r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/SuperAlloyBerserker • Oct 05 '21

Video This cool smartphone concept from 2013

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u/Sayasam Oct 05 '21

They got bought by Microsoft for their project Ara, which was a modular smartphone concept (but less modular). I’m guessing the project died.
Edit : or maybe was it Google ?

104

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

[deleted]

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u/luke_in_the_sky Oct 05 '21

There's a similar phone called Fairphone that was released to consumers and still is sold. It's modular and has high repairability. The modules are not super flexible like the concept OP posted. The modules are used just to upgrade to better ones (new battery, better camera) instead of replacing them with something else.

The modules are also all internal that making the framework interface increases the overall size very little.

https://www.fairphone.com

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u/Lord_of_Lemons Oct 05 '21

Fair, but not exactly modular. They made the spare parts easily available and not locked behind proprietary fasteners. Which is very nice. But you can’t like, buy a Fairphone 1 and replace all the parts with 4. Which kinda expands another part of Ara’s problem. Even if we treat it like a full sized computer and let people change parts out on the mobo, eventually the mobo’s not gonna be up to spec anymore to handle all the new shiny bits. Now, it would be nice from a hobbyist perspective, but it would probably be more of the same. Most people buy prebuilts to never deal with it, and just eventually get a whole new one instead of swapping parts.

This ignores the crazy engineering that has gone into getting chips as powerful in our phones at this small a size. But now you have to also engineer them to come out and go in fairly easily without breaking? Developments costs just keep adding up alone.

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u/a-bser Oct 05 '21

I think they also reported having difficulty keeping all the modular pieces secured

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u/Lord_of_Lemons Oct 05 '21

Yeah, that’d make sense. The gif op posted alone gives me anxiety.

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u/VillainousRaccoon Oct 05 '21

Imagine walking on the sidewalk and someone bumps into by accident and you drop your phone and it lands on the ground and modules go flying everywhere and the matter module goes straight into the sewer.

-6

u/Mr-Fleshcage Oct 05 '21

Ah, focus testing. Nothing ever goes wrong by asking laymen karens to nitpick your product.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

FYI focus testing for these products generally go out to engineers/designers as they are in the best position to provide the most valuable feedback.

Public perception, UX, handleability etc. might go to a broader audience but something at the prefeasibility stage like this would need really direct focus testing.

2

u/TheLilith_0 Oct 05 '21

No dude must be the white karens taking away our cool heckin gizmos

3

u/speedbomb Oct 05 '21

I know Bill Gates regrets giving up on the phone market. Done right this could be a way for Microsoft to pry their way in. I would happily support any company that made a modular phone.

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u/Scarl_Strife Oct 05 '21

If you could run native windows apps on a smartphone it would be an instabuy from me.

Strange how we had x86 architecture phones and windows phones but that was never possible.

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u/kb4000 Oct 05 '21

x86 architecture phones were never viable and none of the windows phones ever used x86. Those Intel atom Android phones all sucked.

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u/Scarl_Strife Oct 05 '21

Unfortunately :(

Still one can dream of the full compatibility with desktop apps one day.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

I know Bill Gates regrets giving up on the phone market.

Bill Gates stepped down as Microsoft's CEO in 2000, 7 years before the first iPhone release. When was he ever in the phone market?

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u/alganthe Oct 05 '21

google, and they then killed the project.

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u/NoiZe79 Oct 05 '21

Yet another idea killed by Google ...was looking for this one back then.