the future of mobile devices?

[randomactsoftech]

I think that this, once further developed and embraced, could be the future of all of our mobile devices. phonebloks.com

 

[AViking]

I'm sure there's already been a thread about this before but I hope you're right. As I understand it though there are multiple companies trying to do the same thing. That bodes well. Hopefully.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I think that this, once further developed and embraced, could be the future of all of our mobile devices. phonebloks.com

This is silliness. It would never be adopted because there isn't enough mark up on individual blocks to make it worth a company's effort. This benefits no one but the end user. When was the last time any company ever did something purely for the end user?

On a side note, the phoneblocks web page is very bad design. It is impossible to determine what they're trying to say /sell without watching the videos.

 

[Ravynmagi]

It's a modular upgradable phone like Project Ara.

I think it's a great idea, I love it. But I don't I'm skeptical it'll happen or last if it does.

Upgradable devices is more our past than our future. Consumer demand seems to have already shown people would rather have smaller, cheaper, more efficient devices over upgradable, more expensive (up front anyway), bigger, and less efficient but much more flexible devices. We used to be able to upgrade CPUs in most of our laptops, now the idea is laughable.

Phone manufactures are comfortable selling customers a new phone every year or two. A lot of customers are used to buying cheap phones with their carrier contracts. Component manufactures are used to having no competition and selling directly in bulk to phone manufactures. There is just so many hugely entrenched things that need to change for upgradable phones to even happen.

Maybe someone with massive influence and resources like Google could do it. A start up with a horrible website probably isn't going to though.

 

[crashtestdummy]

I personally like the idea, but I see a bunch of things in the way:

1. The movement of smartphones to commodity items. The difference in capability between a high-end ($600) smartphone and a low-end ($200) one is already small, and it's going to get progressively smaller. What difference there is has shifted from processor speeds to things like screen and camera quality. Any modular system will almost by definition be more expensive than an equivalently-speced non-modular system. If there's relatively little difference between the high and low ends of devices on the whole, then upgradability is a less of an attractive feature.
2. Bandwidth between components. Phone performance is improved by having optimal connections between components. Upgraded components will want to take advantage of larger and faster pipelines, so any standard created will have to be sufficiently future-proof and flexible to support years of updates.
3. Operating systems for modular devices will need a fundamentally different firmware/driver infrastructure. With Android, each device has its own firmware implementation designed to run optimally on that hardware. To reduce space and increase efficiency, a build of Android for a Galaxy S4 won't run on an HTC One. That would need to change for something like Ara. Android would need to be able to expand its driver components much more like the way a desktop operating system does, without requiring a new OS install. Luckily for it, Google is throwing its resources to make that part work, and perhaps if it can be done it'll become a lot easier to have a universal copy of Android that runs on all platforms. That'd be quite nice.
4. There needs to be one standard from the start. Given how much of a niche product this is likely to be, it can't really afford a VHS/Betamax or Bluray/HDDVD style format war. If there's no sense that the framework is here to stay, there will be little incentive to invest in any of them.

 

[vshah]

phonebloks IS project ARA. they were hired by motorola and now by google.

 

[randomactsoftech]

This is silliness. It would never be adopted because there isn't enough mark up on individual blocks to make it worth a company's effort. This benefits no one but the end user. When was the last time any company ever did something purely for the end user?

On a side note, the phoneblocks web page is very bad design. It is impossible to determine what they're trying to say /sell without watching the videos.

I would like to hold out hope for the future that someday someone will come along who is indeed interested in the end user and not just their own selfish greed. Granted in the past those types of people have been choked out quickly. A man can dream! I think that if something really did come along that could free the world from 2 year contracts that the world would embrace them.

phonebloks IS project ARA. they were hired by motorola and now by google.

I was bit confused by this myself but I drew the same conclusion.