
Project Ara – Google's modular phone project - JS1984
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/google-project-ara/
======
netcan
A musing about the aesthetic of modular:

My first 21st century "gadget" (for some obviously arbitrary definition of the
term) was an ipod nano. I'm not very sensitive to the niceness of things in
general so I was pretty surprised at how much I liked how it looked and felt
in my hands.

It was, cold metallic, small, sleek and completely solid. It had no give in it
at all and felt like a magic rock. The solidness of it made it feel
futuristic. I find that I like my SSD laptop a lot more than the old HDD one
for similar reasons. I think it has to do with it not revealing anything about
how it works.

I imagine artifacts of the future continuing along these lines. Impenetrable
to analysis by the naked A solid mass of synthetic minerals arranged in a very
precise way so that electrons are precisely directed this way or that way. But
to the naked eye, there is no cause and effect beyond the minimal input and
output.

On the opposite side, I can get a lot of enjoyment from messing around with
something like a foot-treadle loom or 18th century brass navigation
instruments. Even just looking at them is fun. They are complicated enough to
be very clever and interesting. Too clever to invent yourself. But, they are
still simple enough to understand using your eyes. You can get an "aha!" from
seeing the flying shuttle work on a loom. The objects themselves being so
common in mythology also adds to the flavor. You can see the incredible
potential of adding more gears and levers.

It's an accessible cleverness that you can experience pretty directly. I find
it fascinating that space cowboy fiction & steampunk exist. First, future
tense nostalgia is an interesting concept. Second, I think it shows a kind of
longing for objects that are both futuristic but understandable.

The loom is obviously a human artifact. The ipod is something we
intellectually understand to be an artifact, but emotionally it doesn't feel
like human one. A magic object doesn't hint at its workings.

Beyond the practical advantages of a modular device, I think there is a
steampunk-esque appeal to the idea. We could weld together a brass spaceship
using an energy crystal to power the electron sail (both naturally obtained by
barter or pilage ).

~~~
anigbrowl
You are the sort of person who would enjoy using modular synthesizers.

* Not responsible for possible bankruptcy/ divorce/ loss of employment resulting from acting on above advice

~~~
wcfields
Forum to pump that paycheck into:

[http://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/](http://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/)

~~~
MrJagil
A thousand times yes. Muffwiggler is the place to be.

------
abruzzi
Once upon a time, when I was younger, I felt very strongly that I needed a
computer with everything replaceable. I wanted to replace a CPU when it got
too slow, new graphics card, upgradable RAM, storage, etc. But I found that in
the end while I'd make small upgrades, I still replaced my computers at close
to the same rate. That because some standard that was built into the old
machine was no longer fast enough or wide enough for newer uses, or an
interconnect standard changed (think ISA, to PCI, to PCI-X, to PCI-e) The
other reason is while i could upgrade some parts, I couldn't upgrade all the
parts, and pretty soon those parts were now two or three years old. They were
no longer as reliable as a brand new system.

I wonder with these modular phone ideas, if we're looking at the beige box PC
industry all over? And whether it will be a good fit to mobile or whether
you'll buy your modular system in a year, and then find in another two years
that there is a new modular interconnect version without backwards
compatibility, and gradually you won't be able to find modules that work with
your current frame, so you have to replace that, and maybe the some of your
old modules don't work with the new frame, so you have to replace them at the
same time. Like a lot of beige bok PC geek, you'll end up with a drawer of old
modules in a drawer that you hardly ever find a need for, but you cant bring
yourself to throw them away unless they're actually broke. The smart person
will just buy all new modules when they replace the frame (that what most
people did when they replaced their beige box, because why upgrade but still
carry over that old junky graphics card). Pretty soon your at a point where
the primary benefit of modularity in not upgrading pieces, but the ability to
spec exactly the phone you want when buying. But in reality there are a lot of
phones on the market now, and you can come pretty close.

I don't know that this will be the case, but its how I'd bet it would end up
playing out.

~~~
mturmon
Google might benefit strategically from a market where phones are commoditized
down at the hardware subsystem level. This would further disempower hardware
integrators like Samsung.

The analogy is Microsoft:beige box::Google:component phone.

~~~
userbinator
> where phones are commoditized down at the hardware subsystem level

This is already happening with the various Chinese manufacturers and the
Mediatek MT65xx platform. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of
different models, all slightly different looking and with different
dimensions, but based on the same internal reference design with minor
changes, often to the point of ROM interchangeability.

------
evanmoran
This is absolutely the right direction, but not in the way you think. This
shouldn't be branded as a phone -- size and look matter too much. It should be
branded the tool of the future, designed for people people in the field:
electricians / construction workers / scientists / tinkerers. Let me plug in
an altimeter, leveler, or multimeter. That is what is missing on my iPhone,
and this is the first thing I've seen modular enough to pull it off.

And, yes, I've been thinking Tricorder this whole time=).

~~~
rch
I'm curious to see what I will be able to do with the interconnect myself. For
instance, could I rig something up to hook a couple of modules to my laptop or
car?

~~~
yarri
This question was asked at the tech conference yesterday, and they may clarify
it in the MDK [0] but the project team seemed to downplay this aspect,
preferring to pitch the idea of a "low cost mobile phone for the next billion
users."

Still, the modules can be emitters (ie., BT/ZigBe modules) although they were
unclear about how module developers would get these certified. And I guess no
one is stopping you from adding cables to a module, but the UniPro based and
M-PHY current specs wouldn't get you very far... 10cm cable perhaps?

[0] [http://www.projectara.com/mdk/](http://www.projectara.com/mdk/)

------
sdfx
I think John Gruber over at Daring Fireball said it best:

 _" I remain highly skeptical that a modular design can compete in a product
category where size, weight, and battery life are at such a premium. Even if
they can bring something to market, why would any normal person be interested
in a phone like this?"_

[http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/04/15/project-
ara](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/04/15/project-ara)

~~~
josefresco
Size matters? My Android friends have huge phones (and cases) - Clearly they
don't mind a phone being big and if the phone had cheap replaceable parts,
that giant "life proof" case wouldn't be needed.

Weight matters? I have never heard "I wish my phone was lighter" from anyone,
anywhere. In fact I've heard from several who think a heavier phone means it's
"better made".

Battery life - Again my Android friends (and a few 5c friends) suffer from
poor battery life - How would a phone where you could easily swap for a
new/better battery be inferior?

Gruber should remind himself of the first generation of pretty much any tech
product. Bulky, ugly, and clumsy could describe a lot of projects that push
technology to it's limits.

~~~
jan_g
It does matter when comparing with alternatives. Modular phone with comparable
specs to other phones (screen size, cpu, camera, etc) would probably be
bigger, thicker, heavier and uglier. In other words, even when a customer is
buying a big 5"\+ phone, then I think he/she will probably not choose the
modular one.

~~~
josefresco
I think the key is the purchasing model. A "free phone" with contract every 2
years creates a situation where the consumer doesn't value repairing/upgrading
their phone.

If you had to pay say $600-$800 for a phone upfront, one is
upgradable/repairable and the other is not (but faster/sexier) I think some
(maybe many) would choose the former.

~~~
adestefan
I know people that just toss an $800 laptop like it's nothing when something
goes wrong. We truly live in a disposable society.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "I know people that just toss an $800 laptop like it's nothing when
something goes wrong. We truly live in a disposable society."

Nope. You just happen to know people who can afford to toss an $800 laptop.
For most of the 'lower middle class' people I know purchasing a laptop is a
big deal and only happens once every 3/4/5 years. Even then they don't spend
more than £400. Even when their laptop is practically unusable through age,
damaged parts, viruses etc. they continue to use it because £400/$800/a new
laptop is a lot of money.

~~~
sp332
But the only difference is the amount of money, not the attitude. No one
thinks "I can afford a new laptop, but I'll rehabilitate this old one anyway."

~~~
dublinben
I must not be anyone then. I have a (nearly) six-year old Thinkpad that I've
upgraded a few times. I could have afforded a new replacement at any time, but
I'd rather keep using the machine I already have.

------
bane
I'd actually love it if this idea extended far enough to let me double my
"phone" as an impromptu laptop/desktop. I know that we can use a bluetooth
keyboard or whatever and kind of simulate things. But I'd love to carry around
a single computing device that I can drop into a cradle at home and it's using
my two big desktop monitors and nice keyboard/mouse, and when out and about,
head into a coffee shop and swap the screen out for a larger screen and
keyboard, and then head onto the subway and just swap the screen back and use
it like a phone. Then end of the day, head to the gym and swap out a few parts
and have it just play music for me while I work out. Head out for a hike on
the weekend and configure it like the Gym, but put in a better GPS unit and a
bigger battery or something. Go to the store and swap out the GPS unit for a
barcode scanner so I can comparison shop a bit. If something breaks, I can fix
it myself. Go home and plug it into an HDMI port and watch movies or play
games or something. Want to read a book? Swap out the screen for an e-ink
screen. Going on a trip? swap in the GPS device, big battery and the Nokia
camera module so I can use my nice lenses and find my way to the sites. Swap
the screen for the bigger screen later so I can review and edit my photos for
the day.

I could trade my notebook, camera, desktop, console, media devices, mp3
player, e-book reader and tablet in entirely.

But all my data is present for me and I can work on it, context appropriate to
the interfaces I have available at that moment.

I wouldn't mind having a few bits and parts floating around my backpack if it
gave me the flexibility to do that kind of thing.

~~~
smorrow
I like the modularity idea, I don't know if I'd want to be swapping components
five times a day though.

If the idea is just to have the same files/data on all your "different"
devices, I think I like the idea of running a central fileserver with that
stuff on it, and having separate phone, desktop, etc, that each do two or
three things and do them well, and they all mount the fileserver, which has a
much storage as you want, gets backed up regularly, is where indexing happens,
is where long-running downloads happen. and everything mounting that gets the
same files. oh, and a server is less likely to go missing or stolen or soaked.

Your idea is the simplest way to preserve application state between
"different" devices, my idea is the best way to preserve saved-file state (and
only that) between using different devices.

Your idea has been done to some extent by the Motorola Lapdock, but I don't
actually know anything about it.

~~~
jkimmel
You're indeed correct that Moto attempted something similar with the Atrix.

As a onetime Moto Webdock owner though, I'll attest to the fact that the
grandparents dream is far from realized. At the time, the phone was simply too
underpowered to provide a usable experience running _just a browser_ (outdated
Firefox at that). I picked the accessory up on Craigslist and it quickly found
a resting place in my closet -- it was neat, but only in the proof of concept
sense.

I'd love to see a company attempt something similar with today's hardware. A
phone like the Nexus 5 / HTC One could provide a pretty slick experience,
given enough RAM.

------
jacquesm
The first time I saw a modular phone was long ago (2000) in the lab of a very
large hardware company where they had a prototype from a start-up they'd
invested in.

It was made like a deck of cards, cpu, display/kbd, battery and cell
components could all be swapped out. There even was a camera module for the
back. It didn't make it. The main reasons iirc were that people see phones as
integrated wholes, that contacts breed failure and that making an integrated
phone versus one made out of pieces is simply cheaper.

Curious how this one will fare!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonebloks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonebloks)

~~~
bane
> that contacts breed failure

Just like in software, the interfaces are where the complexity lies.

------
enscr
People are viewing this project as a 'lego' phone that sounds great in theory
but doesn't charm practically. However manufacturers can take a middle ground
approach where future electronics slowly move towards hot swappable
components. Upgrading & replacing defective parts shouldn't require a screw
driver and perhaps as easy as plugging in a USB cable.

When I'm buying a high end phone & spending $600, I'd want it to last 5-6+
years. However the current ones typically stay relevant for barely 2 years and
the residual value is below $200. How about a phone that I'm not scared to
drop because if something breaks, I can easily swap out a new LCD, ofcourse at
a reasonable cost. Many users like me would be willing to sacrifice the form
factor slightly to get the ability to make my device last longer.

However all this goes against how manufacturers make money i.e. make you buy
new product frequently & charge an arm & a leg for repairs.

~~~
anigbrowl
There are other models, like sell the razor cheap and charge more for the
blades, which can support a product ecosystem, albeit a smaller one than that
for grooming products.

Consider that the FOB price for replacement cellphone cameras is under $5 in
quantities of $100. The hardware is cheap, the labor of installing it into a
phone that needs repair is not. But if you make it user-installable (as here),
you can sell the exact same camera for maybe $20-30, with only a minimal
increase in the cost of production for the modular package. So this could work
out quite nicely for component manufacturers by giving them a small additional
revenue stream from enthusiast/hobby buyers.

All those people complaining that it won't be competitive with other phones
for consumer dollars are _totally_ missing the point. Of course consumers will
continue to prefer all-in-one products from brand name manufacturers like
Apple and Samsung, for the same reason that most consumers want a car that
Just Works rather one that requires them to be an amateur mechanic.

And yet, there's a thriving retail business in auto parts, because a lot of
people _do_ like to hack on their cars or carry out their own repairs. And
likewise, there's a market for modular phones among hackers, engineers, high
school and college students, and all sorts of other niches, who want
flexibility but don't necessarily want to go down the Arduino route with
soldering and building their own cases and PCBs. Simple example: stick two
camera modules into one of these things, and you have a super cheap 3d camera
platform.

This will be absolutely huge in the developing world where utility >>
convenience or aesthetics.

------
Zak
I find this interesting in contrast to Nexus devices. Two or three years ago,
most Android phones had SD cards and removable batteries. These features have
been conspicuously absent from recent Nexus phones in spite of their appeal to
the power-user and developer markets who are among the most likely to want
such features.

I hope it gets some traction. I'm seeing a lot of sameness in high-spec
Android phones, and something like this might help manufacturers learn what
kinds of variations might sell without having to take the risk of mass-
producing and marketing a new model.

P.S. - if any manufacturers are reading this, I want a high-spec Android phone
the size of an iPhone. My Nexus 5 is somewhat uncomfortable in my pocket and
too hard to use one-handed due to its size.

~~~
psbp
Moto X.

~~~
Zak
I'm not sure what part of my comment you're responding to, but I don't think
the Moto X is a good response to anything I said. It doesn't have removable
storage. It doesn't have a removable battery. With a 4.7" screen, it's much
bigger than an iPhone.

~~~
mikeevans
Have you seen how big it is next to an iPhone? Pretty close in physical size,
despite the screen.
[http://i-cdn.phonearena.com/images/reviews/142861-image/Appl...](http://i-cdn.phonearena.com/images/reviews/142861-image/Apple-
iPhone-5s-vs-Motorola-Moto-X-001.jpg)

~~~
Zak
My mother owns a Moto X, bought on my recommendation. It is much closer in
width to my Nexus 5 than it is to the iPhone and barely more comfortable for
me to use one-handed than my Nexus 5. The difference in width is apparent in
the photograph you linked.

I commend Motorola for an excellent job eliminating non-screen area on the
front of the Moto X. It's a very space-efficient device in that regard, but my
complaint is about reaching all areas of a touchscreen with my thumb while
holding it in one hand, and nothing fixes that like a smaller touchscreen.

------
LarryMade2
Yeah, right.

I remember computers built in the 90s and 2000s, touting their modular
construction and never having to buy a new system again. I wonder if those
machines are still in operation?

I think what would guarantee longevity is something that is rock-solid good,
inexpensive, repairable, and easy to develop on. I'm thinking of track records
of computers like the Commodore 64, iMac, or in vehicles like the beetle,
video game consoles, ipod, iphone etc.

~~~
bane
You mean, pretty much any computer not made by Apple? Sure, I still have my
home-rolled desktop from 7 years ago. I just put together a new machine
earlier this year I expect to get at _least_ that much life out of. I don't
even buy top-spec parts, just good price/performance ratios for each part and
cobble it together. And if something breaks I can fix it myself.

It's not too technical and not too hard to do. About as complicated as making
a full dinner with main course, two side dishes and a dessert.

On the flip side, every other machine I've had that was closed, mostly
laptops, but I'm thinking of my C64, and my Coco2, when the smallest piece
died on those things, right into the trash they went. There's literally
nothing you can do to fix them that doesn't involve an engineering degree and
a lab.

------
AndrewDucker
If one of the modules can be a keyboard, then I know a fair few people who
will buy one...

~~~
Slackwise
The keyboard is _the_ module I want.

I used my T-Mobile G2 until it died a month ago, and had to do an emergency
replacement, which ended up being a Nexus 5. I'm going absolutely insane not
being able to just type without thinking about it. When you have to think
about your input and often correct it, you are no longer able to simply stream
your thoughts, and each micro-interruption is actually quite a distraction
from getting things done. It's frustrating.

------
CHY872
Yeah this is probably just one of Google's projects where they try and make a
device that totally uses the concept, realise that most of it's pretty bad and
redo it with a device that uses it for the single part that worked. The cynic
in me says 'replaceable battery' but I'd like to see replaceable SOC.

~~~
josefresco
Screen and battery are the two most common complaints/issues with current
phones. Simply allowing consumers to buy and swap these two parts would go a
long way.

------
ctdonath
As technology continues to shrink more functionality into less space, it
crosses the threshold where human limits require the device be _at least this
big_ (whatever that size/shape minimum is). A screen can only be so small
before it's practically unreadable. A touch area must provide at least so much
space between tap targets and accommodate "fat fingers". The box of a phone
must be big enough to hold comfortably to an ear. A small matchbox-size device
would just plain be too awkward to use.

Seems Apple initiated the unchangeable phone (no swappable battery, extremely
tight/solid tolerances) in part to get all that core functionality inside a
box that small. Sufficient battery required X _Y_ Z volume; making it
removable wasted a nontrivial amount of that, affecting talk time &
durability.

Now that core functionality can be _smaller_ than the minimum usable size,
including battery life acceptable to most users, there's some space again to
"waste" on components like pluggable interconnects, module packaging (so a
part is not fully exposed when removed), air gaps, etc.

"This here's a good axe. It's had nine handles and three heads."

"This is the last phone I bought. It's had nine batteries, three CPUs, two
displays, four radios, ..."

------
higherpurpose
If you read Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Solution [1] book (sequel to
Innovator's Dilemma), you'll see him talk about "integration" and
"disintegration" (basically the modularization of a product or market).

So in the early days of a new market/category of product, the products are
highly integrated, for several reasons. One is that the market is still new,
so there isn't much of an "ecosystem" to begin with. Another is that the
company with the "first mover's advantage" wants to keep stuff proprietary as
much as possible, and another is that the product still kind of "sucks" in
some areas (camera, battery life, in early days of the iPhone for example -
compared to the traditional competition). So they need to make everything work
as tightly as possible, to squeeze all the possible optimization out of it.

But eventually, the market becomes mature, the ecosystem grows, and the
products become "good enough" for most people. So much of that extreme
optimization or need to keep everything proprietary and in-house isn't needed
anymore, and you actually start getting some advantages from the
modularization of the market, such as buying a better modem than you can make
from a "modem company", and so on.

For a while I wasn't sure this was going to happen to the smartphone market
(ignoring the fact that there has been an increasing trend towards
customization through colors and whanot), because for one the smartphone is a
very tighly put together product, and it's hard to imagine how it could've
been separated into a dozen different pieces without being junk, and two, for
a while the trend was towards increasing "closeness" of devices, rather than
openness.

But it seems it's going to happen, and ARA looks just about right (I wasn't a
big fan of the Phonebloks pin-model). Still, even if the strategy here is
"correct", and most likely on the _right side of history_ , Google will still
need to excel at execution, and make sure using such a phone gives very few
disadvantages compared to a regular phone, but many more advantages (being
able to use whatever camera you want, without buying a $700 phone every year,
and so on). Otherwise, people could be turned off by the initial version, and
then it will be a lot harder to convince them what a good idea this is. But
for now I'm optimistic.

[1] - [http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-
Sustainin...](http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaining-
Successful-
ebook/dp/B00E257S7C/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1397650807&sr=8-1&keywords=innovator%27s+solution)

~~~
andosa
> So in the early days of a new market/category of product, the products are
> highly integrated

Not sure about this one, seems like the opposite to me. Twenty years ago, PC's
were very modular, and it was very common to add/upgrade a sound card, memory,
cpu, video card etc. Fast forward to now, and for the most common computing
devices (think tablets and smartphones), there is almost zero modularity or
upgradability. Even with current PC's (i.e. mostly laptops), it's increasingly
limited.

The same trend is apparent in other similar technology. For example with
analog TV, people could add a PAL block if their TV was NTSC or SECAM.
Upgrading your car used to be significantly easier etc.

~~~
divy
You're forgetting the first wave of PC's - Apple II, TRS-80, TI-99, C64, etc.
These machines had very little modularity compared to the wave of beige boxes
that followed the IBM PC standard. I think Christensen even uses that as an
example.

~~~
uxp100
The S-100 buss based machines before those were very modular, if perhaps not
PCs in the same sense.

------
Zigurd
I give this about a 5% chance of success, and 1% market share, maybe less, if
it does succeed. That's still more than 10 million units per year, so not a
failure. But this isn't going to be _your_ next phone.

If it falls much below that unit volume, the scheme implodes because the
optional components will not find enough of a market to get manufactured.

In order to succeed, the internal connectivity scheme needs to not go obsolete
over at least two, and preferably three product generations.

It also needs to find a market. People still build their own PCs for gaming,
for lab automation, and other distinctly minority pursuits. So far, the niche
for this product seems to be "people who find the idea attractive but can't
articulate an actual need."

~~~
blah314
If all my module slots can go to batteries, I'll be tempted.

~~~
higherpurpose
I think they said at least 2 modules can be used as battery (the larger ones).

------
drakaal
Raise your hand if you bought an "upgradable" mother board in the 286 and 386
days.... Do you still have it?

I have a computer that still uses some of the same screws that my 486 used.
For a long time I kept the original hard disk spinning even though I didn't
store stuff on it... But when IDE connectors went away I stopped bothering
with keeping it for nostalgia.

Even my case is no longer compatible, the power supply stopped being
compatible long ago.

Some of this is "advancements" some of it is just that manufactures want to
sell you new stuff.

Houses are about the only thing that are modular and you can say you will only
need to buy one... The house I grew up in is nearly 200 years old. So far it
hasn't needed to be replaced to do incompatibility.

------
bausson
There is a market, or should I say: there are markets: * people who often
broke their screens (my current boss is at 3 screens in 2 years, and counting)
* enthusiast, early adopters, developpers,... * There is probably a good way
to market it in developing countries too.

I would love having that phone, even more with a firefoxOS running on it.
Having that plateform with open hardware specifications would be a huge boon
for it to become a viable ecosystem. I could see firefoxOS and windows phone
boarding it quite easily if it take.

PS: whereas specifications are open or not, IDK at the moment, not a lot of
reliable information being available. Wishful thinking on my part I suppose.
Still hoping.

------
joshuapants
As someone mourning the fall of the full-qwerty physical keyboard phone (yes
there are the new BB phones, but by the next time I upgrade I anticipate that
BB will be dead), this gives me hope. There may not be enough people who want
them for manufacturers to make whole phones, but maybe there are enough to
support a market in quality keyboard modules.

------
eric_cc
This is not marketed at me.

My phone buying thought process: Does this phone have the software I care
about? Are apps tested to work with my exact device? Sold.

I do not want to spend a split second thinking about modules or RAM or
anything and I'm a very technical person. I cannot imagine my mom dealing with
this crap.

What is the market here? I would pay a premium to NOT deal with modules.

~~~
stackcollision
Once this is out, you _are_ paying a premium to not deal with modules by not
getting one. It's a $50 phone you can swap components in and out of as
upgrades become available. To me, that's infinitely better than buying a new
$300 smartphone every other year.

But there's also a second appeal. Right now, phones are impenetrable black-
boxes. You get what the manufacturer thinks you want. The reason I think a
modular phone will become very popular is the same reason the AR-15 is the
most popular gun in America: because you can play with it. You can swap parts
in and out depending on what you need.

"Oh, I'm going hiking today? Better stick my extra-big battery and wide-field
camera into my phone."

"Apple's putting a new zillion-byte SSD in the iPhone 9Q? Well good thing I
can just buy the zillion-byte module for my modular phone instead of having to
buy a whole new one."

And a million other examples.

------
fiatjaf
Where are all those comments, blog posts and experts' analyses saying
Phonebloks could never work in this world?

------
encoderer
I think the real-world use cases for a modular consumer device--like the
Sasquatch of meaningful OOP code reuse--is overstated.

I think this could work for business use. But the consumer equation is tricky.
Phones are fashion. Also phones take a lot of abuse.

------
id
I really don't think phones will stay the way they are for decades. And
modular phones definetely won't bear up for decades.

At some point every piece of the phone will have been exchanged, making it a
completely new phone.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Is that a new phone though?

 _invents the question of the philosopher 's modular mobile phone_

~~~
id
The ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the exact same
question.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_and_change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_and_change)

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Tyrannosaurs
I love that that Wikipedia article references Sugababes - a British pop band
which has changed entire line up over it's existence (begging the question is
it still the same band).

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koalaman
I wish someone had done this for PCs 20 years ago.

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stackcollision
Can you clarify what you mean? Maybe not 20, but 15 years ago my dad was
mucking around in the guts of our family computer, performing his own
upgrades. By the time we got rid of that thing the only original component was
the case. And nowadays you can order any piece of hardware you want off the
internet and slap it in.

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gcb0
heh. you guy really have any hope? just count the number of devices google and
its nexus partners released without even a sd card slot! motorola too since
the google devices started.

the market demands that fast obsolency and they are evil now. the only thing
holding back the nexus one as a strong daily phone is that it have no space
for more than 5 modern apps. it does if you hack android 2.3 to install apps
on the SD...

anyway. i wouldnt hold my breath. this is being done just to fail and harm
other people pursuing it honestly. cynic much? probably. but i am mostly
stating facts. how much does a sd slot saved in costs from your $600 phone?
nothing. hiw many years its lack cut from the device longevity? more than
half.

edit: plus the feature they advertise more is electro magnets! on a device
where the biggest concern is battery... and which will have a case anyway that
could hold everything together in case they used simple mechanical latches.

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kevingadd
It's a little gross that they seemingly picked up the PhoneBloks project and
then entirely erased any traces of the original product and its creators.
Hopefully that team's still involved and getting compensated...

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itp
From reading
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara#Development](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara#Development)
I'm not sure it's fair or accurate to say they "seemingly picked up the
PhoneBloks project."

