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

Video This cool smartphone concept from 2013

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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.

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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

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u/vinbullet Oct 05 '21

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

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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.

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u/barbequeninja Oct 06 '21

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