

Ask HN: What do you think of modular smart phones? - haack


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alain94040
They make no sense, for two reasons:

1) hardware engineering: there is no dead space in a phone, every single
square inch is used by something. The PCB is as compact as possible. If you
design a modular phone (like project Ara), you easily double the space
required. Instant losing proposition: less efficient, more bulky.

2) market: even if you offered a wonderful selection of decent modules, market
reality means that 90% of your customers would use no more than 2 or 3
different configurations, at most. If that's the case, forget about
modularity, just build those 3 configs and optimize them to death.

~~~
jotux
And the PCB is compact because there are tons of high-speed and/or noise-
sensitive signals that need to be carefully routed. If you make components
modular you now need to run them over (typically fewer conductor) buses. The
buses will be slower than direct hardware connections and now when you want to
upgrade your 1080p camera to 4k you're still limited by the bus speed of the
base phone.

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kleer001
They only make sense to me if all the functionality was based out of a single
(or two) type of unit. Camera/Ram/CPU/gps/etc was all just a matter of
software. Need more memory? Buy more phone-goo, designate it as RAM, and bam.
Basically computronium.

So, in conclusion, completely unrealistic in the near term, or our lifetime.

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rahimnathwani
If my smartphone were modular in the same way as a desktop PC, I would worry
that minor bumps would cause disconnections or shorts. In theory I'd love to
upgrade parts at low cost, e.g. upgrading to an AMOLED screen, but ease of
disassembly doesn't seem compatible with the durability/weight/size
requirement of a device I carry around all the time.

In practice, it's easy to buy a new phone every 1-2 years, and give the old
one to a relative.

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hcho
They'll go as far as modular laptops.

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reach_kapil
Big Flop. Modular smartphones provide iterative benefit not revolutionary.
Until you have revolutionary breakthrough in product (more software than
hardware since hardware is easy to be cloned), these will remain as toys.

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forkLding
Ultimately depends on marketing, consumer reception, how well developed the
product is and how overall user experience is. I think that's really what
would either make or break it.

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5h
Dead end. I suspect a widely varied yet cross-compatible & long lived set of
modules & interfaces would leave us with a gigantic / expensive / ugly device.

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random778
All the arguments here are valid. However, Hello Kitty will make it succeed.

