Phoneblocs

maltingsaudio

This is interesting but we'll never see it

http://www.phoneblocs.com/

Myranda

Love the idea - but he explained why it wont happen in the video

It needs companies working together to make the best phone...

Also, people are rushing out to buy a phone that's 1mm thinner than their previous phone. This design will be anything but thin. Will the interface board be able to handle large changes in speed of components? Will it be water resistant? Will the blocks be just far enough appart to fill up with skin and sweat (bluegh)? What about drivers?

I like the idea - but they've not managed to introduce something like this for the Desktop PC which is somewhere that it makes all sorts of sense, or laptops which could make them upgradable in the same league as desktop pcs... Phone component upgrades are a good idea, but introduce them slowly by getting the idea across in more obvious form factors first

Phil_aka_Pip

good idea but I agree it will never happen

VimFuego

I take it this is a planned obsolescence thing? Thing is, planned obsolescence is one of the corner stones of the modern economy.

ddlooping

Very cool but, imho, utopic idea.

frankus

never say never... these kind of leftfield ideas have a habit of being echoed in research departments

Phil_aka_Pip

modularity has never worked in software (not completely anyway) and it certainly won't work with a mixture of software and hardware. There will always be some revision of a component that doesn't work with another revision of another component.

digitalscream

Myranda said:

Love the idea - but he explained why it wont happen in the video

It needs companies working together to make the best phone...

Also, people are rushing out to buy a phone that's 1mm thinner than their previous phone. This design will be anything but thin. Will the interface board be able to handle large changes in speed of components? Will it be water resistant? Will the blocks be just far enough appart to fill up with skin and sweat (bluegh)? What about drivers?

I like the idea - but they've not managed to introduce something like this for the Desktop PC which is somewhere that it makes all sorts of sense, or laptops which could make them upgradable in the same league as desktop pcs... Phone component upgrades are a good idea, but introduce them slowly by getting the idea across in more obvious form factors first

This is exactly what I told someone else when they mentioned it...in fact, I'm convinced they're missing a trick here. We already know that it's possible to make a mobile phone almost as powerful as mid-range computers. So...why not make a modular computer in a phone form factor instead?

Shrinking the desktop (and reducing the power consumption) is the way forward for me. I'd happily pay £300 - £400 for the components to make a decent ARM computer that small.

Myranda

But standards are notoriously difficult to encourage - the EU tried to mandate that all smartphones sold in the EU have a usb micro charger - Apple said "no" so the standard didn't happen - even though all other manufacturers obliged.

But the idea that companies will come together to make a single platform that people don't have to replace every year? Apple would cease to exist under that system... so they wont be in - they'll pitch as a high end gadget... Samsung will compete by doing roughly the same thing but cheaper... then the others will think "if they can do it..." and so the upgradable phone will end up the niche product.

I agree to it being a nice idea... but you have to change the corporate greed mentality... and the consumerism hunger of the whole planet... it's not going to happen in 10-20 years... that's my prediction. Maybe when the resources needed for making mobiles start to run dry, then someone will "invent" the idea again

Sporky

Phil_aka_Pip said:

modularity has never worked in software (not completely anyway) and it certainly won't work with a mixture of software and hardware.

I don't think it's quite as black & white as that. In my industry there are a lot of switching systems that involve buying a frame that handles the backbone and the control systems, and then individual boards that have the input and/or output ports on them. Most of the ones on the market have gone through loads of revisions and updates to add different media support without changing the backbone, and most are very reliable in operation.

It can be done if you have a suitably talented company that is strict enough about the interoperability aspects.

Windows is similar in some respects - it's the kludges needed to make 3rd party stuff work (when that 3rd party stuff isn't fully compliant with the modularity specs) that cause the problems.

digitalscream

Myranda said:

But standards are notoriously difficult to encourage - the EU tried to mandate that all smartphones sold in the EU have a usb micro charger - Apple said "no" so the standard didn't happen - even though all other manufacturers obliged.

But the idea that companies will come together to make a single platform that people don't have to replace every year? Apple would cease to exist under that system... so they wont be in - they'll pitch as a high end gadget... Samsung will compete by doing roughly the same thing but cheaper... then the others will think "if they can do it..." and so the upgradable phone will end up the niche product.

I agree to it being a nice idea... but you have to change the corporate greed mentality... and the consumerism hunger of the whole planet... it's not going to happen in 10-20 years... that's my prediction. Maybe when the resources needed for making mobiles start to run dry, then someone will "invent" the idea again

I'm not talking about the phone market - I agree that it's foolish to try to make a phone with that model.

I'm saying that they should take a sideways step and do it for computers instead. After all, the desktop market has been based on exactly that model for a couple of decades now, and the standards required for interoperation are reasonably stable and mostly forward-compatible.

Really, it comes down to designing a good backplane with fast enough interconnects in the right places. Even better if they're stackable (this would be the perfect situation IMO).

Sporky

digitalscream said:

This is exactly what I told someone else when they mentioned it...in fact, I'm convinced they're missing a trick here. We already know that it's possible to make a mobile phone almost as powerful as mid-range computers. So...why not make a modular computer in a phone form factor instead?

I have something about this in an E&T at home - I can't remember who the manufacturer was, but the idea was that your phone had all the processing power in, and then you had a dock (much like with laptops) that let you access a secondary processor, wired network, extra USB ports and so on.

Ah - found it - Ubuntu Touch.

Myranda

My worry would be functionality... have you looked (and I mean properly looked) at a motherboard lately?

Having just installed an mATX and an mITX PC set up and been a gadget junky I did have a proper look.

There's a LOT on those boards. To create a pin-board style board capable of swapping and exchanging components neatly would take some very VERY clever people being very clever for quite some time.

Someone came up with a nice idea years back that might be capable now (then it was limited more). was a smooth block (lets imagine the size of a mATX motherboard but half an inch thick) then you place your modules on it - and through the magic or wireless charging and wifi type connectivity it just works. As easy as putting a book on a shelf. Wireless comms over the space of a couple of mm could easily be tweaked into the multimulti gb/s bandwidth (802.11ac is capable of 433mb/s per antenna at a distance, so tweak that for contact range...).

Also when smallifying computers heat is a major bum-ache. Big PC cases serve a purpose when it comes to heat, they give lots of space for lots of fans and airflow... if smallified and modular enough for anyone to get their paws on it could be possible that users would place things in such a way that components gently cook each other - or worse corporate users being thick as ham might start trying to remove components while live then wondering why the smoldering CPU in their hands no longer works.

I have for years been wondering when PC upgrades will get as easy as they should be - my inspiration has always been blade style servers - one board dead? slide it out and replace - the same basic set up in a simple (branded if needs be) case covering all those little components from clumsy users for say a GPU or CPU to me seemed logical. No need for screw drivers or taking cases off to upgrade, just grip the handle, pull out the old slot in the new - with my imagined system power supply would be intelligent enough to not kill components or users even if doing it with the system running

maltingsaudio

@myranda the mother board in the phone or a pc could be developed to only carry signal and power if all the clever bits are in the blocs. If you think of it like a multicore then everything you need to get the job done is plugged in at either end

Sporky

What signal though? If you don't allow things like USB and PCI-E access to memory and so on at very high speed then they're not much use. But if you put the processor and everything else all on one bus (which is then directly accessible to the external interfaces) you risk setting up security holes. Witness what's happened with Thunderbolt being hacked...

maltingsaudio

As with a multicore you can have different signals routed to different pieces of equipment. My point was that the actual "motherboard" doesn't need to have any electronics on it just tracks connecting the modules together which in a perfect world then the processor would always be bottom left the speaker top right the battery in the middle ect

Sporky

I don't think that'd be at all efficient - every module would need to have a comprehensive buffering and storage system so that tthey didn't all talk at once.

The whole point of the motherboard is that it co-ordinates all the other components and enables them to get on with their own thing. Taking all the management features off the motherboard just means that every single component needs all those features onboard.

maltingsaudio

Quite frankly I don't know its a technology I'm not that familiar with purely laymans thinking

Myranda

What about some sort of OSI type model? different types of module would be addressable and would only look at their own type of signal through a system of encapsulation

Phil_aka_Pip

and then everyone would be compatible but some would be more compatible than others ...

frankus

Phil_aka_Pip said:

modularity has never worked in software (not completely anyway) and it certainly won't work with a mixture of software and hardware. There will always be some revision of a component that doesn't work with another revision of another component.

it's true I can't play Halo 4 on my ZX Spectrum 48 ... it's got a joystick and everyfink.
:O)