
Goodbye Sticky. Hello Ara - mikeevans
http://motorola-blog.blogspot.com/2013/10/goodbye-sticky-hello-ara.html
======
sirkneeland
As someone with similar interests in a large Finnish company...

God help the antenna engineers assigned to this project.

Whether the antenna is part of the "endo" (and thus subject to interference
from potentially unknown external modules) or àn external component itself
(and thus subject to interference from potentially unknown adjacent modules)
it's going to be an unholy nightmare to try and engineer.

That said, I would love if they could figure some sort of genius solution to
the problem and further this concept. Wild things like this are exactly what
Motorola should be doing (along with continuing to iterate on the solid Moto
X)

~~~
seertaak
At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot: can't they send on slightly
different frequencies or wavelengths? Or: why don't they just copy the design
of antennas in mobile phones?

What's different technically from mobile phones?

~~~
rkangel
Antennas on mobile phones need to be designed to take into account the
environment around them - other chips, other antennas, metal body of case
work, likely position of head relative to phone. They are customised to the
particular application.

Trying to design one that will work regardless of the combination of other
components chosen is a difficult challenge.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Sort of. Mass market radios are designed for low cost and low power
consumption, and the engineering cost is amortized over tens of millions of
devices. For that market segment it makes sense to make a perfectly customized
radio.

There's nothing to stop them from putting a self-tuning phased-array radio on
a niche product. At $50 a unit extra on a volume of 200,000 it might be
viable. And the tech could be amortized over a line of industrial radios too.

------
galenko
I remember the thread about phoneblocks and how it was never going to happen,
who would have known that Motorolla was working on something similar for
almost a year at the time.

Hope Dave gets something out of it, besides the warm and fuzzy feeling that
Motorolla makes a product that is similar to his idea.

~~~
GuiA
Have they shown a working prototype yet? For all we know, that's the last we
may hear of the project. Sadly, it's happened that way for many promising
products (Microsoft Courier, anyone?)

~~~
venomsnake
Google are trigger happy with killing products but I am not aware of many
announced and undelivered ones. But I don't follow them too much.

------
jorde
While the Phonebloks concept got a lot of hype, I haven't seen any mention of
Modu, an Israel based phone manufacturer (startup). They introduced the first
modular phone but it wasn't never a success and the company went bankrupt in
2011. Interestingly enough, Google bought their patents and now we have a
modular phone concept from Google owned Motorola.

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

~~~
hugs
Reminds me of the quote [1]: "There's very little difference between being
early and being wrong."

Sometimes, you have the right idea, but the world isn't ready for it, yet.
Appears to be the case for Modu?

edit: found quote reference. [1] Herb Greenberg, 27 Apr 1986, Chicago Tribune.
<[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-04-27/business/86013...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-04-27/business/8601300826_1_bear-
richard-eakle-big-rally>)

~~~
zach
That's a good find, but when I think about that quote with technology
adoption, I remember Joe Kraus's great "Confessions of a Startup Addict" from
Startup School, where he said "Being early feels the same as being wrong --
you're dead!"

[http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2006/04/30/joe-kraus-
confe...](http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2006/04/30/joe-kraus-confessions-
of-a-startup-addict/)

Probably my favorite startup speech, but no longer online anywhere due to
lossage from Omnisio and the YC Infogami.

------
nwh
It looks pretty on paper, but it can't ever compete with a properly designed
and executed product in the real world. The reason Apple can get their devices
so small is the complete omission of connectors and other internal padding.
This thing (whatever it is) will just be a mess of connectors and other
supporting hardware- a monolith of extendability that will never be used by an
end user. Any extendability it has will be stunted by the bus abatable to it;
you won't get an external screen or upgraded processor on a flimsy usb-alike
connector.

I would wager that almost every "reconfigurable" device or product just ends
up in a single setting, which would have been better off being found during
product testing and the rest of the configurations ignored.

~~~
DominikR
> This thing (whatever it is) will just be a mess of connectors and other
> supporting hardware- a monolith of extendability that will never be used by
> an end user.

Yes, it probably would be a mess compared to an iPhone - just like the PC vs
Mac.

I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss this, you might be surprised how many users
would prefer the ability to customize their devices over one-size-fits-all
solutions.

Just ask yourself why there are so many people buying all those high end
Android devices.

~~~
GFischer
"Just ask yourself why there are so many people buying all those high end
Android devices."

Over here (Uruguay), it's the network effect, and Android being cheaper (both
perceived and in app availability).

Apple makes no efforts to cater to some particulars of Third World countries
(like, no credit card even having enough income, and a strong dislike to tying
it to anything). I wonder how they manage to be apparently strong in China.
Android dominates in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East

App availability is much better for Android here.

Microsoft made many of Apple's screw-ups as well.

So, if you plan to buy a high end phone in Uruguay, 97% will end up buying an
Android (and most of those will end up with a Samsung Galaxy, which is what
the official carrier pushes).

Apple does have a lot of signalling value though :) and and iPhone is
perceived as a luxury product too, but it's way more impractical here.

~~~
nikoftime
Hi -

Really appreciate your comment. My startup, Nulu, is servicing Latin America
with an English learning product with daily news content. Something you
mentioned is that Apple makes no effort to cater to those who have no credit
cards. Can you tell me a little more about how you and others would prefer to
purchase devices and apps? How about products and services over the web?

I'm really quite interested as we're facing the same challenges you're
speaking about.

~~~
GFischer
Hi, I don't think there's a Latin-America wide answer to that unfortunately.

Here in Uruguay, the most popular method for payments is through a nationwide
payments network, the two biggest being Abitab and RedPagos:

"Abitab and Red Pagos, channel some 49% transactions of the retail payment
system, with credit cards (39%) and cheques (9%)"

[https://twitter.com/marslombas/status/302521188939358209](https://twitter.com/marslombas/status/302521188939358209)

The local Groupon clone, wOOw (www.woow.com.uy , which vastly outperforms
Groupon here) uses mainly Abitab, as well as credit cards, with the important
distinction of accepting locally issued credit cards which do not exist
outside of Uruguay or Argentina.

In Argentina there exist similar payment networks (RapiPago and PagoFacil I
think)

[http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapipago](http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapipago)

I'm not sure what the situation is in Brazil or Chile (I think they have
ServiPag) or the rest of the Latin American countries.

There must be services to integrate with those payment methods easily, here in
Uruguay we have CobrosYa

[https://www.cobrosya.com/sitio/](https://www.cobrosya.com/sitio/)

It seems very primitive and it introduces a huge friction, especially for
impulse purchases like apps.

Apple buyers here in Uruguay are usually wealthy and do have credit cards. The
problem is Android users (the vast majority), which don't have a culture of
paying for apps (and most have the attitude of just looking for the free
equivalent).

I investigated starting a micropayments platform based on the cell phone, but
I gave up due to the extreme complexity involved, but there's certainly a lot
of opportunities to disrupt - and some are doing it like former coworkers who
started Paganza:

[http://www.paganza.com](http://www.paganza.com)

~~~
nikoftime
Thank you so much - super useful information. It matches a lot of what we've
discovered over the past several years looking into the market. If you don't
mind my asking, what are the most effective ways of communicating "how to pay"
to consumers in Uruguay? Any sites that you've seen that do a particularly
good job?

------
chasing
Phones are too cheap -- and getting cheaper. And I suspect most people find
just simply selecting a fully-baked phone intimidating enough.

The actual market for this kind of device would be tiny. (Why I suspect this
won't even make it to market.)

This is just Motorola brand marketing.

------
lyime
Now finally, I can build a coffee brewer attachment.
[http://pomegranatephone.com/](http://pomegranatephone.com/)

------
jasonlmk
I'd love to hear some of your thoughts about how technically feasible this
actually is (under a single discussion thread).

[1] Sirkneeland states that it's going to be tough to engineer the antenna

[2] nwh states that "Any extendability it has will be stunted by the bus
abatable to it; you won't get an external screen or upgraded processor on a
flimsy usb-alike connector"

Any other thoughts?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6632641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6632641)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6632597](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6632597)

~~~
rkangel
I love the concept, but I can't see how you're going to avoid losing out
majorly on size and/or battery life.

As I understand it, one of the major size reduction wins in the modern mobile
phone is packaging - taking the major components and packing them in such a
way as to lose as little space as possible. The battery shape can be designed
to go with whatever packaging is chosen.

In this scenario, the packaging decisions are already made - or rather, there
isn't much flexibility. Each device has to be a cuboid, placed next to each
other. The same is true of the battery. The packaging of the blocks is going
to cost you some space (connectors, case), but you're also going to waste
space in a block as it's unlikely the given chip is going to be exactly as big
as the package. The same is true of the battery - rather than fitting in a
customised space, it's another cuboid.

All of these little inefficiencies of space will add up, so that either you've
got a very big phone, or one with a very small battery.

------
dbg31415
I don't get why anyone would want a modular phone. It's so backwards from
where we are heading. Promise you a non-modular phone will be smaller,
lighter, etc. The slight variations in how people customize a phone...
guarantee they'd be happier finding a phone they liked and buying it. Plus...
phones aren't expensive, why not just throw them out ever 18 months?

~~~
drbawb
> phones aren't expensive

A new smartphone in the US is $600-800 off contract.

In my own experience: that puts it in line with (A) my car which I purchased
and titled for $500 last year, and (B) my workstation which cost $1200 without
peripherals.

Both my car and workstation are, unsurprisingly, modular systems that can be
useful for years or even decades with proper care.

My retired work-station is still in use as a file-server, and that machine is
8 years old. My car is 300,000 miles young without a single major mechanical
fault.

\---

So from where I'm standing: $600 is a rather sizable chunk of change that I'd
much rather spend on a system that's _not designed to be disposable._

I can't even find a current-gen smartphone that I'm remotely interested in
purchasing. The "smaller and lighter" you speak is not so much _smaller_ but
_thinner._

I don't need, or even desire a 1080p screen on my phone; despite being
interested in other current gen components like the latest round of cameras.

You can't make the physical package and smaller than the _gigantic displays_
these phones are being equipped with. I would sooner part with $600 for an
iPhone 4S-sized "endo skeleton" with current gen "RAM and CPU modules" and a
slightly smaller battery. A tradeoff that's possible when you're dealing with
modules... but a financial disaster when you're trying to design a mass-market
phone to compete with the Android flagships.

------
devx
If you've read Clayton Christensen's books, you know that after "integration"
comes "disintegration"/modularization when the market becomes mature enough,
just like it did in the PC world many years ago.

This might be what disintegration looks like for smartphones. Maybe our
devices won't be just black boxes we can't get into in the future.

From Geoffrey Moore's books (Crossing the Chasm, etc) we also know that when a
market becomes "mature"/saturated, the companies start to "mass customize"
their products. We can already see the beginning of that trend with multiple
colors for devices, multiple backs, etc, instead of the previous just black,
or black and white.

------
fudged71
Notice that this announcement was 10 hours before the phoneblocks
"Thunderclap" to 970,000 social media accounts, as well as the speculated
Nexus 5 announcement. Interesting timing.

------
ZeroGravitas
I can't see this working for consumer phones in the short term (though long
term we'll get to the Beats Audio stage where the tech is completely
commodified and the packaging will become all important).

However, right now it seems ideal as a prototyping platform, or even a way to
produce short runs of devices that need (most of) a commodity smartphone plus
a couple of random sensors or connectors.

------
pselbert
I'm the tech lead at dscout.com, the tool that Motorola is using to run the
"Project Ara Research". The design team behind the product it is personally
running the research effort, so if you have ideas or comments you may want to
check it out.

Any feedback you submit is going to them directly.

[1] [http://dscout.com/ara](http://dscout.com/ara)

------
natch
This seems like mostly PR.

Now if Motorola could give us a good usable mesh router for the masses, that
would be something with actual impact.

~~~
IBM
That seems to be what a lot of Google initiatives are lately. It's like Xerox
PARC or Microsoft Research, except Google is taking the step to capitalize on
those projects for PR reasons as well. I doubt they will have more success in
getting things to market and making a business out of something from their
research labs than Microsoft (so that it shifts the revenue mix from 94% ads
to anything else). It's important for them to be seen as "innovative" so that
the company doesn't become a stodgy old web company like AOL or Yahoo. I
believe mainly for recruitment purposes.

------
ChikkaChiChi
In a day and age where computers are seeing more soldering and glue than ever
I am hard pressed to believe that anything like this would ever see the light
of day, production-wise.

It's a neat concept but building a mobile device is more than just schluffing
together a bunch of random parts.

------
hershel
This could be a huge win for Motorola. Say they control/patent the shell and
the communications interface. It's easy and cheap to build. They charge $99
for it with great margins. All this while module builders compete both for
price and features.

Since this is open, the winner in this market will be the company who can
build the best ecosystem. Who can do that better than Google?

And it would be almost impossible for Samsung to compete, since they are a
highly integrated company.

The interesting reaction would be from apple: they are highly integrated so
hard to move to this model but they also know how to build ecosystems.

If Google builds something compelling, I'm grabbing my popcorn.

------
hawflakes
Come to think of it, both projects look to be inspired by Bug Labs' modules.

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

------
rurounijones
This interesting thing about what they have in their example is there not all
phones need to be 100% modular. that blue phone looks like a normal phone with
only one modular point.

Best of both worlds

~~~
znq
There are two more on the backside.

~~~
rurounijones
yes in fact looking at it that is very modular (it is the one the hand is
holding for starters.)

But the point still stands. I (as a manufacturer) could release a phone with
huge customizability or maybe just 1 or 2 slots. Quite flexible

As long as the communication / power bus and physical size standards are
ruthlessly enforced.

------
jtchang
I've actually never seen the idea of a phoneblock but it sounds awesome. I've
always wanted a mass spectrometer on my phone (okay maybe that is asking a bit
too much).

~~~
msutherl
Not exactly what you're looking for, but a friend of mine sells $10 origami
spectrometers that use your phone camera:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA5BTD-
aelo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA5BTD-aelo) /
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jywarren/public-lab-
diy-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jywarren/public-lab-diy-
spectrometry-kit).

------
asiekierka
"how do we bring the benefits of an open hardware ecosystem to 6 billion
people?"

What about the remaining billion?

~~~
venomsnake
They are happy in the walled garden of Apple :)

------
andridk
This design reminds me of The Centurions
([http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/centurion.htm](http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/centurion.htm)).
Good times.

------
gmuslera
One missing piece (or at least, not shown, and not sure how it would conflict
in their puzzle like approach) is a hardware keyboard. Mostly for that i
prefer Jolla's other half idea for modularity.

------
Aloha
Well, I'll be dammed.

------
srhngpr
Did anyone notice the cat with the sunglasses "module"?

~~~
rurounijones
Looks like an E-Paper display module perhaps?

~~~
wingerlang
It is probably just supposed to be a module (as the one to its left) with some
fancy graphics on it. It has the same edges as the (again) module to the left
of it.

------
asadlionpk
I wonder what the phoneblock team is thinking right now...

~~~
rplnt
It's worth reading the linked article before commenting on it.

~~~
asadlionpk
yeah i read it later, forgot deleting the comment

------
emp_
Not being asian and reading a few years ago that the company started calling
itself MOTO for the difficult it is to pronounce the full name with asian
phonetics, Ara is a kick in the balls and I feel sorry for them choosing that
name.

