News - Motorola to work on a modular hardware smartphone system

[HEXUS]

‘Project Ara’ will take the ‘Phonebloks’ concept and community under its wing.

Read more.

[Biscuit]

Well this is certainly interesting. I saw the project and didnt see anything coming of it, someone like motorola behind it and it could have a chance if its executed well.

[killer7xx]

Cool concept but I bet it'll be very expensive compared to off the shelf options.

[Lucio]

I think market traction could be quite difficult to achieve when the majority is used to purchasing phones on contract, instead of outright.

[cheesemp]

I'll be surprised if they can get it working well but really like the idea. Imagine being able to remove the camera and microSD card slot and replace with an extra battery when travelling, or sticking a bigger storage block on when space gets tight. Biggest issues will be drivers and mechanics (don't want your CPU block falling out in the middle of a call!).

[Voidflakes]

"Motorola’s hardware designs look a lot like the Phonebloks efforts we had seen previously, because they probably stole the idea directly, and left the original designer to rot."

[cheesemp]

"Motorola’s hardware designs look a lot like the Phonebloks efforts we had seen previously, because they probably stole the idea directly, and left the original designer to rot."

Did you even read the article?

"The official Motorola Blog says that Motorola has been working on ‘Project Ara’ for over a year and recently met with Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks. Both companies want to make this modular system work and the engineering resources of Motorola and the almost million-strong community supporting Phonebloks will work together to give this project a great start. From now on, says Motorola, its development work on Project Ara will be in the open and it will be tailored and refined with help of the Phonebloks community. A Module Developer’s Kit (MDK) containing all module developers need to know will be released this winter."

[DemonHighwayman]

It's nice to see this idea gaining some traction. I look forward to the day I can start building my own phone.

[circuitmonkey]

I think I've just decided what my wife's new phone will be...

My old one!

[AETAaAS]

Kinda curious what the outcome will be. I like the modular idea, but the interconnects and modular design itself take up precious space, so I am guessing that a normal phone of equivalent size would be better in a wide range of aspects simply because it can be more tightly packed with goodies.

If however, there comes a 6+ inch 'hyper nutter' edition with massive expandability, I will be all over it.

[crossy]

Kinda curious what the outcome will be. I like the modular idea, but the interconnects and modular design itself take up precious space, so I am guessing that a normal phone of equivalent size would be better in a wide range of aspects simply because it can be more tightly packed with goodies.

Ah, but I'm pretty sure that there's quite a few here who'd be happy to "give up" the fashionable thinness of their smartphone in exchange for some flexibility - even if that flexibility was limited to having more battery capacity.

If however, there comes a 6+ inch 'hyper nutter' edition with massive expandability, I will be all over it.

Hmm, put me down for a 10" tablet edition.

Now what would be really neat was if someone other than Motorola took this up. I'm thinking particularly of third party alternative blocks to the standard ones. And if another manufacturer - e.g. Samsung or HTC - was to also get into the game then we'd have the possibility of being able to perhaps make a phone up from the best-of-breed modules. E.g. a basic Motorole phone with an uSD block, Sony camera module and extended battery.

An interesting concept, and one I'd like to see do very well. However, I suspect that the black-box approach will continue to be the vast majority.

[Gerrard]

I really like the idea but have the same concern. I think the overhead for making it modular on a small device would mean there would be very little advantage. For example, you might be able to remove the camera and leave room for a bigger battery, but could find a "normal" phone that had the same size battery and can still fit a camera in the same size. Even just customising a processor for battery vs power would probably be better as a software mod. There could be some merit when upgrading your phone it parts but would still probably be better off selling/recycling your old one and getting a whole new one.

[Animus404]

I'd rather have this concept applied to tablets and laptops.

[Biscuit]

I really like the idea but have the same concern. I think the overhead for making it modular on a small device would mean there would be very little advantage. For example, you might be able to remove the camera and leave room for a bigger battery, but could find a "normal" phone that had the same size battery and can still fit a camera in the same size. Even just customising a processor for battery vs power would probably be better as a software mod. There could be some merit when upgrading your phone it parts but would still probably be better off selling/recycling your old one and getting a whole new one.

Think about the evironment though

[circuitmonkey]

I thought a community like this would have been all over this idea, being able to upgrade your phone's components as and when something new comes out rather than having to wait until your contract expires?
Add to that your not left with a draw full of old phones or having a perfectly good phone ruined by one component that's sub par (Think camera in nexus 4)

I'm not so fussed with the size of a phone, my motto has always been if it fits in my hand and pocket then it's the right size.

[crossy]

I'd rather have this concept applied to tablets and laptops.

Tablets are just big phones, so I can see the justification for having a "Lego" one - after all I did say to AETAaAS that I'd like a 10" tablet edition!

Laptops on the other hand, I'm a bit confused about. Surely if you buy a proper laptop - so that's nothing from Acer and no Ultrabooks - then you've got some options:
o Batteries can be replaced with bigger alternatives;
o Memory can be expanded;
o "Spinning rust" HDD's can be replaced with larger/faster ones or even SSD's;
o Some laptops even have modular discrete graphics cards that can, in theory, be replaced/upgraded too;
o Some (older?) laptops use modular network features - so you can replace an old 802.11b unit with an 802.11n one;
o You USED to be able to replace processors, but I'd suggest that you're looking at something only attempted by hardcore hardware junkies, and even then, your options are limited.

Maybe it's just my nostalgia but I'm sure it was easier to get into laptops in the olden days - modern ones definitely seem to be heading towards the "sealed black box" system of design. Certainly your "consumer" ones (the kind you get from PC World, Curry's, Tesco, etc) are sealed and really it's only the "Pro" models that let you pop the hood and fiddle.

Two of the three laptops here have had memory, disk and network upgrades, and the remaining one hasn't been fiddled with only because it's a fairly modern laptop and also because it's still under warranty. As soon as it's out of warranty then I'm thinking that it's 1TB HDD will get replaced with an SSD - faster and saving battery.