The Good Parts of Project Ara

[mallenwho]

I feel Linus doesn't fully understand the gravity of how awesome this concept is. This will probably be the last phone you will ever need.

 

These are the reasons why i backed phonebloks and why i back project ara:

 

(reason one is its PRETTY. Customization decals on the phone would look awesome, and with the tile effect, any combo could look awesome. Straight white. Monocolour. Paterns. Anything broken up with aluminium will look sweet. Ok designer fantasies out of the way.)

 

 

- COST - the $50 price is NOT a full phone cost. That is the cost of the metal backbone chassis with wifi antenna. You still have to pay for processor and camera and battery and actual phone antenna. the plan is for google to sell these backbones and have it an open marketplace with industry standards so other companies (nvidia, intel etc) can make their own processors to put in, at different costs. 

That if i want a last gen processor, i can pay $100 for it. If i want a bleeding edge processor. I can pay $400 for it. Exactly the same way the PC market works.

 

- CUSTOMISABILITY - These ports are designed as 2 way data and power ports. Which means you can put a camera on a larger block if you want; it just means you can't put a battery block there and you have to deal with a smaller battery. If you wanted only processor and 15 batteries you could. If you wanted 500gb storage but no battery you could.

 

And so with industry leaders providing different quality and cost blocks, you should be able to get almost whatever you want. Perhaps some overclocking too if they're open standards.

Get a Canon camera on the large block for $500, and then fill up all the medium blocks with batteries

 

Mount it to a quad copter, and put on a gps block, a camera block and an I/O block. Maybe have an entire gopro or quad copter chassis (see below)

 

Each block can have quality and power and you can choose what to focus on like with a desktop. The small DAC might just have a 3.5mm jack, which sticks out a bit or something. The medium one might come out at an angle to fit, have volume rockers and a tinny speaker. The large one has an awesome speaker, volume rockers, and 2 jacks for friends to listen to. You can carry that around with you just in case, then take out your camera temporarily or something.

 

Have 2 camera blocks that are synced HTC 1 m8 style.

 

These are SOME ideas i had off the top of my head. Up to manufacturers to make, not google. they have said they're making the chassis and software. Nothing else.

 

- SWAPABILITY - These blocks are supposed to be designed to be interchangeable between platforms. That when different sized chassis' come out for phablets and full tablets, I can just take my batteries and hard drive and camera from my phone and chuck them on my tablet which is only an extra $150 for the screen and chassis, and use each device when i need it. A tablet isn't always useful, neither is a phone, but having one set of hardware i can use in anything is awesome.

 

What if i put it on a camera chassis with lens mount?

What if i put it on a smartwatch mount which had 2 small slots, with built in processing? so i could choose whether i wanted gps tracking or heartrate monitoring, or battery.

 

- UPGRADEABILITY - saying that there is only one cpu that would fit in it is a bit of a bad statement. This modular system is being approached in exactly the same way as the PC industry is. You can swap out your processor for another one. Except that due to size constraints its going to be a combined CPU/GPU/APU/Motherboard chip. 

 

 

(although with this other concept you might be able to customize within the processing block)

If you look closely there is a locking mechanism on the edge of the slots, so it isn't going to fall out, and with open industry standards it will have as much tinkering potential as any desktop does.

 

- COMPATIABILITY - With the size constraints there is a maximum constraint, but no minimum one. You could put a camera which was 1% larger than the medium slot, but way smaller than a large slot, and if it came with spacer material in the box, then it would fit. That could keep weight down for people who want a 30g phone.

 

Yes you could make it thicker to put more in (see the camera in the background below) and again, that is a size and dimension compromise the consumer is willing to make.

 

 

So yes i think it is aiming for the cheap market, but also the adventurer market, and the fitness nut market, and the tinkerer market, and every single market out there. That is the point of this

 

That is the point of a desktop PC

 

that you can CUSTOMIZE IT depending on whatever you feel like doing at the time.

 

(if someone could link this to linus or luke that would be appreciated. It took a while to write)

((i don't really care if there are typos, but i am interested in discussion =) ))

 

Thank you =)

[Lyons]

I'm really excited that something like this is happening, and I think it's a much needed product, but I really want to see a functional prototype.

[SirRoderick]

The concept has won me over, but I need to see a good and thouroughly flexible implementation before I jump in head first.

[Ivyk]

Wasn't it called "Phoneblocks" or something a while back?

[mallenwho]

Wasn't it called "Phoneblocks" or something a while back?

 

The original concept for the device that went viral within hours, which over a month got 270 million "up-votes" of support - was called - Phonebloks (no c) =P

 

"up-votes' because the guy who published the concept - David Hakkens -Didn't want to kickstart it himself. He was a designer with a concept and had no technical knowledge of phone building or networking (important in a modular phone)

And kickstarting hardware - especially a new market - is bloody hard (see "Oculus Rift")

He put it on a peer sharing network so that big companies to be attracted by millions of people saying they were interested, proving interest in the concept and encouraging them to develop further themselves. 

 

Google and Motorola Picked up the concept with their new "Project Ara" system, which seemed to only be a few months old.

Hakkens became a community go-to person, and Motorola was very keen on the open ended nature of the design process.

 

If this was to truly be a revolutionary modular customizable phone for the masses it needed to be designed by the masses. Project Ara has been running many community based design gathering events over the past 6 months.

 

To everyone else, i believe they do have a working prototype currently, published in the past few weeks, but soon will be releasing a dev kit 1. =D

[chicksoup]

the problem with ara will be the interface between the CPU and all the other parts, because you can't soder it to the motherboard, so there can only be a few pins connecting the CPU with other things. It will be very expensive, atleast for the high end model, because all the seperate enclosures are going to cost a lot to manufacture 

[squirrl]

If there's no keyboard/pad and it's going to be that large then forget it

[DTV998]

Hmm...I was never really so interested in this.....until now!! ;D

[mallenwho]

the problem with ara will be the interface between the CPU and all the other parts, because you can't soder it to the motherboard, so there can only be a few pins connecting the CPU with other things. It will be very expensive, atleast for the high end model, because all the seperate enclosures are going to cost a lot to manufacture 

 

Yes. Enclusures are a large part of the structural issue with this. That so much space needs to be taken up with plastic deviding walls. One reason to have a defined chassis rather than "put them where you please"

 

I imagine that the processing blocks will be just that - entire modules of processing. You wouldn't upgrade a cpu without upgrading a chipset, and because mobile electronics are so small like you said, you'd probably buy one processing block that was the entire brains of the phone. Simplifies a lot of it down. 

Then you just choose the power and quality.

 

Because a phone has a lot more weird and 'custom' hardware than a computer - antennae for things, cameras, vibrators, speakers, jacks, batteries, gyroscopes - all of which take up internal room. You choose what you want that room to be taken up by rather than "hmmmm. which cpu do i want?"