Watch the video. This is not the way real humans use technology.
I call it futile not because the idea of hackable modules are a bad idea but because this particular vision of consumers plugging and unplugging bits and pieces is just silly. It will never be a product that people will actually want.
I see parallels with what’s happening on the desktop, with people building custom PCs to suit their needs. Even more so with professional photographers, who switch lenses, filters and flash modules according to the frame they’re trying to capture.
Ara will certainly not be the norm, but I think it will have a sizeable audience when it comes out.
1. First of all, it’s a project that requires buy-in by multiple hardware manufacturers if it’s going to mean anything, which simply isn’t going to happen, because hardware companies don’t do that. They’re disorganised and have little or no ability or motivation to work together. That’s even without taking into account that…
2. Even if the whole idea were technically practical and indistinguishable from a non-modular device, which it won’t be, it goes against the interests of hardware manufacturers to have their devices trivially improvable, or so the current paradigm works anyway. The idea is that you build a solid and exclusive market to which you can sell new versions regularly and/or services/software. It worked incredibly well for Apple and so everyone else is trying it, though they’re kind of limited by the fact that Apple did that when there was really no competitor apart from dumb phones (no, Symbian didn’t count). And also…
3. Modularisation is one of those things that sounds great to some tech folk but nobody else actually gives a shit about, because we live in a world where it’s way easier and often cheaper to just buy a new fully-constructed thing that works better because it’s tightly integrated. Why would I buy a clunky-looking phone just because I can upgrade the memory module when next year, when my phone contract gets renewed, I get a discount on a newer phone model with more memory? The number of people who build their own PCs is minimal even though it’s really cheap and easy because who wants to spend time doing that? Hell, I don’t.
I think we can leave high end professionals and Maker hobbyists out of this. Their needs are always going to be different and niche. Not that many people build their own PCs these days because the prices of built systems has now fallen.
The only other way I could imagine this kind of modularity making sense is if each module was really expensive. If the battery block cost say $500 and the camera component cost $850 or $1850 then you could imagine people wanting to swap bits a pieces out.
This came up as an issue with the high end Apple Watches. If the gold case cost $10,000 could you swap out its innards? Apple’s answer was still No.
With phones, the high level of integration at a low total price point is most of its value proposition. Debundling doesn’t really offer the user enough value to be justified.
Speaking as an electronics engineer, I’ve been facepalming at this project since it was first mooted years ago. It’s a dumb idea for all the reasons Ordinal M. gave. Plus, there is no way you could build a modular phone for even close to the same price as an integrated phone with the same features, not could it be less than at least double the total size.
This is one of those ideas that sounds great in theory, but is stupid in practice, like PC motherboards that can allegedly take CPU upgrades – ever heard of anyone actually upgrading their CPU instead of replacing the whole PC, or at least the mobo? No, neither have I.
This is Winbook but for phones. And if you don’t remember Winbooks, they were Windows laptops from the mid-90s that were user upgradable, including the CPU and “video card”. You didn’t customize a system, you simply bought an empty shell of a laptop and added components, CPU, RAM, hard drive, etc.
That said, I have gone looking in the past for some kind of build-your-own-phone thing; I’d love to make a custom phone the way I want it. But I think the right approach is probably a super slick web based design tool, where you assemble the device you want out of bits, and a custom phone is then produced and shipped to you which is then one largely unmodifiable piece. There’s still enormous problems in making that work, but it seems like it might be more likely to produce something someone actually wants.
Emlyn O’Regan That’s kind of how prototypes are made from chipset reference designs, but you have to know what you’re doing, & it’s extremely expensive.
John Hardy Developer 
Why do you think this is futile, John?
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Watch the video. This is not the way real humans use technology.
I call it futile not because the idea of hackable modules are a bad idea but because this particular vision of consumers plugging and unplugging bits and pieces is just silly. It will never be a product that people will actually want.
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Mobile usability problem no.1: “Where did I leave my phone?”
Now you have ten individual parts to lose.
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I see parallels with what’s happening on the desktop, with people building custom PCs to suit their needs. Even more so with professional photographers, who switch lenses, filters and flash modules according to the frame they’re trying to capture.
Ara will certainly not be the norm, but I think it will have a sizeable audience when it comes out.
LikeLike
I’ll take a stab at that.
1. First of all, it’s a project that requires buy-in by multiple hardware manufacturers if it’s going to mean anything, which simply isn’t going to happen, because hardware companies don’t do that. They’re disorganised and have little or no ability or motivation to work together. That’s even without taking into account that…
2. Even if the whole idea were technically practical and indistinguishable from a non-modular device, which it won’t be, it goes against the interests of hardware manufacturers to have their devices trivially improvable, or so the current paradigm works anyway. The idea is that you build a solid and exclusive market to which you can sell new versions regularly and/or services/software. It worked incredibly well for Apple and so everyone else is trying it, though they’re kind of limited by the fact that Apple did that when there was really no competitor apart from dumb phones (no, Symbian didn’t count). And also…
3. Modularisation is one of those things that sounds great to some tech folk but nobody else actually gives a shit about, because we live in a world where it’s way easier and often cheaper to just buy a new fully-constructed thing that works better because it’s tightly integrated. Why would I buy a clunky-looking phone just because I can upgrade the memory module when next year, when my phone contract gets renewed, I get a discount on a newer phone model with more memory? The number of people who build their own PCs is minimal even though it’s really cheap and easy because who wants to spend time doing that? Hell, I don’t.
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That’s spot on Ordinal M.
I think we can leave high end professionals and Maker hobbyists out of this. Their needs are always going to be different and niche. Not that many people build their own PCs these days because the prices of built systems has now fallen.
The only other way I could imagine this kind of modularity making sense is if each module was really expensive. If the battery block cost say $500 and the camera component cost $850 or $1850 then you could imagine people wanting to swap bits a pieces out.
This came up as an issue with the high end Apple Watches. If the gold case cost $10,000 could you swap out its innards? Apple’s answer was still No.
With phones, the high level of integration at a low total price point is most of its value proposition. Debundling doesn’t really offer the user enough value to be justified.
LikeLike
Speaking as an electronics engineer, I’ve been facepalming at this project since it was first mooted years ago. It’s a dumb idea for all the reasons Ordinal M. gave. Plus, there is no way you could build a modular phone for even close to the same price as an integrated phone with the same features, not could it be less than at least double the total size.
This is one of those ideas that sounds great in theory, but is stupid in practice, like PC motherboards that can allegedly take CPU upgrades – ever heard of anyone actually upgrading their CPU instead of replacing the whole PC, or at least the mobo? No, neither have I.
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This is Winbook but for phones. And if you don’t remember Winbooks, they were Windows laptops from the mid-90s that were user upgradable, including the CPU and “video card”. You didn’t customize a system, you simply bought an empty shell of a laptop and added components, CPU, RAM, hard drive, etc.
LikeLike
Yeah it’s a solution in search of a problem.
That said, I have gone looking in the past for some kind of build-your-own-phone thing; I’d love to make a custom phone the way I want it. But I think the right approach is probably a super slick web based design tool, where you assemble the device you want out of bits, and a custom phone is then produced and shipped to you which is then one largely unmodifiable piece. There’s still enormous problems in making that work, but it seems like it might be more likely to produce something someone actually wants.
LikeLike
Emlyn O’Regan That’s kind of how prototypes are made from chipset reference designs, but you have to know what you’re doing, & it’s extremely expensive.
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OK, haters, remember that everyone also laughed and scoffed when Microsoft introduced the Zune, and when Blackberry introduced the Playbook!
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