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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

#51

Post by WalterBright »

femto wrote: post #32
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…

Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? After a few years, it becomes a cascade of dependencies: Can't upgrade memory because the old motherboard won't support state of the art DIMMs, the bus used by current cards (ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIx) doesn't match the motherboard, power supply connector has different number of pins, an…

> Did the upgradeable PC ever really work,

It did in the early days (the first 10 years). These days, the mobo, CPU, ram, power supply, graphics card all seem to need to be a matched set.

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

#52

Post by zaphar »

grizzles wrote: post #18
zaphar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is really boggling to the mind are how people think they can know the motivations of people they haven't met or talked with because, "it's obvious" or something.

I've both met and talked with Sergey Brin. It's not like it's an everyday occurrence but it's happened. So, what's your problem? It shouldn't need to be said but this is totally OT, because the parent comment is 100% my opinion.

The phrasing was dogmatic in tone. It may be your opinion but it was presented as fact.

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

#53

Post by flukus »

idreyn wrote: post #46

From a layman's perspective, it sounds like they shot themselves in the foot somewhat by taking modularity to a logical extreme — building a highly generalizable bus system that would support connections of any kind of component on any part of the device. I wonder what gains would come from relaxing that requirement, so a certain sector is always reserved for a camera, another for a battery, etc, one for each compone…

That's what these guys are trying to do: https://shop.fairphone.com/en/

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

#54

Post by throwaway91111 »

WalterBright wrote: post #51
femto wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? After a few years, it becomes a cascade of dependencies: Can't upgrade memory because the old motherboard won't support state of the art DIMMs, the bus used by current cards (ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIx) doesn't match the motherboard, power supply connector has different number of pins, an…

> Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, It did in the early days (the first 10 years). These days, the mobo, CPU, ram, power supply, graphics card all seem to need to be a matched set.

You've been active through the transition. Care to speculate why?

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

#55

Post by kchoudhu »

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…

Who made cash from the IBM PC moment, though? It certainly wasn't IBM.

Why would a privately owned company like Google seek to emulate this behavior?

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

#56

Post by nrp »

swsieber wrote: post #35
femto wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? After a few years, it becomes a cascade of dependencies: Can't upgrade memory because the old motherboard won't support state of the art DIMMs, the bus used by current cards (ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIx) doesn't match the motherboard, power supply connector has different number of pins, an…

The boon wasn't that consumers could customize their computers - it was that competitors could easy compete on individual parts because of the standardization.

There are equivalents in smartphones. MIPI standards like D-PHY and C-PHY and DSI and CSI on top of those ensure compatibility of cameras and displays in a way there is significant competition among suppliers there, and wide range of options for handset makers. JEDEC similarly does so for DRAM and Flash. Unlike the IBM PC era, the mechanical interfaces aren't standardized due to the desire for deeper physical integration for miniaturization, but the electrical interfaces and protocols still are.

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

#57

Post by alphakappa »

flukus wrote: post #45
serge2k wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just like the PC ate up the homecomputers Ever increasingly cheap and plentiful clones made computers finally cheap enough for anyone to own? Phones are already way beyond that point. > where if a user needs more ram he would just add more, if he needs a new processor he would just replace the current, if he needs a higher resolution display the old just would get replaced. Why would I ever want to deal with that?…

> Why would I ever want to deal with that? Because it's cheaper and easier than throwing out a phone and getting a new one. Phones could less 10 years with ad hoc upgrades instead of 2. I'd love to have been able to take my galaxy nexus (best phone ever) and add more ram and a faster processor.

It's possible that people get bored of their devices well before the devices stop functioning.

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

#58

Post by bsder »

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…

> To this day, it still boggles my mind that Intel won't sell an open handset.

Because you would be asking Intel to trade the enormous margins of x86 for the minuscule margins of ARM.

Seriously. Intel fabs already operate at almost 100% capacity. There is zero incentive to play in the ARM space if you are Intel.

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

#59

Post by nine_k »

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…

In a PC, you have plenty of room for interconnect. A system board can easily dedicate 25% of the area to PCI slots, and another 25% to CPU and RAM slots. A typical chassis has plenty of empty space, for air cooling if for nothing else.

A phone has nearly zero empty space. It has to be very compact, especially thin, it has to have a large battery, a large screen, and powerful chips. Also consider things like antennas, microphones, speakers, usb and headphone connectors that cannot be made smaller than physics and standards dictate.

A phone has no room for connectors between major components that would be remotely convenient for the user. Many connectors, is placed in accessible ways, would also work against mechanical strength. Good connectors that won't break after 2-3 reconfigurations, aren't cheap. Thus a phone with connectors will need to be significantly larger and heavier, and also costlier.

The PC argument does not work with mobile devices. At best, major components, like radio interfaces board, or a screen, or a battery can be made standardized and user-replaceable, likely requiring tools and skill. Batteries are easiest, but even these are far from standardized, and there are little incentive for manufacturers to work towards this. Users are content with glued-in batteries anyway.

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

#60

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Apocryphon wrote: post #9
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…

Maybe Intel and Samsung could finally do something with the Tizen Association?

I feel like Samsung has been hedging their bets on this for a long time. Before Google struck a patent deal with them that also included some other capitulations, Samsung was heavily working on replacing Google apps with their own products and services. And they recently bought the Viv assistant, from the original creators of Siri. Given Google's terms likely forbid OEMs from setting a default voice assistant other than Google's, it seems like an almost nonsensical purchase unless they want to be ready to leave Google.
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