
Phonebloks - heldtogether
http://phonebloks.com/
======
raphman
There are numerous threads on Reddit that explain very well why this concept
is not really feasible [1,2,many]

The (imho) most important ones in short:

* Mechanical modularity increases size and cost, makes it harder to create a beautiful phone, and is not in the manufacturer's commercial interests. Therefore, it would be hard to find companies/customers to build/buy this.

* Many current components are highly integrated - SoCs, sensor ICs, Display/Touchscreen, etc. Making these modular would require development of many new components (and would increase size, cost, power consumption).

* The concept assumes that all components use a common communication backplane. This is not feasible, as a variety of voltages and communication protocols are in use in a typical phone (I2C, SPI, UART, USB, various display protocols, etc.). Many components need very short connections to the CPU/GPU/whatever without crossing other PCB traces. It is not really feasible to make this work with a generic communication backplane. Proper heat dissipation for CPU/GPU is another problem.

In summary, while it is certainly feasible to build a modular phone (look at
David Mellis' DIY cellphone [3]), doing so for current hardware would involve
_major_ engineering effort (== design and manufacture dozens of new chips) and
would result in less stable, more expensive, and less beautiful phones
requiring more power.

Nevertheless, such ideas are certainly helpful to catalyze thoughts about
future hardware.

[1]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/1m6y1q/that_phonebl...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/1m6y1q/that_phonebloks_things_annoyed_me_so_here_are_17/)

[2]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m4pmy/el...](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m4pmy/eli5_why_is_phonebloks_a_bad_idea/)

[many]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/all/search?q=phonebloks&restrict_sr=...](http://www.reddit.com/r/all/search?q=phonebloks&restrict_sr=on)

[3] [http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=2182](http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=2182)

------
pjc50
While this is obviously very far from feasible, what _is_ possible is a return
to servicability for the two parts that most commonly fail: batteries and
screens. The rest of the phone is usually fine unless subjected to serious
physical battering. The legendarily reliable Nokia 3210 is your landmark here.

Note that in a modern phone, the screen strength usually is achieved by
bonding it to the case, so in practice "replace screen" turns into "take
mainboard out of case and place in new case".

Modularity doesn't really help at all with the constant drive to replace
working phones with newer, better ones. But there should be an effective
secondhand market selling them to the Third world - and there is! No shortage
of websites offering people money for their old phones.

Long term, we have to wait for the Moore's law slowdown, and a rise in Chinese
manufacturing wages and other costs, before a local western repair industry
becomes viable again.

(Apart from all the other issues, phonebloks would turn "Android
fragmentation" into a far more extreme version; you can't guarantee that your
peripheral will even be there next time you turn the phone on).

~~~
DanBC
There should also be a better way to return phones for recycling. Mining the
gold and minerals is destructive and it's weird to me that it's easier and
cheaper to dig up ore and process it than to grind up old tech and process
that.

~~~
pjc50
In Europe, the manufacturer is _legally required_ to either accept old devices
for recycling or contribute to a shared fund for doing this. (The program is
called "WEEE": [http://www.environment-
agency.gov.uk/business/topics/waste/1...](http://www.environment-
agency.gov.uk/business/topics/waste/139283.aspx) )

~~~
Kliment
Which is an enormous racket and close to impossible to comply with
economically for small manufacturers in some countries.

As an example, in Germany, if you are a small electronics manufacturer and
sign up to the system, you get entered into a lottery weighted by the amount
of devices (measured by weight) you ship, and whenever a container of e-waste
gets filled, a randomly selected unlucky participant has to take possession of
said container, no matter where it happens to be or what it's full of, and
find some way to dispose of it. It's absolutely insane. In addition, you have
to pay a fee to get to participate, and also you are subject to random
inspections by an entity with absolutely no oversight that is legally
prevented from having competitors. You have to pay for the inspections
yourself too, to the same entity, which also runs said lottery.

There's no option to only accept your own devices for recycling, and also no
option to contribute to a shared fund that takes care of it all. There's a
small industry that will sell you INSURANCE against winning the shit lottery.

~~~
pjc50
I hadn't realised it was quite that crazy.

I'm still wrestling with CE approval for a device containing a GSM module.
Which looks like it's going to be about E15000 for the radio and electrical
testing, plus the complexities of RoHS compliance (random lab testing
required, even if all your components are certified lead-free?)

I've concluded that Tindie-style electronics cottage industry is basically
illegal in the EU. Fortunately I can still buy stuff from dealextreme and
alibaba that doesn't have to comply..

~~~
Kliment
With a GSM module, you want a pre-approved module so you only need to do EMC
testing. Doing your own radio testing is ridiculous and expensive. For RoHS
compliance you should be able to get away with a declaration as long as not
only the components but also the assembly process is lead-free. Incidentally,
I have some thoughts on fixing this process, if you'd be willing to talk about
it. Contact me on IRC (Kliment on the freenode network) or at kliment at
0xfb.com (yes, that is a zero)

------
dzuc
With everyone pointing out it's infeasibility in mind; didn't Bug Labs do
something similar already?:
[http://buglabs.net/products/blocks](http://buglabs.net/products/blocks)

~~~
jkestner
And how's that working out? It's feasible, yes, but not in the consumer
market. Bug Labs is for prototyping.

------
simias
It immediately reminded me of this
[http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2008/03/03/stop-press-pixie-
dus...](http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2008/03/03/stop-press-pixie-dust-
unsuitable-for-household-lighting/)

It's cool on paper, as long as you don't think about the technical
implications. I guess it's a good project marketing-wise.

EDIT: this page is more comprehensive:
[http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2007/04/24/break-the-laws-o-
phy...](http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2007/04/24/break-the-laws-o-physics-win-
a-prize/)

------
tudorconstantin
This looks like a marketing stunt:

* the site does not have anything on it besides a video and an Amazon widget (go for the quick bucks?)

* it is not a real site, but a campaign on thunderclap.it (a new kind of service and really interesting concept )

* the video promotes an idea that you can have a good looking phone which you can customize however you want - who wouldn't want that?

* they let the impression that it's only the petty, nasty corporations that don't want such a phone to exist, just to be able to upsell us more phones and rip off our hard earned money, totally not addressing the technical issues.

What could happen (it already did) - the video and the campaign went viral,
so:

* the authors of the campaign get a few thousands of dollars from the Amazon referral commissions

* people hear and see the power of crowdspeaking platforms in action (thunderclap.it)

------
serf
as poorly thought out as this looks, what I wouldn't give for a smart phone
with a very low resolution e-ink swapped in screen plus the opportunity to
replace all the camerawork,sensors, storage , etc with more battery. At least
this may get someone thinking about the idea.

also the video and concepts kept making me think of how hot a big metallic
"speed block" would be against my hand

~~~
devx
E-ink has too many problems, and it's not very good for anything other than
mostly static content. If you're thinking "like Pebble" \- Pebble doesn't use
e-ink. It's using a type of LCD similar to PixelQi.

Mirasol on the other hand, has a ton of potential, and it seems to improve the
overall battery life of a device by at least 3x (which means the display
itself should be many times more efficient than LCD). Too bad nobody has
picked up yet (other than Qualcomm themselves [1]) to use it into a line of
products, so we can see improvements done faster to it (such as to color
accuracy, gamut, contrast, animation speed, etc).

[1] [http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/09/07/ifa-2013-hands-on-
wi...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/09/07/ifa-2013-hands-on-with-the-
qualcomm-toq-smartwatch-video/)

~~~
oftenwrong
Despite the disadvantages, I would really like an e-ink phone (and netbook)
for the significant increase in battery life it could give. The software could
be designed so that it is usable on e-ink. No animations, no reliance on color
for indicators, flipping instead of scrolling, etc. As you say, it would only
really work for static content, but for me that is fine.

~~~
umsm
Almost any phone not a smartphone could fit your description. There are so
many phones that can last for almost a week, but all you can do is talk and
text with some light apps.

~~~
marssaxman
Do you know of one with a QWERTY keyboard?

~~~
greenpresident
The Blackberry 8800 fits this description.

------
pjc50
Relatedly, the Fairphone is shipping now:
[http://www.fairphone.com/](http://www.fairphone.com/)

"Fair" in the sense of "ethically sourced tantalum, etc"; but they've also
thought about e-waste and deliberately included a replaceable battery.

------
lechevalierd3on
People don't bother upgrading their PC boxes so why would they care about
updating part of their phone ?

~~~
jpindar
You don't know too many gamers, do you?

------
kken
Remember when desktop PC where made from interchangeable components? How many
people actually upgraded them instead of buying a new, boxed one?

~~~
tluyben2
A lot of people did and still do. And that was actually quite 'hard' because
you had to touch micro electronics. If you make PCs (phones, laptops) out of
Lego, people will do it much faster and more often. Going to a gig? Pull out
the bluetooth, plug in the midi block. Going on the road in 2 countries? Pull
an USB block, plug in a second 4G. Etc.

Edit; not saying this is a good idea for a phone, but to some extend it would
be for a laptop (not ultrabook). Some rugged ones are quite like that.

~~~
pjc50
Or buy the integrated phone that includes all of those features and doesn't
make you swap them out and risk losing or damaging the blocks.

Modularity often ends up being a _cost_ to the unsophisticated majority of end
users. People don't like it in their software (preferring a "complete
solution"), nor in their hardware (e.g. cheap integrated hifi versus expensive
minority separates).

~~~
tluyben2
But these kind of things are thought up by a minority of technically minded
people who;

\- like to change/tinker with their hardware \- like to change/tinker with
their software \- like products which do one thing and do it well

------
gwu78
Instead of trying to make improvements to Apple's (or whoever's) stuff, let's
stimulate consumer demand for great looking _enclosures_ for (small form
factor) hardware. There should be a market for enclosures that look as good as
Apple's (or whoever's). Note I said "as good as" not "just like".

Give consumers the option to mix and match enclosures with the cheap
electronics that go inside and see what happens.

The growing market for RaspberryPi enclosures stands as proof that it is
possible to have many different enclosures, made by third parties, for the
same PCB. And that consumers will buy them.

I've long wondered why there should not be a wide variety of enclosures to
choose from for various popular small form factor "development" boards. Would
such enclosures sell? Why not? The growing number of third party Pi cases
being sold is testing that assumption.

I'd even go so far as to guess that if you give consumers great looking
enclosures to choose from, you will actually sell more development boards.

------
happywolf
Some issues I notice:

1\. Blocks are having different sizes. Sure you may have some fillers, but
they don't look nice. A light drop could shatter the whole thing (phone must
be able to take hits and drops for many reasons)

2\. The pluggable architecture calls for the backbone to be some sort of
shared bus, example will be I2C, which may not be efficient for high-bandwidth
transfer (e.g. camera to memory). A dedicated bus for some modules will just
break the 'plugability'. Mitigation could be to zone the backbone so that each
zone's traffic is limited, well, that is not simple...

~~~
AUmrysh
My concerns were similar.

What bus can be used which will be fast enough for all of the components to
work together? Sticking a cpu, camera, memory, and screen on the same bus will
cause an amazing bottleneck.

How will the components be made to fit in the same thickness? Can you really
fit a higher resolution camera in a larger (but not thicker) package?

In that regard, what's to stop someone from making an uber battery which only
takes up a few slots but then covers the previous layer on the back, thereby
increasing the real estate?

How much force can those pins hold?

Will the bins be biased in some way such that the positive will be every N
pins and negative every M pins, and data lines every L pins or something? If
so, will the holes be keyed to ensure proper placement?

There are a lot of questions to be answered before this thing can come to
fruition, and I think the bus is going to be the biggest limitation. There's a
reason this phone doesn't exist yet, as I'm sure hardware manufacturers would
love to continue selling people hardware over and over, but there's a genuine
problem with bandwidth in this setup where anything can go anywhere.

A better solution would be universal plugs/ports with specific uses for each
port. Battery port, CPU port, memory port, and then accessory ports, just like
a modern desktop. This would allow the components with the largest bottlenecks
to have their own dedicated bus.

------
Zigurd
This is a pretty naive idea. There are a lot of reasons to go in the opposite
direction

For example, water-resistant phones are going to be hard to take apart, and
that's a feature that will result in many fewer dead phones.

Packaging for mobile handsets is continuing to evolve. Any modular system
would be obsolete long before it breaks even on repairability, upgradeability,
etc.

------
pla3rhat3r
I think this idea is brilliant. I may be in the minority but I think this
would be a great thing for young kids to teach them how components can be
swapped out very easily. I would get one of these for my 10 year just to watch
him figure out what he'd like to add or upgrade.

------
reinder
In order to reduce electronics waste, we should recycle what's already there.
Not invent a new phone that's easier to recycle. Also, people will want to
upgrade or change their phone configuration even when it's not broken. I don't
understand why the video is pitching the product as if its sustainable and
fighting waste. It's not.

------
HorizonXP
Relevant discussion on reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/1m4m0f/this_is_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/1m4m0f/this_is_currently_on_the_front_page_a_good/)

My opinion is that this wasn't thoroughly thought through...

------
BenSS
I completely understand the appeal of the concept, but it seems like it would
be significantly more expensive for the same features of another phone. I'd be
concentrating on the features that most frequently drive upgrades other than
the screen: memory and camera.

~~~
jnbiche
But then you also need to include those features that most frequently crap
out: screen, battery (easy enough), jacks (maybe a block of jacks -- power,
microusb, headphones?).

Otherwise you'll be upgrading memory and camera on a broken phone.

It's a wonderful concept, but extraordinarily hard to pull off. I'm glad he's
trying to find partners before any thought of crowdsourcing.

~~~
BenSS
Why would you -have- to? I've never broken any of those things personally,
other than the typical battery charge degradation. If the
camera+battery+memory are modules, it may be cheaper just to replace/tradein
the main body over doing a repair.

Handwavy on the costs, but modular is definitely more expensive - being able
to trick out your phone with bigger memory and large-aparture camera may be
worth it to a certain set of customers.

Agree it's a wonderful but hard to implement concept.

------
tehwebguy
Site is currently down, here is their video on YouTube:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAw7vW7H0c](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAw7vW7H0c)

------
Firegarden
This site has been down for days at the exact time the video is going viral.
There is another site [1] www.phoneblocs.com that has more information

~~~
garland222
The guy keeps posting this, but it's a fake scam site with ads asking for
bitcoins. Which, as he said, he is not taking donations:
[https://twitter.com/davehakkens/status/378204427363946497](https://twitter.com/davehakkens/status/378204427363946497)

------
jrabone
Hmm. Would you buy phone components from people who can't do Unicode? "It�s
pretty cool." Revenge of the SmartQuote.

~~~
namenotrequired
They're not selling it themselves, just proposing the concept.

------
Firegarden
[http://www.phoneblocs.com](http://www.phoneblocs.com) is up and has a copy of
the video.

------
jpswade
My biggest gripe with this is, what problem does this actually solve?

Phones exist as they are as a sealed unit, so if something fails or you want
something new, you buy it from the manufacturer or network.

Networks or manufacturers wouldn't want this kind of thing because it would
affect their profits, so what's in it for them? What solution is it offering
them?

That's before we even get into the engineering flaws...

~~~
venomsnake
Well standards and replaceable parts brought the PC to world domination.

And the networks should be removed from the device business at all.

So a smartphone that could be assembled and upgraded with full control and
root access is idea that I stand behind. And if it forces the carries to
compete on services and not lock people with contracts all the better.

~~~
gutnor
Standards _cheap_ replaceable parts brought the PC to dominate their very
expensive IBM counterpart.

See the problem, is that this idea, with today's technology would be more
expensive to build than the device it is competing against. (if it was
possible at all)

And if you need to go against the network too, it means competing against $200
iPhone5s and the like.

------
kbart
Nice idea. But I simply fail to see how this could make something more than
another geek toy.

~~~
venomsnake
I have said the exact same quote for the iPhone. And have heard it about the
Raspberry Pi. Probably someone somewhere in the early 80s have said it about
the IBM-PC. Geek toys have the power to change the world when the brain behind
them leverages them to new and amazing things.

------
jlebrech
one alternative would be to have a phone with a cpu that can be desoldered and
replaced easily and in a more voluminous case (maybe a nice cnc milled
alumin(i)um case)

~~~
duskwuff
"Desoldered and replaced easily"? Clearly, you've never actually desoldered
anything. :) It's a tricky process which requires a good deal of special-
purpose equipment and training, and even with that, there's a nontrivial
chance that you'll damage the part, the board, or both in the process. It's
_not_ something you'd ever want to do on end-user equipment.

------
kaielvin
Lots of people seem to agree this concept is appealing indeed, but physically
impossible.

~~~
unicornporn
Physically impossible? I've seen crazier things happen.

------
realrocker
Please stop. It' so painful to see this link here after reddit.

------
yaph
Schei� encoding

------
jmcintyre
Wasn't the Moto X supposed to be super configurable like this? It got me
excited from the rumors and the hype. At the end it turned out to be just some
colors that can be picked.

[http://www.talkandroid.com/154586-rumor-upcoming-
motorola-x-...](http://www.talkandroid.com/154586-rumor-upcoming-motorola-x-
is-not-just-one-phone-but-a-new-line-of-devices/)

> And finally— the mysterious device(s) will be completely customizable by
> allowing the device’s color, RAM and internal storage to be completely
> configurable.

