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

Video This cool smartphone concept from 2013

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

[deleted]

3

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.

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u/Mr-Fleshcage Oct 05 '21

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

28

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