101–107 of 107 posts
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>Here's a hypothetical: we already know how to do noisy, shared-media device interconnects. It's called 802.11. And leaking all of your secret data in the process.
Nope. Not more than they do now. Look, the point isn't the specific protocol, the point is that it's possible .
> 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…
A replaceable battery, SD card and easily replaceable screens were all features of phones available more than 5 years ago, yet these features disappeared because the iPhone showed that most consumers don't value those features over a sleek integrated lifestyle product. Besides all points mentioned already, I just can't think of a way to protect the pin-connection from wear in daily use without adding an additional sh…
Actually, at the time when the shift to non-replaceable battery happened the alternatives had significantly worse software, which easily overtook any benefit from a replaceable battery, but also means that it means little in terms of estimated consumer expectations for a single hardware feature.
To get actual information we would need Apple to produce a device that's pretty much identical to the iPhone with the only differences being whatever's necessary to achieve battery replaceability.
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The core problem is basic math: X+Y > X. (For positive values, of course.) Modern phones are marvels of stripping away everything not completely necessary, with the result that they're the size they are. Adding modularity means adding enclosures around the modules, which adds size and weight - and for something as small as a phone, practical physical limits of enclosures add up to a non-trivial increase in size. Sepa…
I totally take your point about the tradeoff, but that's the point, isn't it? For the people who don't fit into the "customers who prefer more performance" bucket (for instance), or any of the other buckets that can be served by a modular approach, where do they turn? How do we get there from here? It's at least worth looking at the map.
All that said, methinks here IS a market for a very well made dumb phone. Anyone carrying an iPad everywhere doesn't need an equal but smaller iPhone, just something like an iPhone nano (makes calls, great ecosystem integration, refined UI, and nothing else).
> 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…
> > 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 > (if there were demand, which I think is the biggest problem here: there's just no demand for this from the majority of consumers) I'm old enough to remember people treating their phone less carefully towards the end of the contract, so that they "had the excuse"…
You'd think that pedestrian everyday uses like beer cans would use many many orders of magnitude more aluminum...
It's also an appearence issue. Most women I know tend to choose their phone by its looks. Phonebloks would not appeal to most of them ("I see the screws!") and thus it is not a very marketable phone.
Yeah, sure, it's only women who choose a phone on looks.
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It's gonna be more expensive, bigger, slower, and have a smaller battery life. What's in it to like? For less than the price of the modular version, you can get a non-modular one with all the functionality included.
> ..with all functionality included Well, except for the modularity. And 'more expensive' is debatable over time, since the user should get away with replacing only parts for a while and competition, standardization and partial reuse of components could result in lower prices over time. Functionality is also debatable, over time. Since bloks users can (ideally) replace a small part to upgrade to NFC, while regular ph…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ..with all functionality included Well, except for the modularity. And 'more expensive' is debatable over time, since the user should get away with replacing only parts for a while and competition, standardization and partial reuse of components could result in lower prices over time. Functionality is also debatable, over time. Since bloks users can (ideally) replace a small part to upgrade to NFC, while regular ph…
That is a great example of why this idea is completely infeasible. You can't replace a small component to get NFC. NFC requires a large antenna (think roughly the size of a credit card). That has RF implications with other emitters ont he device (BT, Wifi, LTE). Also, all the RF modules in a PhoneBloks phone would require individual shielding to pass regulatory compliance (since the phone will never be tested as a wh…