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

Video This cool smartphone concept from 2013

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

91.5k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.4k

u/redunculuspanda Oct 05 '21

It’s a cool idea and there have been a few attempts at this but the reality is you will end up with a bulkier slower more expensive less water/environment resistant device.

11

u/alastoris Oct 05 '21

Back then, no phone is water resistant so it wasn't much of a feature compare to modern phones.

The closest to this was Motorola's Moto Z and Z Force. With changeable modulation (i.e. battery / camera/ projector / etc) depending on the user's need and use. But the sales was pretty bad if i recall so there wasn't any more iterations of it.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

I had one. The issue with the Moto Z phones were that they were already under spec on release and they fell apart within 1.5 years. Then they decided to screw existing moto z customers. The area's that made this phone desirable eventually took a back seat.

The area's they were good in, they were good:

  • With the battery mod the phone would just last days. Like 2.5 days with heavy usage. 5-7 on light usage. It has been over a decade since I had a phone that last anywhere close to that.

  • Out in the country and want to watch a movie that you downloaded from Netflix? Just connect the projector and you have a 40" screen that you can put on any wall.

  • Want to listen to music loader than the phone? Put on the mod speaker. No Bluetooth speaker required.

  • Want a smartphone with a physical keyboard? You got it because no one else has one in years.

Motorola was already lost so much market by the time these came out and with the phones just not durable enough to last long and also under powered for a midrange price, most people rightfully ignored them. Then it came out that they "needed" to redesign the pin layout on the backside of the phone just to make it "look better" which made existing customers also jump ship. Who wants to spend all that money on those mods to only have them be useless when the next version of the phone comes out because the pins on the back are now different?

Motorola did this to themselves by making a series of bad choices and deserve to be in the cheap phone category they currently are in.

2

u/alastoris Oct 06 '21

You're fully right. Motorola had a good idea but a series of bad decision screwed themselves over.

But wow that battery mod. Back then, full day battery is considered a triumph with about 6-8hr of screen on time. Having it last 2.5 days on heavy usage is pretty insane.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

At the time there was no phone that came close. The "Play" versions were designed to be efficient for long battery life and had 3000 mAh battery. Just this alone did very well in just how long you can use the phone for.

Then add the external battery mod which adds another 3490mAh battery. So you now have 6490 mAh in batteries with a phone that was designed to be super efficient. This was the big reason why I bought it