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So, Dave Hakkens (the dude who created the original Phonebloks campaign in September 2013) wrote a letter this week. "When the F**K is Phonebloks Ready??" https://davehakkens.nl/news/modular-phone-2016/ I'll remind you all a bit as to what Phonebloks proposed: A completely modular smartphone, developed not by one company but as an open marketplace. It would expand and individualise the hardware of the smartphone to the needs of the user, and reduce e-waste by making it possible to only replace the obselete/broken parts, not the whole phone. Hakkens points out that communication in that campaign wasn't perfect. He was proposing an idea TO the tech companies, with the hope that they may take that onboard. It wasn't a Kickstarter to fund a final project (even if all 270 MILLION people who signed on to the first campaign had "funded" it, it would not have been enough). It wasn't a promise to a product coming in 6 months. It was a loose concept, that it would have been really great for someone to take on board. And they did. Google, as the biggest boy in the house, made it a high priority project of Google X Labs to get this thing, then called Project Ara. Hakkens was taken under Google's wing as a Consumer Relations Manager. It was a complete realisation of Hakken's idea, that Google wasn't interested in the hardware so much as the marketplace, and they already had the largest names like Kodak and sennheiser developing modules, from their developer conferences. It would cost $50, and would be aesthetically customisable too, with swappable backplates for every module (supporting 3d printing) and by late 2014 it looked like they had an working prototype ready for their planned market launch in 2015. Well, 2015 came and gone. Originally planned to be launched in Q1, it was then delayed to Q4. It was then delayed again. Turns out, this thing is complicated (read my other posts for how that technology came about) and perhaps they were over ambitious thinking they could develop the whole thing in 14 months. News from the Ara Team: They're not promising any more dates, but the whole team is still working at full steam to make it a reality (here's hoping for late 2016). Meanwhile Other kickstarters have launched their own takes on the idea. We've had the Puzzlefone, Which comes in 3 or 4 modules, so nowhere near as customisable as Ara would be. Those modules are also proprietary, meaning we rely on the resources of a small kickstarted campaign to make as many modules as we would need. Otherwise, it is just a more fixable phone. The Fairphone was another. Also kickstarted, also proprietary. BUT THEN, THERE'S THIS Announcing the LG G5 - And Friends - A Flagship Modular Smartphone The modules look promising A camera extension bump, for more classic SLR control and grip. A second camera, for better camera, or for different camera (wide angle? normal camera? low light?) A stronger louder better speaker block. A 360 degree camera A (not directly connected) little ball robot thing. Taran would LOVE it! This is as literal as hotswap battery has ever been. It's like reloading a gun now! Replacable home buttons and USB port too, because they're coming off as well. If you swap out many modules frequently, you'll never break one because each is connected to its modular block. "Always on Screen", so the contrast of an OLED; but it isn't an OLED. Shame, because LG makes some of the best in the industry. But it isn't all rosey and peaches. Yes, this is the launch video for one of the largest phone brands, and their modular stuffs. On the other hand, this is probably the exhaustive list as to what we'll see from them (think of how well they maintain android updates, eh?) It is still proprietary, and it is merely something to expand the hardware functionality. It does nothing to eliminate e-waste. It is going to be just as hard to repair this phone, perhaps even harder. And these blocks aren't the "add 15 batteries in the same thing for the power user. Remove all of them and replace them with a gps system and a drone mount for fancy drone control and camera" This is just the "add a large speaker at your party because why not"? They're gimicky. They sell the modularity as another way to "replace battery", compared to the traditional style of pulling off the back cover. Much of the video focuses on the non-replacable phone stuff anyway. But it is a step in the right direction by the big companies, two and a half years after Hakkens originally proposed what the future of smartphones would be. And we are heading there.
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Phonebloks/Project Ara had their second developers conference last week - well, two of them. One in San Fransisco (for the American companies designing components as well as the core Ara team) and one in Singapore (for Asia-based electronics and camera manufacturers - the guys making all the android hardware) The phones now have 3G reception built into the chassis and Google has shifted their electropermanence magnets to the chassis rather than locating them on the block. It also appears they have adjusted the arrangement of the pins of their main connecting sockets, compared to Spiral 1 design: (Spiral 1, back in mid-2014) (Spiral 2) As you can see their main goals for "spiral 3" (dev kit 3) are. They include RF performance (radio frequency) which is used for, well, phone calls. will Google shift the phone antenna to the chassis too?? aannd.. the market pilot is Puerto Rico. Time for me to move to Puerto Rico! =D Meanwhile, some of the block parters All of the medical recording and measuring instrumentation ever. Glucose levels, ph levels, water detector, as little tabs installed in modules, be it disposable or not. Sennheiser. Making everything. They have their own sub-blog on the primary phonebloks blog and are the most active module developer. They have been asking community suggestions and designs for the "ultimate sound blok" and three primary things have come up. whether they can put all three in one block or whether they have three different bloks for different folks it remains to be seen. 1) have a super high quality best-of-the-best DAC AMP sound stuffs for all of the audiophiles. 2) have 2 3.5mm jacks, for shared listening, or for higher bandwidth throughput, or for stereo mic recording for an actually usable recording for journalism or publication. 3) some sort of wireless tethering to headphones the likes of yet we haven't yet seen before. I am a bit disappointed no speaker block, that we may need a second block for a speaker block because there will be no room left on the primary block. Innolux is developing (at least the first) screens for Ara. The Screen shown here is a 4.5" "HD" (720p) display, although then audio cut out so we don't know the rest of the specs. It looks great though. And ha;f the appeal of Project Ara is the ease of swapping particularly the screen were it to break. You pay bulk discount price for just the screen replacement, which you replace yourself in 10 minutes. Toshiba, making cameras. There is a flat 2mp camera for anyone not really into that and wanting to save money. Then there are 5mp and 13mp cameras (with a second sensor. Maybe a flash. maybe a light sensor. whatever it was the 5mp did not have it) for those more photographically incined, both with sizable bumps because the camera can't extend through the width of the phone. I'm still waiting for a psuedo SLR compatible mount sensor for full size lenses for actual pro photography off a phone, loosing the viewfinder obviously but that's it. I find it interesting that the representative mentioned these are "Reference Designs". Excellent! Asus and Gigabyte Aftermarket Camera designs, right??! =D It seems Google is planning to release a base model "grey phone" for $50 with Screen *(720p) Or (480p) 4.5 inches Processor *(1 or 2 core) 1.2GHz Battery 1800Mah Memory *(4GB or 8GB) WiFi (WiFi calls only) - (Cell radio optional) Operating System: Android 5.x Lollipop - Google Ara build Ram 1GB but then obviously upgradable with third party stuff of everything. So a great phone for the masses, the people who just don't care/need functionality and a phone for the tinkerers. And Google is going to facilitate a Google Play-like store for module trading. That will REALLY help with certification and moderation of blocks. Overall a ton of great design and engineering gone into what seem to be already very capable and functional blocks, that would make a great smartphone. That with this chassis, when new blocks roll around in 2016 or even 2020, the capabilities of the phone will continue to change for the good. EDIT: Solidenergy is developing battery tech for ara. The company, started in 2012 has developed an anode tech that is half the size (twice the density) as current gen models. That should be ready to go Q1 2016 http://blog.phonebloks.com/post/109873051733/project-ara-will-use-a-revolutionary-battery
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http://blog.phonebloks.com/post/100084027488/blocks-a-modular-smartwatch-by-hakeem-javaid David Hakkens recently switched ploy rather than advocating for a modular smartphone, to advocating any tech company to any capacity to develop any modular consumer electronics device. This is the first that caught his (and my) eye. Just like Project Ara this is the Desktop PC marketplace on a wearable. It will allow consumers to choose their price and what features of the device they want to spend their money on. it also allows for greater combustibility and upgrading potential - a major selling point for desktop PCs, yes? - And of course sustainability and all. Wearables more so than any other catagory given they're still juvinile so a generation barely lasts a year, sometimes 6 months. A more stable market would be very beneficial in the long run. Hakeem Javaid and his now 16 person team have been developing a modular smartwatch concept for Intel's 'Make It Wearable challenge'. Their design has been shortlisted to ten so has been granted $50,000 funding and access to Intel's latest mobile processors. The design is very simple and straightforward. The blocks interconnect through a standard audio/3.5mm jack where the band is the blocks. Many watches have metal bands of connected segments and this is an inspired way of interconnecting the technology and modules into the design without making things too tiny. In other words, It's project ara without the chassis but on your wrist! Promotional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1dB4LzIVSU The problem with all of this is that we may end up with too many different standards. We may end up with a smartphone modular market, a tablet modular market, an SLR modular market, a watch modular market and a glasses modular market. While this marketplace is self growing and sustaining when the big players like Sennheiser and ASUS get into play, they won't develop for 15 small platforms. We need to make sure as an international community that only a handful of standards are developed to cover all bases. Perhaps project ara is applied to all consumer electronics (phones, tablets, SLRs, drones, fridges) and this (or something similar) becomes all wearables (that have a different agenda and design requirement). Two or three standards are ok, 15 is not.
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Last week Project Ara had their MDC (Module Developers Conference) and showed off a lot of the hardware behind how Project Ara is going to work. http://www.tested.com/tech/smartphones/460765-tested-explains-how-googles-project-ara-smartphone-works/ Because Project Ara is designed to be a modular smartphone, Google does not want to control this market with an iron fist. They want to make it an open marketplace with open standards like the PC market. This MDC was to give hardware manufacturers the specifications on how to make modules for the phone. Therefore specs of size, connector location and type, how the blocks are held together, and even the manufacturing process that Google is trying to implement. All very exciting. (replacing a broken screen is as easy as yanking it off and buying a new one - while the phone's still turned on!) To start with, Google does indeed have a working prototype of the Ara Phone. So it is possible to work. The $50 (actually 'Sub $100') price tag "for what [Google] calls a basic "grey" phone includes $15 for the Endo [Chassis], $15 for the display, $5 for a battery, $10 for the main Application Processor module[AP] [small SSD for OS storage, CPU and RAM on one chip, where the entire chip is interchangeable but within you can't keep the cpu while changing the ram], and $5 for a Wi-Fi unit". This does aim at the cheap phone market, but you could chuck out all of that and build a baller enthusiasts phone with awesome hardware for $1500. Its possible. Parents buy kid a basic grey phone when they're 7, and every year get something new for it. Age 8, an HD display, age 9, better camera, age 10, more storage, etc. Or you could buy just an Endo Frame for really cheap and customize from there from a marketplace of different manufacturers. (The stock AP module. Other companies (like Intel or Nvidia) could make their own if they wanted to) The other slots can be filled with whatever you want, and are interchangeable. If you're a cloud user but 2 weeks battery life, you can ditch the hard drive and have all battery modules. You can have no battery if you're always charging it, and just get a wireless charging port and then awesome speakers and camera and such. Position of all the components can be wherever (with restrictions on physical size of course) as the connecting pins are the same on every slot. Another thing is that if you had a tiny camera thing, the manufacturer could put in lightweight spacer material to fill in the module (lightweight phone) or they could but in some storage to save all the photos to, depending on what they decided. Depth is not an issue so long as users are ok with chunkier phones, but that is a user decision. The connection is though a 10 pin port. where pins 1 and 2 are power and ground, and the other 8 pins are 2 way data transfer (or more power if its a battery) depending on what the hardware manufacturer decides. The bandwidth should keep the Ara phone moderately future proofed. The interface can handle 10gb/s for most modules, and 20gb/s on the larger ones. So even an ethernet port block could transmit at close to full speed for quite some time. This connection allows the modules to talk to each other through a very basic low level firmware, so communication between camera and gyroscope and microphone could be a thing for augmented reality creating devices for the "FPS game where you map out a location first" software thing Linus seems interested in. The Endo also contains a small battery designed for hot swapping. It can keep the stock AP block powered for a few minutes while swapping battery blocks out when one dies, giving this phone essentially unlimited battery life. That's built into the frame of the phone, on top of all the other batteries that could be chucked everywhere (around the screen, next to the camera, around a wifi block, essentially anywhere where the PCB and components of a block don't fill up the whole thing.) Hopefully the things that made the PC marketplace great a decade ago with all sorts of graphics cards and hard drives and CPUs for different audiences and prices will make this phone great too. Next thing was the attachment method. Many people have wondered whether blocks will just fall out if you're not careful, or whether they need screws or latches or are one way or something. Nope. They're held in place with "Electropermanent Magnets" (EPMs) Essentially electromagnets that don't loose their charge when powered off. I don;t know the strength of these magnets, or how you release them when you want to remove blocks (maybe they just make it stiff to release and you can tug it free), but they will hold stuff in place when you don't want it to move. Theft could be interesting though. Rather than stealing phones, people might start stealing blocks... (cross section of how a block will be built. all the layers for every block as well as the Endo Frame will make this phone thicker than current, but its a price to pay for modularity.) (conceptual idea for the 3D printer. Not yet built but should be fully built and tested by this time next year for full scale production) Finally, Google announced their production method for the Ara Phone. 3D Printing. Google has teamed up with 3D Systems and asked them to design a mass production 3D printer for the backs of modules, as well as potentially the entire module (now that we can 3D print PCBs and electronics) It will work by having a more or less stationary head while the work moves underneath along a conveyor belt, slowly being built as it goes along. The slow part of most 3D printers is that the head makes a line, it then lifts up and moves back to the start to make another line. If you could have heads always applying stuff, and have multiple heads applying different colours or shapes at the same time, you could 3D print anything REALLY FAST. This allows for customization of the back of the phone. Choose colour or even get a photo there. Depending on end cost and size, it also allows Google to have production anywhere in the world. If demand is high in Germany, just put a Printer in Germany to save on shipping. (examples of what designs you could have on your phone. The plastic backs are removable to put on other modules when you buy them.) Really exciting stuff. Even if Google decides to NOT build Ara Phones (which i doubt they will this far along) they still have all the tech they have now developed - the Electropermanent Magnets, the 10 pin interface with 10 gigabit transfer speeds as well as power, the 3D printer... Looking forward to April next year! =D I covered a week ago the differences in what Linus talked about in the WAN show with what's actually happening with Project Ara, thought i'd clear up some misinformation that was going around. Link to my other topic here: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/142942-the-good-parts-of-project-ara/#entry1908417
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Hey guys, one of my friends introduced me to phonebloks, a phone that uses interchangeable parts not very different from a PC. If something breaks, you can replace the part (block) instead of replacing the whole device. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/phoneblok-a-tonic-for-the-iphones-planned-obsolescence here the article i checked out. Personally, I think the idea is cool. It could introduce some competition via individual components which could benefit the consumer. On the other hand, I feel like there are too many iphone zombies to ever embrace an idea like this. I'm more curious about what you guys think!
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There was a discussion on the WAN show and it seemed like Linus was pretty dismissive of modular phones except for the low end. However, I would point out to him he featured a bulky modded Galaxy Note 2 awhile back with a massive battery and an SD (not microSD but real SD) adapter. Also I personally know few people who wouldn't mind a big phone as long as they could carry it around. Not to mention the number of people I see using phones with cracked/shattered screens. I think a modular phone could be a low, mid, and high end device. Enough about what I think what does the LTT forum think about modular smart phones?
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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 =)
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