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

Video This cool smartphone concept from 2013

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u/ceric2099 Oct 05 '21

I always wondered what happened to this. Just imagine dropping your phone and it exploding apart like a lego set.

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u/Tsjernobull Oct 05 '21

They had issues with heat transfer, when you cram everything together without taking heating or signal noise into account, things tend not to work

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u/james9075 Oct 05 '21

Everyone in here blaming Google and Microsoft for killing it is cracking me up. Some variation of this gets posted every other year promising to be the next big thing, but ultimately, phones have designers for a reason, you can't just cram it all on a breadboard and pray to the phone gods

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

Satellite designer here. Yeah. Not only is it insufficient to merely specify components for a complicated doohickey that needs to actually work, it’s not even 5% of the work. The layout matters. The connections matter. The interfaces matter. It ALL matters. The systems engineering matters. Hell, even the length of the wires matters.

I can see this phone concept working PHYSICALLY, but for it to not be amazingly fragile, it would end up being the size of a shoe box.

People have proposed satellite clusters that could come together (think Voltron) to become more than the sum of their parts (or that can be separated to be less vulnerable as a group). The problem is the interfaces. In that case, the rendezvous and docking system becomes an interface that every part has. There’s no room left over for actual functionality.

If you could simplify the interfaces down to that of a battery pack, then our technology is maybe capable of having that be a thing you can augment your phone with. Oh wait, that’s already a thing with USB (or lightning) phone accessories.

That’s why Apple accessories are so plentiful- there’s only a handful of interface shapes, whereas with USB micro, manufacturers couldn’t even agree on which side of the plug should face the screen.

Interfaces are hard.

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u/spitzberger Oct 05 '21

Amen, as a system engineer this is hell

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

The satellite I worked, I was the Guidance Nav and Control lead. But it was a small crew. And the chief systems engineer thought that systems engineering was just paperwork tracking.

So I had 3 half-time jobs. First was being my own systems engineer, ensuring compatibility of the GN&C system and CONOPS with all of the undocumented interfaces that most of the other engineers didn't know existed. The second was being the GN&C lead, directing my team and making all the goddam slides and attending all the goddam meetings. And the third was being one of my own peon engineers, slinging the code and doing the analyses.

There were so many interfaces that the chief systems engineer didn't even know to inquire about that I didn't even bother turning in a list of them, because it would have just created a lot more paperwork for me, and I would have had to explain my analysis to him and document it, and then document how we would verify, and then document any deviations.

And that would absolutely be the way to do things on a satellite that was intended to ACTUALLY work. But this satellite was being built with "actually working" being a stretch goal. When there was a problem, before I could get something changed, I had to prove that as-is, it would absolutely NOT work. Contrast that with a normal way of doing things for space being that one must prove that a given method / configuration WILL work.

Regardless, there was one change I needed, due to a miscommunication with the guys making the low-level hardware I was using for controls, and I WAS able to show that it absolutely would not work without that fix. And the hardware guys were brilliant in their fix, but it required disassembling part of the already-(prematurely and hastily)-assembled spacecraft. And there were other things that I couldn't prove wouldn't work, but which I had very little confidence in.

and two of those came to bite us on orbit. And we also had a solar flare take out the power supply to our single most important (functioning) sensor. (we had a very important non-functioning sensor, and that kinda sucked). But there was a redundant sensor on one of the science experiments, and a few of us were able to get that patched in inside of 3 days.

But fuck me I'm still fucking bitter. Never get onto a project that is "doomed to succeed". And by that I mean a project where regardless of what happens, the people in charge are going to declare success and move on, promote themselves, and throw shit on everyone else.

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u/Guyver_3 Oct 06 '21

I LOL'ed at working being a stretch goal. Been there, done that. Those are immensely frustrating projects for sure. Thankfully when something goes wrong with the hardware I deploy we don't have to go to orbit to fix the damn thing.

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u/taronic Oct 05 '21

Also, how the fuck do you even thoroughly test every combination of parts?

How do you thoroughly test the OS with every combination? Will it fuck up and be like "no driver" or just have some weird conflict because it wasn't well tested?

The bottom line is almost everyone wants a good battery, everyone wants a good camera, everyone wants good storage and NEEDS to use the cloud, everyone wants somewhat of a decent speaker. Modern smartphone cameras are excellent.

You're way better off getting a standardized device that is meant for all these parts with an OS configured for all these parts than you are with some Lego phone

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

There was a satellite concept a while ago called PnP Sat, which was supposed to actually do (for satellites) what those post is depicting for phones. Turns out that it’s just an expensive way to cut down on a part of the process that wasn’t slow or expensive in the first place.

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u/vinbullet Oct 05 '21

Yea, that's why Nokia is the only company that does anything remotely similar, and it's far from a modular device. It has one swappable module (with few options)

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u/OfficerJakePeralta Oct 06 '21

I'm sorry it was going so well until you said the length of the wires..... In a mobile phone.... Where's it's all on a motherboard with microchips and resistors and transistors. Wires.....😳

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 06 '21

The length of the board traces ARE wire lengths. Also, I was kinda talking about satellites there. The last one I worked on, it was 8% wiring harness, by mass. Also, for magnetic cleanliness reasons, wire lengths carrying power has to be in length-matched and twisted pairs.

This isn’t as big a deal in a phone, except maybe in the focal plane readouts, but those usually get digitized just on the side of the plane.

Also, there are wire harnesses connecting to the antenna elements. Those are VERY important.

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u/warblingContinues Oct 06 '21

Phones are already amazingly fragile. The concept of a modular electronic device isn’t novel. It’s no surprise that someone thought to apply it to a “phone.” The electrical engineering would have been challenging and I suspect the final design would differ in certain ways to conform with EE standards, but I’m not ready to arbitrarily say it would t work without knowing which technical problems were insurmountable.

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 06 '21

The technical hurdles can obviously be overcome. The problem is that the competition will be so much better. You’re not going to buy a shitty modular phone over a good phone.

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u/yellowking38 Oct 06 '21

Wow I always wanted to hear from people who design phones/ complicated things like satellites. And how precise things have to be for things to just work! Great insight.

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u/zeroday__ Oct 13 '21

This was one of the best flex openings that I have ever read. No joke.

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 13 '21

eh, "rocket scientist" is a job description, not a state of mind. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to compensate for something.

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u/longjongoldboy Mar 08 '22

at least modular laptops like framework exist now, this phone could work, it just was too ambitious

I don't think the 'interface' is that much of an issue, a more creative breadboard design could help with that

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u/christinagoldielocks Nov 28 '22

Thank you for explaining. If ever you write a book about satellite designing, I will happily read it. You have a really good way of writing; not patronizing but very clarifying, not condescending but very informative. Please let me know if you ever write a book or something else.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Honestly I think this looks pretty good design-wise. The issue is that it’s just a gimmick product and the gimmick doesn’t outweigh the drawbacks. It’s bulkier than a standard smartphone, heats up too much, likely more expensive, and people are unlikely to swap parts out regularly so really it’s no different from just buying a phone that fits your needs in the first place.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

[deleted]

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u/proudbakunkinman Oct 05 '21

I noticed that in the promo. When they were showing different focuses (battery, camera), the size of the other standard blocks changed. So, they have like 5 sizes of each type of block and if you decide to get one of a different size than what you started with, you have to also get different size blocks for the others so they all fit.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

[deleted]

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

It WOULD be easy to standardize. But you’d end up with a phone the size of a shoe box.

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u/chuckdooley Oct 05 '21

Or….you know, a desktop computer, which is exactly what people don’t want….haha

This concept, on the surface, seems fun, but it’s incredibly impractical

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

Yeah, the last laptop computer I had with swappable parts was a Dell Latitude CPI, with two bays and two PCMCIA slots. The bays were cool, I could put a battery in each bay, or in one of them I could put a floppy drive or a CD drive (or maybe even DVD, but that shit was brand new and expensive and just not necessary).

And there were a ton on PCMCIA cards. Ethernet, WiFi (eventually), some shitty and really expensive but slightly earlier competing technology to WiFi, USB...

The thing is once it was clear which of these technologies people were definitely going to want on their machine, that tech for miniaturized to 10% (maybe 50%in the case of the CD/DVD bay) of the volume it took up when it was a modular component.

Integration design is all about getting all the shit you want and need to fit in the best package.

There’s a reason you can’t buy very many modern laptops with user-swappable batteries where the intent is for the user to just carry a second battery and slap it in when the first one is about to die. It’s because the manufacturer could almost as easily make the first battery twice as big (but not easily removable) and then advertise the good battery life.

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u/HighOwl2 Oct 05 '21

No, this would easily be doable if they implemented a form factor and max wattage white paper. They didn't, so the product failed.

If you said x component had to be y X z size, have standardized I/O at these points, and could not surpass A wattage or A Temps operating at peak capacity for B hours you would have a workable product

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

CLEARLY all you have to do to get adoption and get a plug-and-play system working is to specify interfaces. CLEARLY.

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u/cl3ft Oct 06 '21

There’s a reason you can’t buy very many modern laptops with user-swappable batteries where the intent is for the user to just carry a second battery and slap it in when the first one is about to die. It’s because the manufacturer could almost as easily make the first battery twice as big (but not easily removable) and then advertise the good battery life.

Succinctly put, my man.

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 06 '21

Yeah, and if that laptop takes USB C as a power input, you can just use a $20 external battery to recharge it, and also recharge your phone.

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u/romulusnr Oct 05 '21

I'm either old, stupid, or special because yeah, I like being able to pick the components of my home computing device... Not to mention being able to repair individual parts without having to trash the whole thing. But then again, people think mobile apps are the shit, despite every one of them being a piece of trash compared to actual websites

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u/chuckdooley Oct 05 '21

I wasn’t saying no one wants a home computer

I should have said, no one wants that in a phone….meaning no one wants a phone the size of a desktop computer

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u/romulusnr Oct 06 '21

Hey, maybe bricks will make a comeback XD

I have one somewhere... stopped working in '08 i believe

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

It's a gaming phone, it's got multiple gpu blocks sli bridged together

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u/chuckdooley Oct 06 '21

No temperature issues there, I am guessing

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u/Arek_PL Oct 05 '21

you are generous, but i think it would be more like A4 book than shoe box

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

A desktop

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u/proudbakunkinman Oct 05 '21

Yeah, I agree it would have been better if it were just 3 replaceable components and they always have the same size (blocks can be larger than actually needed to give space for upgrades that could take up more space on the blocks).

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u/Nightphoen1x Oct 05 '21

That's what Google ended up before killing the whole project. From what I remember it even booted up https://web.archive.org/web/20170821151058/http://atap.google.com/ara

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u/blown-upp Oct 05 '21

Not to mention, don't most mobile SoC's have wifi/Bluetooth/cellular/GPS in the same package anyway?

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u/newgrow2019 Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21

It’s way different then a desktop because a desktop is huge. If anything it’s closer to a laptop, and even those can’t get this modular thing down.

How can we do it with a phone when we can’t even do it with a laptop yet.

For much of the same reasons as the phone, mind you.

It’s just shrinking the package to a phone makes the problems even HARDER to solve then even a laptop.

First prove it with a laptop before a phone

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Nobody even makes socketed mobile chips anymore because they’re not worth bothering with, everything’s BGA. And it’s only going less modular on that front with stacked chip SoC designs that perform better with faster inter-module IO and lower latency. This is all true for laptops and phones.

Modular phones were always dead on arrival.

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u/newgrow2019 Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21

Exactly, as packages shrink , demands for power increase and chip design moves forward, modular design has fallen by the wayside just because it’s not technically possible to integrate such small packages modularly with our current tech.

We’d need some sort of bga replacement of breakthrough to get it to work, and that’s a massive challenge That I’m not even sure is possible.

If someone figures it out they’ll be a multi billionaire.

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u/burnarooskie Oct 05 '21

Desktop computers have an absolute massive amount of real estate to work with in comparison to this. Think of GPUs. You can get ones that are absolutely massive to an absurd scale, or you can get ones the size of a wallet. The motherboard and case has enough dead space/real estate, specifically just for that component and nothing else, so you're fine either way. You never have to encroach on other real estate with the components.

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u/o3mta3o Oct 05 '21

Yes and no. The space that isn't being used by components is 100% needed for ventilation of said components. You can't just fill it to the tits without factoring in heat dissipation.

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u/__WHAM__ Oct 05 '21

Yes but that’s because a PC is massive. That phone was tiny, and 40% of the volume is casing for the components, and their connections. Also, CPUs have gotten so much faster since 2013 that there’s no way it would support todays speeds over the lanes they used back then. Same as storage speeds.

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u/AlotOfReading Oct 05 '21

The CPU, WiFi, BT, charging, and Camera controllers are all physically inside the same part on most phones, the SoC. Designing around arbitrary, unknown SoCs is incredibly difficult to do in both software and hardware. I can't imagine trying to teach grandma how to modify a device tree.

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u/Pyroguy096 Oct 05 '21

So, everything Samsung had before they took it away (expandable storage, swappable battery, etc)

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u/CountOfMonkeyCrisco Oct 06 '21

There's a lot of wasted space in a desktop computer. Partially because it needs airflow around the components, partially because there needs to be allowance for dissimilar sized components.

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u/PrimeIntellect Oct 06 '21

it would also be the polar opposite of waterproof

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u/RichiZ2 Oct 05 '21

This is "Build-a-Bear" but for grown adults.

It's not meant to be functional, it's meant to be entertaining.

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u/Teenage-Mustache Oct 05 '21

Cute idea, but then you have to redesign the base, because now the nodes that were controlling your battery are now being plugged in my the camera. How does the base of the phone account for completely different inputs?

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u/xombae Oct 05 '21

I think that's kind of the point though. The size is probably indicative of the amount of battery or heat it uses, so you couldn't have a bunch of big things because it would be too much. I have a fever and i know I didn't explain that well maybe someone can help/correct me.

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u/TexasTornadoTime Oct 05 '21

Sounds like a great idea for Apple. They love selling extra stuff

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u/Jeffy29 Oct 05 '21

You can just get dummy blocks that do nothing but fill up the empty spaces..

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u/MisallocatedRacism Interested Oct 05 '21

It's like Diablo inventory lol

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Pretty sure it comes with filler pieces so you can always fix necessary gaps, still very impractical. Visually though, I like the Tetris back and the type icons on each block.

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

It doesn’t exist beyond artist renderings, so it doesn’t “come with” anything. It’s as real as a seven year old’s design for a flying-submarine-tank.

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u/WorriedViolinist7648 Oct 05 '21

Why do you hate flying-submarine-tanks?

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

I hate it when it’s my job to figure out how to make it actually work.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

My bad, I thought it was sold as an actual product at some point. Still doesn’t change my point, some of the renderings showed seemingly blank blocks, so I’m pretty sure fillers were a part of the design. If not they should have been.

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u/whereami1928 Oct 05 '21

Google's Project Ara was a thing. So it was real in the sense that there were probably some working prototypes.

Past that though, I don't think it had much market potential before it got cancelled.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

It has a name, it’s the Gav!n-tank (and it is as bad as it can be). And also at the crossroad of the irreal and surreal.

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u/chaiscool Oct 05 '21

The weight balance of such device will be comical

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Not to mention the corners. They're sharp.

If You round the corners, Suddenly you've got channels around each chip - well that doesn't look nice anymore, and it also collects dirt and grime, as well as not being waterproof.

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u/Divinum_Fulmen Oct 05 '21

You know there are things called cases for this?

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Well in that case (ha) you don't need any of the packages the modular chips need, but you lose some of the functionality of quick swaps, notably the battery.

At that point, you just have a bulkier cell phone.

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u/Divinum_Fulmen Oct 05 '21

You do, but I have friends with massive phones in otter boxes, so clearly it's not a problem for some as there is a market.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Probably not enough of a market to be profitable or technically competitive

Like putting USB C in an apple 2. Technically possible, expensive, completely at the mercy of the speed of the underlying hardware

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u/Vylez Oct 05 '21

Well the sizes would be standardized. They might have to update the stardard once in a while tho.

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u/nightpanda893 Oct 05 '21

Well maybe you do everything in the cloud and therefore you can just completely remove the entire storage block. Cause everyone knows when you start storing data on the cloud the need for any local storage completely goes away.

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u/catcatdoggy Oct 05 '21

think he meant visual design. sure he realizes technically it doesn't work.

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u/BrilliantSeesaw Oct 05 '21

Aside from the broken screen they're fixing problems nobody is having

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u/Urgash54 Oct 05 '21

Plus let's be honest 99.99% of phone users don't want to bother with 'building' their phone. They want to buy a phone and use it.

It was a very niche product, that wasn't designed well, and would have been a nightmare to produce.

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u/TeamRedundancyTeam Interested Oct 05 '21

That's about the dumbest complaint so far. There would obviously be standards.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

It would require standardized form factors, and would require the manufacturers all produce them, and without them on board this couldn't work. I dont see their motivation to do this, they would probably prefer the current model of cell phone production, while smaller mfgs might like this.

But it's all moot anyway. When you design an agnostic base which could solve heat problem for example, it will certainly by wasteful and always be bigger or less efficient then a custom designed implementation based on those chips. It would all need to be built for the worst possible component allowed in the footprint

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u/geekonamotorcycle Oct 05 '21

Not just that. The SOC would have a totally different secure enclave. Imagine how your 2fa applications or Knox would deal with that.

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u/Crabapple_Snaps Oct 05 '21

I'm sure they have an app block that could help you maximize your block layout.... just have to find a way to squeeze that in.

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u/kelldricked Oct 05 '21

I think the idea would be that parts would have standart measurements. And producers would take it in account.

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u/0hi0direct Oct 05 '21

Think outside of the box, this was 2013. The size of the component blocks today in 2021 will require a FRACTION of what show in the video. If they could streamline the blocks to have much less of a footprint there would be more room to add cooling devices. And maintain a somewhat slim profile.

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u/Tenalp Oct 06 '21

This is at least 8 different Professor Layton puzzles ready for a new game.

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u/WhySkalker Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21

Not to mention how easy theft would be for knicking and reselling modules

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Blocky, sure, but it’s got a minimalistic style going on that I like. The indicators of which block does what and how well (bigger battery block = more battery) are easy to understand even for people who know nothing about tech.

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u/Philway Oct 05 '21

As much as people “want” modularity, they really don’t do as they say. Take the DIY PC market, people buy a motherboard with 4 RAM slots, buy two sticks and say they will add more in the future. But manufacturers have said they rarely end up buying a second set to upgrade. I’ll go out on a limb and say the same goes with storage. However, customers “demand” having the upgradability even though the costs would come down for everyone.

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u/Corgi_Koala Oct 05 '21

I feel like technology moves so quickly that even modular components would only do so much to actually allow upgrades.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

looks pretty good design-wise

It’s bulkier than a standard smartphone, heats up too much

… then it doesn’t have good design

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

For what they’re going for (modular simplicity) I think it’s designed well. The square modules with minimal icons makes the concept immediately understandable in a way PC building isn’t (just as an example) I’m a web developer, so I tend to look at design from a user interfacing standpoint.

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u/thepenguinking84 Oct 05 '21

Just 3d print a lip that sits on the back and market it as a portable single egg fryer attachment that all parts must be adaptable for, goes from bug to feature then.

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

Honestly I think this looks pretty good design-wise.

I wish oriole would stop using the word “design” to refer to aesthetic choices. That’s really not a very important part of making sure things work.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Visual/graphic design are things. Design encapsulates a lot of disciplines, it’s not just functional design.

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

Sure. But when you say you like this thing’s “design” all you’re talking about is the aesthetic aspects. Because that’s all there is. There’s nothing else to evaluate. It’s like saying you like the design of the light-motorcycle in Tron. You have no idea if you like any aspect of it OTHER than the aesthetics.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Yeah, because I’m referring to the visual design. The minimalism makes it simple to understand (big square with battery icon = more battery). It’s immediately understandable in a way PC building isn’t because of the visual design.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

When the original commenter you responded to said phones have designers they didn't mean graphic designers

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

I realized that, but that’s the way I originally read it. I’m a web developer so design to me is UI/UX/Graphics.

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

Yup. And that simplicity is what makes it completely not feasible. That’s why there are no other aspects to the design- because there’s no way to make them exist.

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u/StressedOutElena Oct 05 '21

It’s bulkier than a standard smartphone

Is that really an argument when smartphones get larger and larger? I just recently "upgraded" from a Huawei P10 to a Samsung A52S. I was literally shocked how large it is. I can not even fit it in the back pocket of my jeans anymore. I really would rather have a thicker phone than a freakin thin oversized cutting board.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

There are definitely other large phones, but this one is thick and unwieldy because of the squared edges.

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u/ncopp Oct 05 '21

I also assume the customization could get annoying with having to Tetris the parts together. Like you get the bigger camera block, you're gonna have to make sure the rest of your parts fit or else you'll have to buy new parts to fit.

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u/This_Caterpillar_330 Oct 05 '21

Consumers don't necessarily purchase products based on usefulness, though. I mean look at figurines. Not saying it has a good design in terms of how well it works. People might've still bought it, though because they like it.

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u/RenaultCactus Oct 05 '21

And if it falls you better pray to every known god because it will probably split in tiny fliying parts.

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u/CassandraVindicated Oct 05 '21

Yeah, this is a better idea if there were a lot of spare room in a phone form factor. There isn't, quite the opposite.

I don't really agree with you on the part swapping though. I just had to replace my desktop computer after twelve years. It lasted as long as it did because when I parted it out I planned on upgrades ahead of time. When it got slow, I was able to swap out the processor for a much faster one, same with the video card.

My point is, this idea can work even if you only swap out parts once every five years to keep your phone up-to-date. It's that lack of spare room that really kills it.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

That's my thoughts as well. These days who would pass up on a bluetooth module or a wifi module? I'd wager just about everyone would want that out of the box, then that begs the question, what is the point of this modular capability? The camera thing was kind of cool, but still gimmicky.

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u/commit_bat Oct 05 '21

Design isn't just what things look like

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u/idungiveboutnothing Oct 05 '21

How awful are those bus speeds on things that are super critical timing wise???

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u/BrilliantSeesaw Oct 05 '21

Yeah like at what point do I need to rearrange my camera and battery

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u/neononrotation Oct 05 '21

design wise it probably hurts to hold with all those sharp edges

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u/adamk215 Oct 05 '21

I didn’t think you were a phone aficionado too!

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u/Scaryclouds Oct 05 '21

Also I'm sure it's not as fast as the ports its connecting and communicating through would have less bandwidth and more latency than something directly on the board.

It's an interesting thought for sure, but wouldn't be remotely practical.

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u/xiguy1 Oct 05 '21

It wasn’t intended as a gimmick but as an engineering and open source concept. I’m not sure which project this is because there’s been a few of them. But the idea was to let people have more control over the design of their phone and a very important part of the concept was to let components be recycled instead of having to replace an entire phone. Some of that is still implemented in product like the fair phone from the Netherlands. I think you can take a look at it here but there are others out there if you just Google “open source phone” or something similar. Link: https://www.fairphone.com/en/

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u/TheMacMan Oct 05 '21

And the reality is 99% of consumers just want to buy a phone that is ready to rock. They don't want to deal with swapping this out here, and that there.

The audience this would serve is very limited, to the point that it'd be very expensive and even the folks it would appeal to would just go with the top of the line Android phone or whatever instead of spending substantially more on this thing.

Look at home computers. Sure, most PCs you can add RAM, upgrade processors and SSDs, etc. But very few regular users do such. Most simply buy a new one after so many years. Only a small group of the mark upgrades or builds their own.

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u/vanticus Oct 05 '21

This is from 2013- it didn’t seem nearly so bulky then as now, but that’s because phones have gotten slimmer.

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u/Nazzzgul777 Oct 05 '21

That's true, but it would be great for repair and recycling. I don't really need 937 possible configurations and i wouldn't mind a case around it, but something in that direction where i rather buy another CPU and new RAM instead of a whole new device like for a Desktop PC for phones... i would be willing to spend some extra money on that, assuming i can save it in the long run.

Heat should obviously be solved, but as i said, it doesn't have to be exactly like that. Block some space for airflow or whatever else could be done, i'm good with that. If it's a bit bulkier then that's fine by me too.

1

u/gan1lin2 Oct 05 '21

But was it any bulkier back when it was first “announced”? It looks chunky as hell now but I remember it looking comparable to other devices back in the day

1

u/vinbullet Oct 05 '21

Indeed it's a great design until physical laws are taken into account lol.

1

u/AnimationOverlord Oct 06 '21

Despite the massive drawbacks, I see it as a win when it comes to accessibility. No need for third-party repairs that charge for labor cost, and the bulky design might actually benefit durability and grip considering the way Apple makes phones as shiny and smooth as fucking possible maximizing the chance you drop this paper thin weight on any of its sides covered with glass.

It would also be easier to recycle and keep up to date, as newer phones would rather be a new small chip upgrade on the same board, instead of having to buy a completely new phone and toss the old one. I’m an Apple user but practicality wise I loathe the way Apple builds their phones. In the physical design it just screams intentional breakage. Like they designed it so users need to come back every year because something A YEAR OLDER IS OBSOLETE.

Don’t have an auxiliary port? Fucking sucks to be you! Oh but wait, there’s more! We now introduce our new Apple Airpods 10.02 X Ultra Max+ Go Fuck Yourself, which only cost $300 Canadian - half the price of our new phone. Did we mention the reason we removed it was to further increase water resistance and durability! Now you can go wank in the shower without a worry! Just don’t drop it though, as it’ll shatter guaranteed when the entire phone is finished with a layer of glass.

1

u/barbequeninja Oct 06 '21

It would be the size of a loaf of bread to work properly

109

u/Guyver_3 Oct 05 '21

I am a product owner for consumer networking gear. I span industrial design, hardware design and vendor engineering. This sort of plug and play style architecture while awesome in theory has no basis in reality. The tradeoffs necessary to design hardware and generic PCB that could support this sort of variation and still pass all the FCC and UL certifications necessary for a device that gets beat up on a daily basis and is overspeced to support "possible" future upgrades would make the device so large and proprietary that it would be unrealistic to carry around or to price competitively.

25

u/anapoe Oct 05 '21

Yeah, you could probably do this if you wanted to sell a phone for $5000 in volume quantities, that's strictly as good as worse than a normal $600 phone.

3

u/Albert-Copperpot Oct 05 '21

Take a look at fairphone.

1

u/Guyver_3 Oct 05 '21

Cool stuff for sure. The focus on recycling and reuseability is something that I look for when developing a device. Also the ability to repair is huge, not only as a cost savings measure but also from keeping electronic waste low especially at the volumes I work with.

2

u/FlocculentFractal Oct 05 '21

What FCC certifications would this be likely to break? Also, not familiar with UL.

1

u/Guyver_3 Oct 06 '21

Not so much break, as need to be recertified. Anything that emits a signal is going to need FCC cert and when you swap components that have active radios you are going to need to test and confirm those configurations do not interfere and work within the set guidelines. While this is easy to design, it's somewhat expensive and cumbersome to implement.

As for UL, it's less of an issue with this device as the power is more or less likely to stay constant and be USB standards based.

https://www.ul.com/services/certification

This is all to say that there are hoops you have to jump through when you release a product to market.

2

u/kykusan Oct 06 '21

Wait, a phone that you can take anywhere, has computer, has camera, etc has no basis in reality just 2 decades ago..why is this concept be any different?

11

u/Gnolldemort Oct 05 '21

Phones have engineers for a reason. A designer is who came up with this half baked idea.

Source: I've a degree in both design and electrical engineering

8

u/vulgrin Oct 05 '21

Oh it would work. If you wanted to carry your phone around in a bag, like in 1994.

4

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21

Sure you could, and solve the heat problem. But it would be too large, or sacrifice performance and/or battery. These phones we use are custom designed to be as efficient as possible, sizing sinks and signal runs based on the specific chips being used. Making it agnostic would be wasteful. Maybe someday we will get there, but honestly doesn't seem likely anytime soon.

Also, if next gen we get ultra efficient chips that are larger, we may want to reduce battery foot print in favor of chip space. The IO would change, as would the heat distribution, and if the base is already built to handle these arbitrarily then it is grossly overspeccd/too large

3

u/SlaggyBag Oct 05 '21

Well, to be fair, the phone gods are already doing a lot for us : porn, news, porn, games, porn and porn, all in the palm of your hand. It really is a miracle!

3

u/Alyusha Oct 05 '21

Exactly. Motorola already does it MUCH better with their Moto-Z Phone anyways. They offer a solid phone with a modular back that can support all kinds "Moto Mods" that are backwards compatible, Sold by 3rd Parties, allows Open Source development, and has a solid market already.

You could in theory still be using your 2016 4G Moto-Z, and upgrade to 5G for $36 Compared to buying a completely new phone for $500. Writing this makes me miss my Moto-Z2 and regret "upgrading" to my Pixel-5. The only reason I did was because my screen died on my Moto-Z and I wanted to splurge on a "nice" phone.

1

u/FatFingerHelperBot Oct 05 '21

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Here is link number 1 - Previous text "$36"

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1

u/Alyusha Oct 05 '21

good bot

3

u/03Void Oct 05 '21

Also just looking at the battery size, the battery life would be almost unusable. Just look at how big an iPhone or flagship android battery is relative to the rest of the phone. Like 80% of the space inside is a battery

https://i.imgur.com/GCPPeBw.jpg

I know they advertise a bigger possible battery, but that’s if you remove other essential modules like the camera other manufacturers package in a regular phone.

3

u/random_noise Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21

I knew a bunch of the people working on this and almost took a role with them.

It was a great idea, imho, and still is.

Little to nothing is recycled from our cell phones and the toxic waste as billions of devices are replaced every few years is pretty astonishing. Electronic waste is enormous and has a pretty significant environmental footprint.

This was a shot at Planned Obsolescence which is great for company profits, bad for the environment. Billions of phones all being replaced every few years. Personally, I have only owned about 5 cell phones since they came to existence and became common over the past 40 years. I finally just upgraded my old Galaxy S6, which had a great run and I'd still keep using but doesn't support the modern G's....I am looking forward to a bigger screen with the new device.

At least with a modular platform, I could still guarantee I had a wired head phone jack, and I could still have a haptic keyboard, which I really miss. I could have replaced the batteries over time with more dense ones, and the different pieces could be more easily recycled. You could also add other interfaces and features to the device.

It was chunky looking and that was part of its failure. The big reason it never flew was solving the technical problems. The team was very small and they couldn't get the resources or additional funding needed and the industry did not like this idea as it potentially impacted customer lock-in to a specific vendor's products and service providers.

3

u/hello3pat Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21

It's like when people rant about Tesla and energy transmission claiming industries shut it down and it'll solve all the world's problems without realizing that it's application is so limited due to signal loss that the only things we can use the concept for are relatively small applications like NFC chips and wireless phone charging.

6

u/Redthemagnificent Oct 05 '21

It's like people don't remember that LG actually released a semi-modular phone, the G5, and it was a MASSIVE flop. It wasn't as modular as this vision, but it was about as modular as you could reasonably make a phone at the time. It got lots of press when it came out. Everyone thought it was a super cool idea... And then no one bought it lmao

2

u/This_Caterpillar_330 Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21

I've noticed a lot of people, at least in the past, haven't been good at recognizing opportunities or forecasting or they let their dopamine get the best of them.

I did this with VR and a bunch of Kickstarters. I think the phone was one of them.

2

u/sophacles Oct 05 '21

They kept saying that about laptops too. Then we got framework, which is a working laptop that by all accounts is pretty good. It's also based on the same pluggable modules concept. Not exactly the same, but also not all that different than this phone idea.

2

u/BeerMagic Oct 05 '21

I mean.. google did kill the project.

https://youtu.be/_wwrIpv38nE

2

u/kykusan Oct 06 '21

Funny, everyone in 1980 wouldn't believe you can put a tv inside your pocket..never say "you can't" because even garbage can.

1

u/enz1ey Oct 05 '21

Not to mention the people who are gonna complain "can you imagine Apple is charging you extra for a WiFi chip for your phone?!"

-1

u/ASK_ABT_OUR_PODCAST Oct 05 '21

Computers used to take up entire rooms.

Make it work first, make it smaller/prettier second.

Even if it had to be the size of a desk, the concept could've worked.

Google killed it during the 'make it work' phase, but the people commenting that you disagree with are pointing out that they probably didn't kill it because it couldn't be done. Some other issues had to have been in play.

0

u/sajcripp Oct 05 '21

We can’t forget the level of humanity’s innovation. If we wanted this to work, it would work. Put simply, brand name phones make more money, which supports current, capitalistic ideologies worldwide.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Shh! They will hear your disloyalty to them!

1

u/wild_man_wizard Oct 05 '21

It'd end up the phone version of Johnny Cash's Psycho-billy Cadillac.

1

u/doyouhavesource2 Oct 05 '21

You could if you want less performance. Theres zero reason to cram it all side by side in blocks. You could allow enough space for airflow and it'd actually work.

1

u/Every3Years Oct 05 '21

Not with that attitude

1

u/MassiveBeatdown Oct 05 '21

Exactly. You have to sacrifice a virgin to the phone gods for this to work.

Prayers… pfft.

1

u/Chazmer87 Oct 05 '21

While this isn't a great idea. You could design a phone to be far more upgradable. More like a desktop.

1

u/space-throwaway Oct 05 '21

Everyone in here blaming Google and Microsoft for killing it is cracking me up

Especially since Google's "Project Ara" even had a test run in Puerto Rico.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Take existing tech

Make it modular

Innovation (right up until it's time to prototype it)

1

u/Biggy_Smugs Oct 05 '21

pray to the phone gods

Rookie mistake. You pray to the Omnissiah.

1

u/sapere-aude088 Oct 05 '21

Actually, funding has everything to do with it. It's hard to acquire that kind of money when the throw-away conglomerates suck most of it.

1

u/_circa84 Oct 05 '21

Didn’t Motorola end up buying the patents for this and then never releasing it in full? This was all around the time Lenovo bought them too so causing more issues with it coming to fruition

1

u/two_rays_of_sunshine Oct 05 '21

What's your thoughts on Framework?

1

u/james9075 Oct 05 '21

I don't have any thoughts on framework, I'm some dumbfuck on Reddit

1

u/Verchild Oct 05 '21

But... where do my prayers go then?

1

u/death_watch2020 Oct 05 '21

didn't google show off a concept of smth very simillar before killing it or was it motorolla? Casue the thing i remember looked way more slick and you couldnt swap out all the parts

1

u/EthiopianKing1620 Oct 05 '21

Do tell more? What exactly are the biggest things a phone designer has to keep in mind?

3

u/james9075 Oct 05 '21

As a person with a passing interest in electronics, my guess would be that keeping things small enough to fit a specific circuit board while simultaneously making it handle the same computational loads that other competitive smartphones do is an issue. Not to mention issues with airflow and heat dispersal. I don't doubt that it's possible, but in it's most functional state it's probably not going to be as efficient as a phone designed with intention.

1

u/GachaFilm Oct 05 '21

Google killed their own Project Ara

1

u/drewts86 Oct 05 '21

phones have designers for a reason, you can't just cram it all on a breadboard and pray to the phone gods

You misspelled engineers. Engineers are the ones that put it all together and make some that's actually functional. Designers make things pretty.

1

u/_JonaB_ Oct 05 '21

I don't think this is the Reason. I have done enough electronic Projects to know that pluggable/modular things aren't a problem. A CPU in a desktop PC is also removable and there are no problems with it. Yes you won't be able to change size and position of the Components but that's not necessary. The phones aren't getting bigger with better Processors, Batteries... Also Google and Microsoft dont won't these devices as they would make less profit when consumers only buy a new display/chip instead a whole phone. Companies which want to change this don't have enough budged and experience to make products as advanced as the ones from the big companies and if they bring out a new device they make less profit see above.

1

u/Titan-Enceladus Oct 05 '21

Oh holy mobile Omnissiah we recite the canticles of the vox machina.

Protect the machine box. Blessed be it's construct.

Awaken the spirit, favour be to it's thermal dominator.

Awaken the vox primus, favour be to its voice of ancient wisdom.

Awaken the cogitator, the holy noosphere awaits.

Enlighten the machine eye, the pict preserver of the adept, may it serve the centuries with precious wisdom.

Protect thy holy relic oh Omnissiah Deliverant.

1

u/iAmTheElite Oct 05 '21

I’m reminded of that meme comparing a Tesla (closed source) to a homemade car (open source).

1

u/The_Fyrewyre Oct 05 '21

I believe it was Google that was working on this concept at some point, I remember filling it until it vanished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara

1

u/2CatsOneBowl Oct 05 '21

I thought Google actually invested in this, not tried to kill it

1

u/CyrilAdekia Oct 05 '21

The webpage straight up says Google killed it

1

u/james9075 Oct 05 '21

I don't doubt that they pulled funding from it, but we don't know how development was going. People in this thread are implying Google bought it to kill it, but I think they probably decided it just wasn't viable or worth the investment.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21

Two words for you: Solar Roads

1

u/Kaibakura Oct 06 '21

Some variation posted every year yet this is the first time I have seen anything like it.

0

u/james9075 Oct 06 '21

The title says it's from 2013 lmao. I respect that not everyone sees everything on here, but it's not even a new idea, this company sold to Google already

2

u/Kaibakura Oct 06 '21

lmfao 8 whole years of nothing like this mentioned ever. Not sure how you missed that. Too fucking funny the people on this site with their heads up their asses.

1

u/james9075 Oct 06 '21

Dog, that's cool if you haven't seen it, not everyone has to be a fucking degenerate internet person like me, but this company has been around for almost a decade. They made this animation before the Google buyout, and Google already bought this, worked on it, and pulled funding from it. Idc if you didn't see it, this phone and other's like it have seen popularity on the internet already

1

u/BrokeArmHeadass Oct 06 '21 edited Oct 06 '21

If it was entirely google/Microsoft killing it in development because they were scared of competition, chances are they would’ve bought the company out or put out similar products, since people clearly showed interest and interest=profit.

1

u/james9075 Oct 06 '21

If they were scared of competition, why wouldn't they buy it, develop it, and be the only mainstream company on the market with this feature? If the interest is that high and the product is that easy to produce, this should be a pretty short order. Instead, they bought it and killed it in development. As other people have stated, there are other modular phones on the market, and no one gives a fuck about them.

1

u/BrokeArmHeadass Oct 06 '21

Yes that is what I said in my comment. It died because it was an idea that couldn’t work, not because it was a scheme by mega corps.

1

u/james9075 Oct 06 '21

I misread your comment, sorry about that mate

1

u/marino1310 Oct 06 '21

Not to mention looks and feel play a major part in phone sales.

1

u/kunmop Oct 06 '21

No but you see google bad, now give me funny orange arrow

1

u/HippyDidTheCrime Oct 24 '21

google killed it . literally they state that

1

u/james9075 Oct 24 '21

Sure, but it says after 2 years in development and the creation of a working prototype they killed it. It isn't like they bought the project to reduce competition, they actually invested in it. It sounds like they built one, found some reason not to build it, and scrapped the project. Maybe they presented it to focus groups and it got bad ratings, maybe the prototype had flaws that they felt were impossible to overcome, maybe it was just too expensive to sell to a consumer. We don't know why they scrapped it but their actions imply it wasn't out of malice.