Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen

#31

Post by ateev » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 12:20 PM UTC

instead of saying "Why it will never happen", I think we should focus on how will it happen. Thats what hackers do. When DC current was invented by Edison,Everyone believed that current will never be able to cover the whole world because DC current cannot travel long distances. But tesla proved everyone wrong by inventing the AC current. And thats how most of the countries delivers electricity in its remotest areas.

So I can understand this idea is somewhat naive, but an idea can drive the future of the smartphone industry. Its our job to make it happen.

If you need another such story, we have henry ford's V8 engine. If he would have given up, probably we wouldn't have a v8 engine today. here is a link http://iwantanonlinebusiness.com/the-impossible-ford-v8-engi...

Re: Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen

#32

Post by brendanobrien » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 12:22 PM UTC

I disagree with the principle that we should make more things to reduce waste. I'd much rather take the 800$ I'm supposed to spend on buying this phone, and give it to someone trying to repurpose old electronics.

Re: Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen

#33

Post by rcfox » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 12:23 PM UTC

captainmuon wrote: post #13

I don't buy the speed argument. In a modern PC, many things are pluggable. PCI express can transmit up to 30 GB/s, IIRC. Even CPUs and RAM are modular. If there was such a benefit from soldering them together, I'm sure we would be seeing more integrated systems. Furthermore, the modem part of many smartphones is already a black box that is heavily isolated from every other component. It's basically just hooked into a…

> I don't buy the speed argument. In a modern PC, many things are pluggable. PCI express can transmit up to 30 GB/s, IIRC. Even CPUs and RAM are modular. If there was such a benefit from soldering them together, I'm sure we would be seeing more integrated systems.

The issue between the CPU and memory isn't throughput (the vast majority of operations are > Furthermore, the modem part of many smartphones is already a black box that is heavily isolated from every other component. It's basically just hooked into a bus, and connected to microphone, speakers, and antennas, and doesn't necessarily interface that much with the CPU.

This is partially true. The CPU still needs to control the radio, and they're constantly feeding each other data. You might want to send the audio data through a DSP for audio processing. The microphones/speakers will be shared between the two, and probably go through a codec. Also, Qualcomm radios and CPUs are pretty tightly coupled. If you want to do CDMA for the US (they seem to have patents on all of the CDMA tech) then you need to use a QC radio, which means that you need to use a QC processor, a QC codec, ... (Source: I used to work on audio firmware at RIM.)

Re: Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen

#34

Post by noselasd » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 12:23 PM UTC

fridek wrote: post #14

As much as it sounds fun, I very much doubt that industry will adapt it. Look at Android which is open-sourcish, updated frequently and the whole os should be easy to transfer between devices. In reality no one wants to allow people to do that. Older devices are not updated and crappy additional software is installed just for this reason - to make sure people have to buy complete new phone often and to make sure it's…

Exactly, the industry would quite likely resist building such a device - there are very little incentive to do so - they would rather sell you a brand new model.

As with most consumer products, especially electronic devices, there's quite a lot Planned Obsolescence in mobile phones.

Re: Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen

#35

Post by telephonetemp » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 12:31 PM UTC

codeka wrote: post #25

> the stated motivation for this design is to reduce electrical waste. The best way to do that in the short term is to ensure devices are more repairable Right, a replaceable screen and battery and an SD card slot would get you 99% of the features you'd actually want from phonebloks, and it's actually something that would be achievable (if there were demand, which I think is the biggest problem here: there's just no…

Could you standardize how screens are connected?

Re: Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen

#36

Post by philangist » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 12:42 PM UTC

This reminds me very much of what [Bug Labs] (http://buglabs.net/products/blocks) is doing. Building modular hardware components for rapid prototyping and development. Cool stuff.

Re: Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen

#37

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 12:50 PM UTC

noselasd wrote: post #34

fridek wrote: post #14

As much as it sounds fun, I very much doubt that industry will adapt it. Look at Android which is open-sourcish, updated frequently and the whole os should be easy to transfer between devices. In reality no one wants to allow people to do that. Older devices are not updated and crappy additional software is installed just for this reason - to make sure people have to buy complete new phone often and to make sure it's…

Exactly, the industry would quite likely resist building such a device - there are very little incentive to do so - they would rather sell you a brand new model. As with most consumer products, especially electronic devices, there's quite a lot Planned Obsolescence in mobile phones.

[deleted]

Re: Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen

#38

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 12:51 PM UTC

I do not think that this would ever work. If it does, I'll take three.

Re: Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen

#39

Post by JoelSutherland » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 1:09 PM UTC

codeka wrote: post #25

> the stated motivation for this design is to reduce electrical waste. The best way to do that in the short term is to ensure devices are more repairable Right, a replaceable screen and battery and an SD card slot would get you 99% of the features you'd actually want from phonebloks, and it's actually something that would be achievable (if there were demand, which I think is the biggest problem here: there's just no…

Plus encasing every component in its own plastic capsule with high quality metal interconnects won't exactly save materials.

Re: Why Phonebloks Will Never Happen

#40

Post by PeterisP » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 1:17 PM UTC

calibwam wrote: post #20

People are complaining about fragmentation on Android, heck people are even complaining about it on iPhones. How would you develop a good mobile OS with apps on hardware you can't test against? Even if the hardware problems was solved now, I do not think people would be happy to dev against the "platform".

People did just fine developing applications for PC with the huge variety of possible hardware, and for web where target hardware differs in size and power by multiple orders of magnitude.