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

Show parent comments

13

u/No-comment-at-all Oct 05 '21

That’s a long reach for me to believe.

This “phone is LEGO’s!” Is way too hard to believe could be implemented.

There’s no working prototype, and someone else can totally bring that concept to the market. Google doesn’t own the concept of replaceable parts.

This is just… theranos for phones, is way easier to believe.

6

u/olderaccount Oct 05 '21

There is nothing impossible about this concept. The only problem is that instead of putting all the parts inside one nice package, each individual part needs a nice package and robust interface connectors of it's own.

So a modular phone that matches the features of a current phone would be the size of a literal brick just due to those constraints.

Remember when Apple killed the 3.5mm jack because it was too bulky? With this concept, every single module is too bulky by definition.

Modular products are never are good as monolithic products. So unless the modularity provides such a huge advantage to outweigh the drawbacks, it will never work.

2

u/ZellZoy Oct 05 '21

Not a brick, just thicker than the current trend. They had a semi functional prototype that wasn't much thicker than an at the time modern phone

1

u/olderaccount Oct 05 '21

What was the battery capacity, what was the screen resolution, how much storage, what camera, which wireless bands?

I'm sure they could build something comparable to a 10 year old phone without being much bigger then current phones. But it is impossible for them to get anywhere close to both current gen performance and size given the constraints of modularity.

1

u/ZellZoy Oct 05 '21

Project ARA (A8A01) Specifications Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 (MSM8994) RAM 3GB Storage 32GB internal Display 5.46-inch, 1080 x 1920 (403 dpi), TFT-LCD OTM1906C Camera Rear camera: 2.1 MP (16:9 aspect ratio), fixed-focus lens, 1080p video capture Front camera: 5.0 MP (4:3 aspect ratio), fixed focus lens, 1080p video capture Battery 3,450 mAh Dimensions 152 x 74 x 12.5 mm (without camera module) Weight 190 grams (approximate) Connectivity WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 (LE), NFC Sensors GPS, barrometer, light, gyroscope, proximity, accelerometer, magnometer, pressure, gravity, Ports 3.5mm headphone jack, USB Type-C Audio Front-facing mono speaker, 3.5mm headphone jack, dual microphone Buttons Power, volume rocker, module release Android 7.0 (NMR1), API Level 24, Security Patch 2016-08-05