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The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

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Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#21

Post by lnanek2 »

grizzles wrote: post #5

Google mgmt fake releases and then subsequently cancels unlaunched products all the time. They do it to assess market viability and also to stymie competitors. Ara is notable because of the breadth of the project, but it was really just about protecting the android cash cow's flank. The strategy has worked pretty well. Android was released as open source almost 10 years ago, and you still can't run it on any semi ope…

I worked at a startup producing an Android device funded by Intel and Intel wouldn't even give us source code to all the parts of the OS. We had to deal with binary blobs copied into the Android source tree for things like the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and fastboot. They were things we really needed to customize too because their fastboot referenced buttons our device didn't have and things like that. It was pretty ridiculous.

Previous to that I worked on a TI OMAP solution and the source for that was much more open. We had a to extract a custom SGX package for the graphics processing, but otherwise it was much closer to the Android Open Source Project. At least we could customize their x-loader and u-boot as needed. Too bad TI OMAP died.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#22

Post by wapz »

jpm_sd wrote: post #12
onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

Nope. Sorry. Physics. Compared to a lightweight device that fits in your pocket, an IBM PC is huge. Colossal. All the space you could possibly need for modular interconnects, sheet metal sub-chassis-es, proper fasteners, etc. etc. A comparably-modular mobile phone cannot be anything but thick and heavy, unless you would prefer fragile and unusable.

I would think a 'modular' phone would have to be one that you could open up and swap out the parts like a pc. You could customize it easily because nothing would be soldered to the board but with onboard ram for boards I don't see how it would be replaceable. The camera lens, speakers, etc should be easily replaceable though.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#23

Post by beambot »

onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

Full modularity never made sense. The system-level tradeoffs for battery, screen, and antennas are just too astronomical.

But one or two expansion slots... now that would've been revolutionary. You could add whatever mattered to you: medical devices, specialized cameras, etc. etc. etc. Instead we're left with shitty USB or audio jack dongles or detached Bluetooth devices. Suck.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#24

Post by losteric »

onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

I would argue that standardization in the PC markets is driven by overlap between enterprise server hardware, enterprise PC hardware, and (incidentally!) consumer PCs...

Think about laptops, they've been around for a lot longer and are much closer to desktop PCs. Why hasn't modularization transformed that market? What about tables?

Answer: Most consumers don't care. They won't upgrade their PC, their laptop, their phones, their tablets, they'll just check them out and get a new one every 5 years.

Phones and tablets don't have enterprise demand. Laptops have some enterprise demand, which corresponds to some degree of customization/standardization.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#25

Post by general_ai »

Even at Google most people knew this project was stillborn. It's a combination of two factors: no one but a few geeks actually has any need for this, and the overwhelming majority of profits in the industry is taken by a company that builds the opposite of Ara, further underscoring the former point. It terms of flushing money down the drain it ranks way up there with Google Glass and Project Loon.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#26

Post by jfoutz »

onli wrote: post #19
jpm_sd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Sorry. Physics. Compared to a lightweight device that fits in your pocket, an IBM PC is huge. Colossal. All the space you could possibly need for modular interconnects, sheet metal sub-chassis-es, proper fasteners, etc. etc. A comparably-modular mobile phone cannot be anything but thick and heavy, unless you would prefer fragile and unusable.

I don't believe that for a minute. While it won't be easy – otherwise Ara would have succeeded already – I don't think we are anywhere near a problem that physics make really infeasible. Where is the physical argument? Where is the formula that says that blocks that size can't stick? You "just" need well defined small intercommunication system for small blocks with one good system that holds it together. If that were…

Think of it this way. You could have one big board with spots to put in upgrades, camera, memory graphics, whatever.

Soldering can get things pretty small, and pretty close together. Home soldering is possible, but requires some tools, and a steady hand. if you want people to solder, you'll probably need to make the connections a little bigger and further apart than what you would need for a nice smt with mask in a shop. Soldering is is also kind of hard to reverse.

Any mechanical fastener is easy to undo, but much more bulky than soldering. i'm thinking little plastic clips, but there are alternatives. in any case, they're going to be bigger.

That leaves maybe some kind of conductive epoxy and a solvent to remove it. that should be pretty comparable to soldering, but seems like it would have the same problems, you'd want bigger surface mount pads.

mechanical fasteners are the way to go, you don't need any (or many) expensive tools to get it right. but mechanical fasteners are big, and that's space that could go to more battery, bigger screen or whatever. further apart means slower bus speed, and probably other problems.

The other options require special tools. So phone plus $200 or whatever for the tools just isn't worth it. (and making the process super reliable for novices isn't easy)

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#27

Post by rtkwe »

wapz wrote: post #22
jpm_sd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Sorry. Physics. Compared to a lightweight device that fits in your pocket, an IBM PC is huge. Colossal. All the space you could possibly need for modular interconnects, sheet metal sub-chassis-es, proper fasteners, etc. etc. A comparably-modular mobile phone cannot be anything but thick and heavy, unless you would prefer fragile and unusable.

I would think a 'modular' phone would have to be one that you could open up and swap out the parts like a pc. You could customize it easily because nothing would be soldered to the board but with onboard ram for boards I don't see how it would be replaceable. The camera lens, speakers, etc should be easily replaceable though.

There's still just not enough space in anything like a modern smart phone to fit all the interconnects to allow that to happen. A laptop sodimm slot is 3-5 mm thick by itself. Also in general you could replace cameras and speakers now they're often their own assemblies or boards.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#28

Post by djsumdog »

jpm_sd wrote: post #12
onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

Nope. Sorry. Physics. Compared to a lightweight device that fits in your pocket, an IBM PC is huge. Colossal. All the space you could possibly need for modular interconnects, sheet metal sub-chassis-es, proper fasteners, etc. etc. A comparably-modular mobile phone cannot be anything but thick and heavy, unless you would prefer fragile and unusable.

That's not what makes a PC. A PC has a bunch of standard hardware, a VGA/VESA interface, a console, a legacy BIOS or newer UEFI.

Android phones have NONE of this. Google could force this. Their "Open Handset Alliance" is not at all open. It's a closed lock in system to keep all their manufactures from ever making Amazon phones.

Google has a vested interested in selling more phones. They could easily require standardization. They could ban binary blobs. They could require all manufactures to make their kernel patches and drivers upstreamable and meet Linux kernel standards. But they don't.

You can take a 32-bit x86 Linux distro from today and run it on an old Pentium. You can take a really old 32-bit distro from years ago and run it on a modern machine (of course very little of the hardware will work, but it should boot in legacy mode...okay, okay it might not boot, but if it does boot you will get a console I/O).

It has nothing to do with the phone and has to do with the fact that ARM is not an architecture. It's a SoC sold to tons of manufactures who all connect whatever they want to onto whatever pins they want to. Yes yes, there are things like Device Tree configs, but name a phone that supports them (no seriously, I'm asking. Are there any? Like I would want to buy/experiment with them if they exist).

Every ARM device seems to have a totally different base image and this isn't maintainable. We need a standard device/IO configuration system so that you can install standard AOSP + drivers onto any phone just like we can with Windows:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#29

Post by sjg007 »

jpm_sd wrote: post #12
onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

Nope. Sorry. Physics. Compared to a lightweight device that fits in your pocket, an IBM PC is huge. Colossal. All the space you could possibly need for modular interconnects, sheet metal sub-chassis-es, proper fasteners, etc. etc. A comparably-modular mobile phone cannot be anything but thick and heavy, unless you would prefer fragile and unusable.

PCs were expensive which created the markets for upgrades and components. Phones are basically disposable.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#30

Post by 21 »

bagrow wrote: post #16
onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

How many smartphone users even know how much RAM they have? Smartphones are eating everything because they just work . Even more than PCs, which are also heavily commoditized these days. It seems like almost everyone thinks of upgrading computers and phones these days the way I would think of upgrading my microwave: by buying a new one. Is this a very western-centric view? Maybe... But it seems like everyone wants th…

Heck, I'm a software developer and I don't really know how much RAM my phone has.
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