

The success of Project Ara depends on Toshiba - ElvisMa
http://www.araprototype.com/uncategorized/toshiba-modules-project-ara/

======
walterbell
Specifications for the on-phone interconnect protocol, UniPro:
[http://mipi.org/specifications/unipro-
specifications](http://mipi.org/specifications/unipro-specifications)

Hopefully Project Ara can bring a PC-like open architecture to mobile devices,
to unlock the combinatorial creativity of a multi-vendor interoperable
ecosystem. This requires that the Google-controlled "Router" component will
not exercise editorial policy or runtime tax on "Bridge" modules.

~~~
dogma1138
So now we'll have to put our trust in software and drivers? :)

PC is open indeed, but for the love of me I can't remember the last time I've
actually upgraded a PC. I usually buy a upper mid-range to lower high end PC
(currently running Core I7 5820K, 980) but i actually very rare upgrade them.
The ones I buy last me for the 2-3 years of which ever games i play at the
time, when i can no longer play them at the graphical level i deem acceptable
i buy a new one.

And this is because the upgradeability of most PC's is sort of a myth, if you
buy a hardware which is all of the same range when you'll have to upgrade a
component the rest will become a bottle neck.

And i don't see this being any different, the added cost of the router and the
entire protocol simply writes off the benefits considering that an upgrade
will require you to upgrade at least 3 major parts.

On top of that you run the risk of the "router" most likely be turned
incompatible within a few years simply because the standard will evolve to
allow for additional bandwidth, different power requirements, an improved form
factor etc.

Take a look at PCI express for example from version 1 to 4 there were huge
changes in bandwidth and power supply, and while some hardware kept backwards
compatibility it was in most cases severely hindered by the bandwidth
limitations. Put in a modern PCIE 3/4 graphics card in a PCI 1 or even 2 slot
and you'll see the difference high end cards lose upto 75% of their
performance, some wont work at all due to the power supply differences.

Do you really think that for some reason that protocol would be exempt of
that?

We already have a combined creativity of a multi-vendor environment, open your
phone it has components from a 100 vendors. There are memory vendors, SOC
vendors, sensor vendors, radio vendors, screen cameras etc. You can have an LG
phone with a top of the line Sony camera, and NVIDIA SOC and a Samsung memory
in it, do you really need to add a plastic square that says Dr Dre to it?

Not to mention that at least now you have the ability to debug issues with
fair ease, if the PC over the past 40 years have not managed to tackle cross
vendor compatibility even at a hardware level (just check the accepted
hardware list for your mother board for example) not to mention on the
software level what makes you so sure that this all of a sudden will?

I would rather much see an easy way to connect peripheral discrete devices to
my phone with ease for the extremely rare occasion i would (and atm i can't
think of one) need it than to have to select different hardware for my phone
hoping it will all work together than having 6 different vendors to get
support and claim warranty from while hoping that at least 2 or 3 of my lovely
blocks will be compatible with the next years model.

~~~
jaywunder
I thought they were making an MDK to prevent the issues with drivers, do you
know about that at all?

~~~
dogma1138
And how is that any different than the driver development kits, frameworks,
hardware development kits and reference design guidelines we have today?

With all of those we still got issues, my 600$ creative sound card still
doesn't work well with Windows 8, vendors still have to patch BIOS, firmware
and micro-codes to sort out compatibility issues, and some hardware
compatibility issues are not sorted at all.

No matter how well you plan things something will not work, today when a phone
vendor designs a phone they can and do ensure that all of the hardware is
compatible with each other and that the software works (some do it better than
others). Do you really think that every single vendor will be able to test
their plug with every other currently in existence?

And if they will can you even imagine the cost of such certification process?
Motherboard vendors today barely test their boards with 1/3rd of the available
memory modules, and on every motherboard manual you'll see warning of at least
5 that don't work at all.

All of them follow the exact standard set by JEDEC and still manage to mock it
up. On the software level for each motherboard you can see 3-4 BIOS upgrades
that patch in support for CPU's additional memory vendors, or increase system
stability, this isn't something that i look forward to see on my phone.

The only reason why i still don't use an AIO PC is that i play games, and once
Steam Boxes come down to reasonable price levels and not 600% branded PC
markup I'll probably dump it for one.

For the rest of my uses, a laptop, tablet, or some other AIO device will work
just fine, and judging by where the market is headed I'm probably not alone in
this view.

------
x43b
I am looking forward to Project Ara. Assuming my Moto X holds on long enough,
an Ara type phone will be my next phone. I do not care if the Ara doubles the
thickness of my Moto.

That said, I am approaching it the same way I do Lego Mindstorms, Raspberry
Pi, and Arduino. However, I do not think Ara will have the education angle
those do to reach volume.

I am not sure I see the real value outside of tinkerers. I plan to buy one but
I do not expect to actually save money, electronics waste, or have better
performance for the dollar.

------
dogma1138
Seems to be yet another HN assisted DDoS attack since the site is being going
up and down like crazy.

On that note, I'm honestly not looking forward for project Ara at all. Seems
to be quite a finicky concept and while i "loath" apple i do think that a
purposely built device is much better over Lego type hardware. I don't mind
some upgrade-ability but this to me seems like it will come at a much higher
cost, bot in terms of overall cost and TCO having even more points of failure
in a given device which will make it even less reliable and to have an overall
shorter lifetime and for what exactly?

I really don't see a single feature that i would want to upgrade on a phone in
the 12-18 months I'll use it, and when i will want to upgrade one it will most
likely mean i will want to upgrade them all. If i wan't a better screen at
that point I'll want a better SOC to drive it, more memory to store higher
resolution content on it etc.

The only thing i see coming out of this is another "Beats" type scam with some
silly audio parts and instragram branded cameras that will be sold for a huge
markup. The only "benefit" we might get is that every "Ara" device will
finally have a user serviceable battery, but considering that no matter how
good their interconnect is the standard and protocol constraints will make it
impossible to optimize every component like you could with a purposely
designed device it's not much of a trade off either (especially considering
that if you need replaceable batteries, many phones still come with them
including the flagship phones from Samsung).

/illpass.

~~~
dman
For many people mobile phones are the dominant computer in their lives. I for
one welcome any attempts to make them less monolithic. In an ideal world I
would be able to freely mix and match the hardware, the OS, the application
framework and the language for my mobile device.

I admit the modular solutions might physically be clunkier and offer worse
battery life. I am willing to live with some compromises on those if it means
that I have more control over the device.

~~~
dogma1138
Well the current trends in personal computing is actually towards monolithic
all in one devices, whether if it's the rise of the MAC's or the continuing
trend in the PC world to put everything unto the mainboard or the CPU.

25-15 years ago your PC would've had 3-4 different extension cards, today
unless you're a gamer or otherwise in need of a discrete graphics card you
have none since they've migrated unto the CPU. And modern CPU's can run many
games today even AAA title on quite acceptable settings for most casual
Gamers, and that trend will only accelerate as they improve.

With AMD built in "APU" being based on the same architecture as their discrete
cards, Intel's IRIS being able to drive more and more games, and NVIDIA
getting more experience in integrating their own discrete graphic cores with
CPU's in their SOC i doubt we'll see discrete graphic cards for much longer,
beyond that the only thing that you'll have on your board is your memory and
that too with stacked and 3D dies will be integrated soon enough. You already
have desktops the with a 10cm^2 footprint that have the same CPU and memory
that you put in your tower, within a couple of years there won't be a single
discrete component on that board at all.

I for one don't see how being able to customize hardware translates to having
any more control over the device i own than being able to select a device with
the hardware i want. Infact the compromises forced by such architecture in my
eyes result in less control as they force me to compromise on hardware to
begin with. Today i can select a phone which has the screen i want, the
battery i want, the camera i want and the SOC i want, yes i might be limited
to certain vendors but i don't see this change if my phone comes as a single
magical block without as much as a sim card slit or as a complete Lego set.

~~~
dman
I admit that you are completely correct about the trend towards increasing
integration. Its possible that as someone who grew up in the PC era I struggle
to embrace the concept of a computing device with few degrees of freedom.

~~~
dogma1138
I got that too, i think that's where more of my resentment to Apple devices
comes from (Why pay twice the prices for inferior hardware).

But considering the current trend and the fact that your data and software
becoming more and more detached from the device you use you get a different
kind of freedom.

Considering that for virtually every discrete software today there is a cloud
service, and eventually even streaming games trough the cloud (or your local
network) will become technically viable why should you care whats inside your
device? The only thing it will do is some basic processing and input/output it
will become nothing more than a terminal.

And where the majority of the computation will be at your house or in the
"cloud" it doesn't matter.

Heck I'm pretty sure that NVIDIA for example is already preparing for the
future in which it can't sell graphic cards, at best it will be able to
license it's technology.

That's why in my opinion they are working on their streaming technology so
badly, I mean today there is absolutely no freaking reason to stream Call of
Duty onto a tablet but in 2-3 years? That will probably be the default setting
whether they sell you some game streaming box which you can buy that can run
3-4 games at the time onto multiple devices or sell their hardware in bulk it
to who ever decides to revive OnLine or take on Playcast.

I for one can't wait for the time in which i will be completely free to choose
which ever device i want because for all intents and purposes they'll do
exactly the same thing and that is connect me to my data and applications. I'm
sick of benchmarks, reviews, and constant upgrades, sick of throwing money
down the toilet just to have a better screen or a faster CPU.

~~~
dman
In my opinion the software story and the data access story could be a lot
better in the new integrated world.

1\. Monoculture of a single language per platform needs to go away. Its
wasteful in terms of programmer productivity.

2\. The data layer needs to be disjointed from the applications completely.
Access to this data needs to be available on a system wide basis.

3\. Power users frequently want to access their data programmatically. More
attention needs to be paid to these use cases.

4\. The bottom level cross application data layer needs to be based on some
open standard allowing people to trivially get data in / out of the ecosystem
via some scripts / programs / tools.

5\. Applications need to be extensible by the end user.

------
tdicola
I remember when Ara was first announced that it was in a special Google
program where it basically has to have results in a year or they shut it down.
I'd love to know how it's tracking in that and if it looks like it will live
on or be put on hold. I'm pretty sure it's coming up on a year old very soon.

IMHO I think it's neat technology but I would not personally want all the
trade-offs of more bulk and weight just to have the ability to swap out parts.

~~~
walterbell
_> I'd love to know how it's tracking in that and if it looks like it will
live on or be put on hold. _

Project Ara received an extension:

 _" A notable exception to the rule is Google's Project Ara, the modular
Android smartphone with interchangeable components, which was granted an
extension on its two-year deadline because it's promising enough that they're
actually testing it in Puerto Rico."_

[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-atap-killed-project-
to...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-atap-killed-project-to-improve-
mobile-battery-life-2015-3)

------
xbmcuser

      Currently computers are not modular and people that keep  saying that they are actually tech enthusiasts that are willing to open up a pc and play with the innards.  
    
       A modular phone and ability to hot swap parts is something completely different than what we have in pc currently. I hope it catches on and is adopted into other devices as well.   
    
       IE taking out the gpu and processor from my phone and attaching it to my TV or tablet for gaming. Or the ability to upgrade the entertainment console in my car by just replacing a part.

