Perhaps my sarcasm was a little too heavy on that one, but I think you’ve illustrated the point I was trying to make very well about concepts vs execution.
It is not impossible to make a modular telephone, just like it is not impossible to make a light powered by gravity.
The Phonebloks video tells the world of a device that’s every bit as good was what is currently in your pocket, just as powerful, reliable, well designed, and makes it seem easily obtainable, that is - if the world of evil corporations would adopt such a novel approach.
Just like the Gravia lamp told the story of 4 hours of bright light in a beautiful design that any architect would be proud to have in their study.
Once the reality of that engineering hurdle sets in it becomes obvious that cost, physics, and design constraints are much more realistic and challenging to over come than planned. A 20lb bag of sand to power a single LED for 30 minutes is certainly nice for the third world, but falls far short from the design promises made, even with planned LED efficiency getting better and better.
Designing a modular phone wouldn’t be any different, it would certainly be possible, but the end result would be far larger, slower, and more expensive due to the massive amount of interconnections not present on any standard device that it would never make market sense, even if most of the phone was reusable for 5 or 10 years.
At the end of the day, most of us buy new phones because we like them. Because our old ones are scratched up and don’t let us get the newest Twitter app. The smartphone platform is much more than just a phone, which is why plenty of people still use flip phones and are completely happy. The consumer culture is a bigger problem than modularizing E-waste is ever going to be, so while I appreciate the compelling story, no one would actually like the product they pulled out on the other side.