly lit room with whiteboards and designers and marketers planning the next thing.

There is no need to make a modular phone in order to have longevity or fight consumerism, if you want to keep your phone, keep your phone. If you want to feel good about sticking it to the man, buy a used phone.

Apple is apparently are going to refurbish traded in iphones and send them to Africa, that is a sort of cool idea. It however illustrates the global chain of consumption.

For this to function you need a completely counter society. North Korea perhaps. Kim Jong Un could declare this “the people’s phone” and build a phone that would only work within the borders of his country, mandating “block” updates for new fingerprint scanners for example, or a new encryption chip that would allow his surveillance services access to the communications. But guess what, even North Koreans want cool phones when they finally get to have one! And even Kim Jong Un needs churn in his economy in order to grow.

So what do we have? We have a concept that is a “great idea”, just “for other people, not me”. We have a viral video that is the absolute height of what the simplest block CAD extrusions and motion paths can reach. And we are introduced to the concept ThunderClap, making a collective “noise” through no effort and no commitment. The sound of millions hands uniting and issuing one giant, one handed clap.

Whiff.

Very well said! Excellent.

Hey Cameron, I did the ID for Bug Labs. Cool project, more of a step up from Arduino, as opposed to phone or device replacement.

One last thing: failures tend to occur at junctions, joints or wherever you have movement. How do you know the camera failed or the connector is dirty or damaged?

Google launches build-your-own-phone project Ara

Motorola plans to begin inviting developers to create modules in a few months time with a module developer’s kit launching soon afterwards.

Motorola came across the work of Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks, while developing the project and asked him to team up with them. Phonebloks has gained much interest in recent months.
Lego phone

Mr Hakkens launched Phonebloks on crowd-promoting website Thunderclap and quickly amassed 950,000 supporters.

“We’ve done the deep technical work. Dave created a community,” Motorola added in its blogpost.

Great presentation. I would say odds are 3000:1 that we never see this available for purchase. It’s a marketing project to boost Motorola/Google’s image.

Because if anyone knows how to run a profitable smartphone business, it’s Motorola.

Could you imagine dropping this?

Oh no! I lost my processor! I dropped my phone and it popped out. It might be under the couch, oh wait, that’s my old wifi chip.

I suspect Motorola had this concept, or some flavour of it, already in process. But then Mr. Hakkens self-published and 950k+ followers, saturation republishing, and there was no conceivable option for Motorola. Imagine the universal condemnation of IP theft if Motorola were to introduce some user module replaceable smart phone concept in the next few years. For sure there were legal discussions within Motorola, but maybe a very prescient design manager saw the idea to offer to cooperate and create a positive situation for all: offer Mr. Hakkens a project specific consulting role, some pay, leverage current hype, avoid bad PR and litigation.

Overall I like this concept, it poses all sorts of complexities for design, manufacturing and for the user, as already much discussed. Rafael Morgan’s comment under the blog page article is prescient: paradigm shift for otherwise sealed ecosystem of smart phone design, opening market to other manufacturers’ discipline specific “Bloks”. Along those lines, I can see even a social aspect, odd permutations of similar phone assemblages forming social circles, akin to those Japanese electronic toys.

Just as this phone blok seems new, it’s also old. Product “platforms” were the management phrase of the 1990-2000’s, one place I worked even changed names from R&D to Platform Development and my title changed from Industrial to Platform Design. And even further back 1980’s Toyota’s “manufacturing in units of 1” concept where permutation of options meant every car was unique, all assembled on the same line (minor news when Toyota abandoned it as impractical, now implemented at Audi).

There exist numerous add-ons for smart phones but they are all odd and obtrusive. Perhaps Motorola and Mr. Hakkens development of a platform, if achievable and truly open source as claimed, will open a market for myriad hardware app developers whose design embodiment is also elegant.

I think the idea of a modular phone is great given how quick consumers are to go after the phone with the best camera or fastest processor, but that idea of consumerism is exactly where the concept loses traction. Nxakt hinted at some problems with the idea; it won’t really solve the issue they claim it will unless it is implemented in a communist society. The happy-go-lucky video that seemingly portrays no one ever throwing away a phone again is a little hard to swallow. With any form of a free-market economy, I think competition will always drive innovation and the phonebloks of 2014 will quickly become outdated by 2016. (Just as DiTullo mentioned with the 30-pin) The design would serve consumers well because they could upgrade their camera before their contract says they’re ready for a two-year upgrade. If successful, so many companies would follow suit and market a modular phone that I find it hard to believe the concept would change the way or amount of hardware disposed. It would just perpetuate our demand to have mass customized products.

Rest in piece project Ara; we hardly knew ye.

Called it.

I’m shocked!