It was silly from the get go, and moronic from engineering standpoint. You don't do that with magnetic blocks. You need standardized sizes for SOC "motherboards", batteries, displays and enclosures, so that you can actually put something together. Tried and proven concept, all that was needed was a new mobile device form factor for it. But noooo, let's use magnetic blocks, because stupidity!
So then what would be the major problem in your opinion?
Also note I did not blame "magnetic connectors" but the "magnetic blocks" as a whole. Were they trying to make a device, or a children's toy?
"this required a lot of efforts in hardware standardization, interconnection, compatibility as well as software support"
BS, more like it only required a form factor standard, which itself incorporates connectors. All the rest apply equally as much to their silly magnetic block concept. However, with actual modular hardware you could have some choice in size and design rather than being stuck with this rectangle with more rectangles on it. And that whole "lot of efforts" would actually have taken a few days tops.
But as I already noted in a comment below, from the looks of it that project was simply not designed to succeed, but to show a "noble effort" while at the same time convince people they are better off with planned obsolescence devices.
I had written up a reply with a lot of my thoughts before I read your post below and realised that you'd already covered most of my own thoughts on the matter.
From my perspective the problem is that a given flagship smartphone costs what it does today because 10 million identical ones are made. All of the hardware and software development is undertaken once and the development costs are amortised over those 10 million devices. Then there is the huge economy of scale when you're ordering parts from suppliers and manufacturing that many of something. In the electronics industry, these discounts can be on the order of low to medium double digit percentages, each time you increase the size of the order by 10x.
A modular smartphone necessarily has connectors that a conventional smartphone doesn't. These introduce additional complexity, size, mass and points of electrical and mechanical failure. It will not be possible to make a modular smartphone down to the same performance, cost, reliability, size and mass as a conventional smartphone. You might hit two of those targets but only by (severely, IMO) compromising the other three, and at that point, I can't see many people being bothered buying one.
I had also written about planned obsolescence, to the effect that you can bet your arse that it will still be a factor! These companies are in the business of continuing to sell you things, after all, and I'm not sure that any conspiracy theories are required there. You'll probably see software compatibility issues between old and new modules, new modules such as CPUs or screens that require more bandwidth or power and thus a new connector, and all manner of other things that are already seen in every other modular system.
"probably see software compatibility issues between old and new modules"
If a 10 year old video card can work on a brand new motherboard I don't see any reason why a future-proof connector can't be created. There is an easy way to do this - allocate the first two pins to initiate a good old serial connection to negotiate the actual connection protocol. Make a module with 40 "pins" and a basic switch fabric, and modules can negotiate pin allocation as needed - pcie, usb, lan, video, whatever. Naturally, even if this is a possibility and not too complex or costly either, you could also get away with something a lot simpler.
"connectors that a conventional smartphone doesn't"
I don't know if you have every taken a phone apart, or at least watched a teardown, but phones have plenty of connectors. And they are not the "sturdy and easy to use" ones either, they are frail things which often break. Conventional phones are VERY MUCH MODULAR, however, the modules are not designed to be interchangeable and are put together in the utmost modification and repair unfriendly ways.
"costs what it does today because 10 million identical ones are made"
Interchangeable standardized modules would make for a MUCH LARGER scale production, as the parts won't be limited to one specific brand and model. It would actually bring down production and design costs significantly. The same module can remain useful for years even in its original form, and furthermore there is the possibility to upgrade the chip only, as many SOCs have proven that it is very much possible to release pin-compatible newer and better models.
"not be possible to make a modular smartphone down to the same performance, cost, reliability, size and mass"
Performance would not be a problem if SOC makers sold their chips freely and without years of delay, for the cost I agree - it will cost a little more, however, as mentioned in the previous post, large scale production will bring production costs lower, cost size and weight would be a little higher, but nothing too severe, a realistic number is 5% for all the three metric. As for reliability - it could be just as good with the right design, plus the option to easily repair and upgrade. And 5% is a very small price to pay, and will be entirely negated by the possibility to easily upgrade and repair the device.
"I had also written about planned obsolescence, to the effect that you can bet your arse that it will still be a factor"
There are two types of planned obsolescence, when a product was designed to be useless after a short time, which IMO is BS, because given a more efficient software infrastructure, a phone can remain perfectly useful for over a decade easy - after all it is a phone, and the second type - which is what is the real problem - when a product was designed to fail after its warranty period is over. That kind of planned obsolescence is usually the product of intentionally bad design, and is something every maker does, more or less. For some makers it is actually quite a lot - such as apple, their engineers put a lot of effort to create weak points that will in time lead to a device failure, and it is being devised not to justify "certified service repair" but a brand new purchase that would otherwise be needless. This kind of behavior would not be a problem with standardized modularity, as the standard itself will enforce quality and durability, and people will have a choice and simply NOT BUY modules which don't stand up to the task.
As you see, you are about 95% wrong and have very little valid point. Which also explains why you bring in "conspiracy theories", as apparently you are one of those people who is being influenced by the "its a conspiracy theory" approach used by many to "refute" their own conspiracies. This kind of a conspiracy doesn't even require for tech corporations to come together to collude and conspire - it is implicit and goes without saying, it makes things very easy and very profitable for them as they well know if people don't have a choice for anything better they will settle for one of the available as bad as it may be (US elections 2016 LOL). They do a lot to maximize their profits, and those profits come out of consumers' pockets. They have just about zero interest to sell affordable flexible and interchangeable modules, which would allow people freedom of choice, upgradeability and repairability, as that would simply slaughter their profits. Many of them "struggle" enough as it is because of their dumb business models. Modular phones are ENTIRELY 100% possible and the design and execution are not all that complex as google's intended failure aims to convince us, and it would be a great thing for all people as well as the environment - we are talking about the whole planet here, but corporations don't care about mankind or the planet, they care about their profits, and they all have a long history of actually phucking up people and the planet deliberately for the sake of profit. Corporations would need to restructure and shift their models and priorities, and the people behind them are dinosaurs long obsolete but refusing to die off. Allowing a modular phone to succeed would be tad amount not to shooting themselves in their leg, but tho shooting their head off. Under the current corporate model that puts profit before everything they are simply not in the position to allow this, much less to make it themselves. And they have the manufacturing complex and the patents in their hands, so they can easily prevent anyone from doing it.
So now that you are faced with a logical cause-effect chain, you are down to insinuating things to bring my judgement into question? Keep up the great job you are doing...
ddriver, I know "hardware standardization, interconnection, compatibility as well as software support" takes a few days tops for you and your 5.25" hard drive because you're a one man team doing everything from googling about hard drives to posting comments about hard drives and showing aggression when people call you a "chronic bullshitter" (skills that take ages to master).
But when it comes to building any kind of modular system in which many manufacturers are involved things get "a little" more complicated. Their people simply don't have the engineering, management and negotiation skills that you have so it takes just a little bit longer for everyone to agree on the standard and actually turn it into something marketable.
Maybe you should submit your CV. I'm sure they can't ignore your kind of genius.
Yep, take it from a broken record. You do know your stuff LOL. Let me guess, "close" stands for "close minded", right? How very suiting.
Standardization is only an issue when it involves standard committees made of competing interest corporations. Such committees are known to be extremely slow to produce extremely poor standards, as their primarily task is for each to pull things in his own direction. And in the end the standard is in favor of their companies, not the consumer. Standard committees have ruined more than a few great things. Coming up with something as simple as a reusable form factor for mobile devices is quite literally a few days of work, and most of that would be refinement, not "figuring it out". It is actually an extremely simple problem compared to the stuff I deal with on daily basis.
Join google? Or any of the big greedy corporations? Don't make me laugh, there is a fundamental rift between my mindset and their so called "aspirations". They will never be willing to execute my ideas, as those will put them out of business, my ideas are all in the best interest of the consumer. As a matter of fact I have already refused a seven digit offer for one of my projects, and will never sell out at any price, because the only reason for them to want it is to drive it into the ground, because those relics know it is something they simply cannot compete with. There is not a single large corporations which can be trusted with or deserves my ideas. They have already ruined so many great things, including the vision of Nikola Tesla - probably the smartest person in human history. Only a compete fool will fail to learn from the past.
It is finny how you keep advising others to "not bother" with me, yet you keep bothering, and only to spew out the same silly stuff. And of course it makes sense that when you are silly, smart things will sound meaningless to you, because you are oblivious to their meaning. You wouldn't know smart if you hit your face in it. I will actually take you up on the "do not bother" advice, as you, poor soul, have time after time proven to be the intellectual equal of a parrot. Cherish this last generous gesture of pity for you and good luck with being complacent subservient dummy ;)
@boozed, don't bother dude. You should have known you're dealing with a "basement-expert" when he said that for such a modular phone concept "hardware standardization, interconnection, compatibility as well as software support" takes "a few days tops".
This coming from a guy (yes, I will just say it again here ddriver) who says he invented a 5.25" hard drive (probably also took a few days tops) but the big manufacturers don't use it because it's all a conspiracy to keep capacities down and prices up.
This should put in perspective his wall of text of meaningless "I sound smart" rants.
It is also a problem of information asymmetry and time discounting. Quality can be difficult to observe pre-purchase, and there is uncertainty about the technological lifetime of a given product, so it is hard for consumers and manufacturers to converge on an agreed level of quality at a fair price. Competing manufacturers would find it easy to undercut the offer, offering worse products for a lower price.
Thus it seems we have found an equilibrium of shitty products that last or are supported for two maybe three years.
Some of us are entirely unsurprised but I can't believe the amount of euphoria that this idea generates every time it's suggested, especially among the STEM crowd (presumably the target audience) who should know better.
Right. Before the the days of the SoCs, we are already discussing integration of components for better costs and size in PC components.
The Project Ara could have its niche though in industries requiring sensors and portable devices for their work where they can easily swap or upgrade sensors.
Anyone with any consumer product design sense knew from the get-go that this was doomed.
I'm not sure that it was ever more than an expensive PR effort pandering to fools/experts who were certain that the smartphone market would develop like the then much smaller personal computer market had, decades before.
Anything from anyone who gave Aria favorable coverage should be viewed with suspicion.
On my desk right now there's a Raspberry Pi with a 5" touchscreen and wi-fi dongle and there's a USB battery that can power it for 5.5 hours. It's way too thick for now, but I'd bet that a PC-like, smartphone-sized hardware system will be coming in the future. But in the form of a small PC rather than a phone, although it could presumably emulate a phone if given a 4G+SIM add-on.
The big problem is parts cost. Big players do a lot of integration and their expenses are very low, but I doubt they would be willing to sell those parts to consumers without actual devices with fat profit margins.
A standalone GSM + GPS module alone would set you back 50$, and not only is it too bulky to begin with, but it will be terribly dated and slow 2G. It would cost YOU 50$ to get a bulky slow and outdated modem alone, it costs them 10$ to make an entire SOC with CPU memory and blazing newgen modem in it.
Of course, it could be done, but for obvious reasons it will not be done - the industry is too greedy and lousy, and it doesn't care about people having freedom, options and future proof products, the industry is all about trapping people, making them dependent, giving them no choice other than to be milked. The only choice you might end up having is to select your milker. But the option to not get milked is not even on the table.
They hold all the cards, they make the chips, and even if some smaller yet capable enough company strays from the pack and begins making and selling decent integrated solutions, they will use patent trolling to destroy it.
I hear you about Apple and Google having no incentive to do this.
Not so gloomy about parts - I can see 4G USB dongles online for $40 although not with GPS by the look of it.
This would be helped if the next generation of ultra-SFF PCs tried to get the whole motherboard to sit behind a 5" touchscreen for example (and use those sockets where RAM and small daughterboard modules sit parallel to the mainboard and push into place sideways). The Pi is already smaller than that but low performance; compute sticks are also small enough but slightly the wrong shape.
Smartphone companies would have trouble suing over that, because it's just a smaller implementation of the PC. They might try to sue over ideas in the touchscreen GUI software I guess, but other companies have got around that and implemented similar systems before. The 4G module is really the only difficult part remaining, since companies are already making 5" diagonal USB powerpacks.
The way I see it, you can already get a really small device for pretty cheap, with Bluetooth peripherals. You can hack the device to run Linux, and then you've basically got something Pi-like. The most important reason is that today's CPUs tend to fit into anything, and the smallest one is generally powerful enough to run Linux and a web browser. We've reached the point of offering $9 computers.
Why should they. M$ charges 500$ to replace the batteries of a surface pro, why should they throw away that money for your convenience? Today people don't even really own the devices they purchase, the maker "lets them use" those devices in ways that they seem fit, which is usually something that brings more money into their pockets.
It is a sad, sad thing that nowadays people use their devices FAR LESS than they are being used through their devices by corporations.
Why should they? Because they want my business. As it stands, there's no way I'm buying a lap top with a removable battery. Unless it's cheap as crap and I plan to throw it away in two years. But I'm not rich.
Their game is simple - they are all practically colluding, as long as they all offer the same garbage, people will have no other option but to buy it, because there is nothing better. And it is a good deal for them as well, as this way they make far more profit than they would on more open, durable, upgradable and easy to fix devices. They will still get your business anyway.
Those devices are slimmer and feel much more sturdy. I agree that replaceable batteries are good (my Note II battery died after two years, but I just swapped in another), but market forces are the real driver in this case. People want the thin, good-feeling devices. There *are* devices with replaceable batteries, and people aren't buying very many of them.
the reason we have PC and smartphone and tablet etc. the way they are is that decreasing node size (and the cost of getting to each node) means more function can be integrated (and must be to recoup the cost) into a chip. once the industry figures out that the asymptote as really, really flattened out, only then will modularity return as cost effective. we're still in the monopoly wins mode.
many of the comments say that this was a stupid idea and was doomed to failure from the beginning. And in one sense they are right. But I think google learned a lot from the project on how things should work. A lot of google project never gain a lot of traction and die but i love google's attitude of trying to make it work instead of just lying down and saying the world is flat.
With the amount of resources at their disposal, it is pretty much an epic embarrassment. Of course, this assumes they actually intended to succeed, but given the course they took, it is far more logical that they intended it to fail, which would achieve plenty in their interest - show all the gullible individuals such as yourself that they are trying, and at the same time convince the world in the infeasibility of the very notion, which plays in the interest of the industry google is a part of. Just in case you missed - google ain't there to do anyone favors, their sole goal is profit. Surely, as every other corporation, they put on a mask and a play to convince people of their noble aspirations, but in reality they are just as rotten as every other corporation, the only thing that varies is the ability to mask it out.
You got it backwards. They trying to make it work was like trying to prove the world is flat.
LG and Motorola both have a very limited modular system. Existing systems allow you to upgrade storage too. Ara was trying to create a PC, with busses and such, but required much more robust HW.
I feel this is a great concept, but tricky to implement. Also, the cost of the modules may not be worth the part by part upgrade too. LG tried with the G5, but clearly was not well received.
Well that sucks. I've been holding out on getting a new phone until I could get something that might last more than a couple of years. I guess my options now are either PuzzlePhone or FairPhone, both of which are sadly too underpowered for my wishes.
As is the performance of my current Xperia Z2. It's perfectly "fine". But it definitely isn't fast - to the degree that its starting to bother me - and its battery is starting to show its age somewhat. And for heavier tasks, like opening large documents, that I'm needing more and more, it's barely usable. Also, its camera is laughably bad by today's standards, and its storage is abysmally slow.
What I want: A phone that performs well by today's standards, that is easily repairable, and that - in perhaps two or three years - lets me swap in a faster SoC, a new camera module, and probably a new battery. For now, the closest thing available is the FairPhone (checks two out of three boxes, and entirely conflict and slave labor free to boot!), but it uses the same SoC as my Z2. No dice.
I've always felt the idea behind Ara would have been better suited to laptops/tablets/AIOs (not of the ultra-thin variety, though.)
I mean, who wouldn't like the ability to easily swap/upgrade the screen, or keyboard, or speakers, or port panel(s), or touchpad, or motherboard/CPU or GPU or memory or storage - without having to disassemble half the machine and sweating bullets about potential compatibility problems in case the upgrade is even possible in the first place?
Granted, a company like Google is less likely to lead on that than, say, Intel. But then again, Google has ventured into PC space with Chromebooks already - so why not try to push further and continue disrupting the status quo?
This makes a lot more sense for tablets especially, but I think they could get away with simply allowing a GPU, storage, and memory swap. Make the screen and body one piece. With the form factor you don't have to worry as much about the bulk.
Maybe one other reason for cancelling was that the growth factor for the smartphone market is currently quite flat. Probably we are not far from the "good enough" state of current desktop and notebook markets? Also, this modular approach never really succeeded in notebooks (comparing with desktops), so why would succeed in smartphones where more technological barriers should be passed?
"this modular approach never really succeeded in notebooks" -- ???
I don't know if it was ever even tried. There's a modicum of modularity with most laptops allowing you to upgrade/replace memory and some drives. And yes, some laptop makers had modular bays where you could swap an extra battery for an optical drive or a hard drive or some such. But -- all these solutions were always proprietary, with total vendor lock-in; nobody ever tried to create a common standard or a robust ecosystem around them.
And beyond/besides all that, has there ever been a laptop that allowed you to upgrade/replace the screen? Or the keyboard? Or the network controller or WiFi radio or the webcam or the fingerprint reader, etc? (For instance, the fingerprint reader on my current laptop is really flaky, but I like all the other components... well mostly. I'd sure like to be able to replace the fingerprint reader with a better one -- but the monolithic design precludes such a possibility.)
Working for a manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, I was mindful of the physical and electronic limitations they'd be presented with, however, I had hoped that if anyone's money could do it - Google's could.
The engineers milked this project for all it was worth. They should send a gift basket to whoever cooked up those slick CG renders though. That gave them at minimum +1 year on the doomed project as uber geeks diddled to the images.
Top misstep: the shoddy real life modules with rainbows and golden retrievers printed on them...
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zepi - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
Anyone with any electrical engineering competence knew from the get-go that this was doomed.Regardless, I'm pretty sure they figured out the smartphone HW business via cheaper way than MS. $7.2 billion so wasted...
ddriver - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
It was silly from the get go, and moronic from engineering standpoint. You don't do that with magnetic blocks. You need standardized sizes for SOC "motherboards", batteries, displays and enclosures, so that you can actually put something together. Tried and proven concept, all that was needed was a new mobile device form factor for it. But noooo, let's use magnetic blocks, because stupidity!boozed - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
I'm not sure the choice of magnetic connectors is the only (or even the major) problem with this idea...ddriver - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
So then what would be the major problem in your opinion?Also note I did not blame "magnetic connectors" but the "magnetic blocks" as a whole. Were they trying to make a device, or a children's toy?
"this required a lot of efforts in hardware standardization, interconnection, compatibility as well as software support"
BS, more like it only required a form factor standard, which itself incorporates connectors. All the rest apply equally as much to their silly magnetic block concept. However, with actual modular hardware you could have some choice in size and design rather than being stuck with this rectangle with more rectangles on it. And that whole "lot of efforts" would actually have taken a few days tops.
But as I already noted in a comment below, from the looks of it that project was simply not designed to succeed, but to show a "noble effort" while at the same time convince people they are better off with planned obsolescence devices.
boozed - Saturday, September 3, 2016 - link
I had written up a reply with a lot of my thoughts before I read your post below and realised that you'd already covered most of my own thoughts on the matter.From my perspective the problem is that a given flagship smartphone costs what it does today because 10 million identical ones are made. All of the hardware and software development is undertaken once and the development costs are amortised over those 10 million devices. Then there is the huge economy of scale when you're ordering parts from suppliers and manufacturing that many of something. In the electronics industry, these discounts can be on the order of low to medium double digit percentages, each time you increase the size of the order by 10x.
A modular smartphone necessarily has connectors that a conventional smartphone doesn't. These introduce additional complexity, size, mass and points of electrical and mechanical failure. It will not be possible to make a modular smartphone down to the same performance, cost, reliability, size and mass as a conventional smartphone. You might hit two of those targets but only by (severely, IMO) compromising the other three, and at that point, I can't see many people being bothered buying one.
I had also written about planned obsolescence, to the effect that you can bet your arse that it will still be a factor! These companies are in the business of continuing to sell you things, after all, and I'm not sure that any conspiracy theories are required there. You'll probably see software compatibility issues between old and new modules, new modules such as CPUs or screens that require more bandwidth or power and thus a new connector, and all manner of other things that are already seen in every other modular system.
ddriver - Saturday, September 3, 2016 - link
BS.
"probably see software compatibility issues between old and new modules"
If a 10 year old video card can work on a brand new motherboard I don't see any reason why a future-proof connector can't be created. There is an easy way to do this - allocate the first two pins to initiate a good old serial connection to negotiate the actual connection protocol. Make a module with 40 "pins" and a basic switch fabric, and modules can negotiate pin allocation as needed - pcie, usb, lan, video, whatever. Naturally, even if this is a possibility and not too complex or costly either, you could also get away with something a lot simpler.
"connectors that a conventional smartphone doesn't"
I don't know if you have every taken a phone apart, or at least watched a teardown, but phones have plenty of connectors. And they are not the "sturdy and easy to use" ones either, they are frail things which often break. Conventional phones are VERY MUCH MODULAR, however, the modules are not designed to be interchangeable and are put together in the utmost modification and repair unfriendly ways.
"costs what it does today because 10 million identical ones are made"
Interchangeable standardized modules would make for a MUCH LARGER scale production, as the parts won't be limited to one specific brand and model. It would actually bring down production and design costs significantly. The same module can remain useful for years even in its original form, and furthermore there is the possibility to upgrade the chip only, as many SOCs have proven that it is very much possible to release pin-compatible newer and better models.
"not be possible to make a modular smartphone down to the same performance, cost, reliability, size and mass"
Performance would not be a problem if SOC makers sold their chips freely and without years of delay, for the cost I agree - it will cost a little more, however, as mentioned in the previous post, large scale production will bring production costs lower, cost size and weight would be a little higher, but nothing too severe, a realistic number is 5% for all the three metric. As for reliability - it could be just as good with the right design, plus the option to easily repair and upgrade. And 5% is a very small price to pay, and will be entirely negated by the possibility to easily upgrade and repair the device.
"I had also written about planned obsolescence, to the effect that you can bet your arse that it will still be a factor"
There are two types of planned obsolescence, when a product was designed to be useless after a short time, which IMO is BS, because given a more efficient software infrastructure, a phone can remain perfectly useful for over a decade easy - after all it is a phone, and the second type - which is what is the real problem - when a product was designed to fail after its warranty period is over. That kind of planned obsolescence is usually the product of intentionally bad design, and is something every maker does, more or less. For some makers it is actually quite a lot - such as apple, their engineers put a lot of effort to create weak points that will in time lead to a device failure, and it is being devised not to justify "certified service repair" but a brand new purchase that would otherwise be needless. This kind of behavior would not be a problem with standardized modularity, as the standard itself will enforce quality and durability, and people will have a choice and simply NOT BUY modules which don't stand up to the task.
As you see, you are about 95% wrong and have very little valid point. Which also explains why you bring in "conspiracy theories", as apparently you are one of those people who is being influenced by the "its a conspiracy theory" approach used by many to "refute" their own conspiracies. This kind of a conspiracy doesn't even require for tech corporations to come together to collude and conspire - it is implicit and goes without saying, it makes things very easy and very profitable for them as they well know if people don't have a choice for anything better they will settle for one of the available as bad as it may be (US elections 2016 LOL). They do a lot to maximize their profits, and those profits come out of consumers' pockets. They have just about zero interest to sell affordable flexible and interchangeable modules, which would allow people freedom of choice, upgradeability and repairability, as that would simply slaughter their profits. Many of them "struggle" enough as it is because of their dumb business models. Modular phones are ENTIRELY 100% possible and the design and execution are not all that complex as google's intended failure aims to convince us, and it would be a great thing for all people as well as the environment - we are talking about the whole planet here, but corporations don't care about mankind or the planet, they care about their profits, and they all have a long history of actually phucking up people and the planet deliberately for the sake of profit. Corporations would need to restructure and shift their models and priorities, and the people behind them are dinosaurs long obsolete but refusing to die off. Allowing a modular phone to succeed would be tad amount not to shooting themselves in their leg, but tho shooting their head off. Under the current corporate model that puts profit before everything they are simply not in the position to allow this, much less to make it themselves. And they have the manufacturing complex and the patents in their hands, so they can easily prevent anyone from doing it.
boozed - Saturday, September 3, 2016 - link
You need to take a step back and a deep breath.ddriver - Saturday, September 3, 2016 - link
So now that you are faced with a logical cause-effect chain, you are down to insinuating things to bring my judgement into question? Keep up the great job you are doing...close - Monday, September 5, 2016 - link
ddriver, I know "hardware standardization, interconnection, compatibility as well as software support" takes a few days tops for you and your 5.25" hard drive because you're a one man team doing everything from googling about hard drives to posting comments about hard drives and showing aggression when people call you a "chronic bullshitter" (skills that take ages to master).But when it comes to building any kind of modular system in which many manufacturers are involved things get "a little" more complicated. Their people simply don't have the engineering, management and negotiation skills that you have so it takes just a little bit longer for everyone to agree on the standard and actually turn it into something marketable.
Maybe you should submit your CV. I'm sure they can't ignore your kind of genius.
ddriver - Monday, September 5, 2016 - link
Yep, take it from a broken record. You do know your stuff LOL. Let me guess, "close" stands for "close minded", right? How very suiting.Standardization is only an issue when it involves standard committees made of competing interest corporations. Such committees are known to be extremely slow to produce extremely poor standards, as their primarily task is for each to pull things in his own direction. And in the end the standard is in favor of their companies, not the consumer. Standard committees have ruined more than a few great things. Coming up with something as simple as a reusable form factor for mobile devices is quite literally a few days of work, and most of that would be refinement, not "figuring it out". It is actually an extremely simple problem compared to the stuff I deal with on daily basis.
Join google? Or any of the big greedy corporations? Don't make me laugh, there is a fundamental rift between my mindset and their so called "aspirations". They will never be willing to execute my ideas, as those will put them out of business, my ideas are all in the best interest of the consumer. As a matter of fact I have already refused a seven digit offer for one of my projects, and will never sell out at any price, because the only reason for them to want it is to drive it into the ground, because those relics know it is something they simply cannot compete with. There is not a single large corporations which can be trusted with or deserves my ideas. They have already ruined so many great things, including the vision of Nikola Tesla - probably the smartest person in human history. Only a compete fool will fail to learn from the past.
It is finny how you keep advising others to "not bother" with me, yet you keep bothering, and only to spew out the same silly stuff. And of course it makes sense that when you are silly, smart things will sound meaningless to you, because you are oblivious to their meaning. You wouldn't know smart if you hit your face in it. I will actually take you up on the "do not bother" advice, as you, poor soul, have time after time proven to be the intellectual equal of a parrot. Cherish this last generous gesture of pity for you and good luck with being complacent subservient dummy ;)
Impulses - Monday, September 5, 2016 - link
Wow... Just wow.close - Monday, September 5, 2016 - link
@boozed, don't bother dude. You should have known you're dealing with a "basement-expert" when he said that for such a modular phone concept "hardware standardization, interconnection, compatibility as well as software support" takes "a few days tops".This coming from a guy (yes, I will just say it again here ddriver) who says he invented a 5.25" hard drive (probably also took a few days tops) but the big manufacturers don't use it because it's all a conspiracy to keep capacities down and prices up.
This should put in perspective his wall of text of meaningless "I sound smart" rants.
Klug4Pres - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link
Pretty much.It is also a problem of information asymmetry and time discounting. Quality can be difficult to observe pre-purchase, and there is uncertainty about the technological lifetime of a given product, so it is hard for consumers and manufacturers to converge on an agreed level of quality at a fair price. Competing manufacturers would find it easy to undercut the offer, offering worse products for a lower price.
Thus it seems we have found an equilibrium of shitty products that last or are supported for two maybe three years.
boozed - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
Some of us are entirely unsurprised but I can't believe the amount of euphoria that this idea generates every time it's suggested, especially among the STEM crowd (presumably the target audience) who should know better.zodiacfml - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link
Right. Before the the days of the SoCs, we are already discussing integration of components for better costs and size in PC components.The Project Ara could have its niche though in industries requiring sensors and portable devices for their work where they can easily swap or upgrade sensors.
mkozakewich - Tuesday, September 6, 2016 - link
The better idea would be to stay away from the $700 flagships and go for $200-$300 phones that improve all their features every three years.Buying cheaper tends to limit you to functionally-older technology, but that just means my new 5mm $200 device is roughly the power of an iPhone 5.
easp - Tuesday, September 6, 2016 - link
Anyone with any consumer product design sense knew from the get-go that this was doomed.I'm not sure that it was ever more than an expensive PR effort pandering to fools/experts who were certain that the smartphone market would develop like the then much smaller personal computer market had, decades before.
Anything from anyone who gave Aria favorable coverage should be viewed with suspicion.
stephenbrooks - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
On my desk right now there's a Raspberry Pi with a 5" touchscreen and wi-fi dongle and there's a USB battery that can power it for 5.5 hours. It's way too thick for now, but I'd bet that a PC-like, smartphone-sized hardware system will be coming in the future. But in the form of a small PC rather than a phone, although it could presumably emulate a phone if given a 4G+SIM add-on.ddriver - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
The big problem is parts cost. Big players do a lot of integration and their expenses are very low, but I doubt they would be willing to sell those parts to consumers without actual devices with fat profit margins.A standalone GSM + GPS module alone would set you back 50$, and not only is it too bulky to begin with, but it will be terribly dated and slow 2G. It would cost YOU 50$ to get a bulky slow and outdated modem alone, it costs them 10$ to make an entire SOC with CPU memory and blazing newgen modem in it.
Of course, it could be done, but for obvious reasons it will not be done - the industry is too greedy and lousy, and it doesn't care about people having freedom, options and future proof products, the industry is all about trapping people, making them dependent, giving them no choice other than to be milked. The only choice you might end up having is to select your milker. But the option to not get milked is not even on the table.
They hold all the cards, they make the chips, and even if some smaller yet capable enough company strays from the pack and begins making and selling decent integrated solutions, they will use patent trolling to destroy it.
stephenbrooks - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
I hear you about Apple and Google having no incentive to do this.Not so gloomy about parts - I can see 4G USB dongles online for $40 although not with GPS by the look of it.
This would be helped if the next generation of ultra-SFF PCs tried to get the whole motherboard to sit behind a 5" touchscreen for example (and use those sockets where RAM and small daughterboard modules sit parallel to the mainboard and push into place sideways). The Pi is already smaller than that but low performance; compute sticks are also small enough but slightly the wrong shape.
Smartphone companies would have trouble suing over that, because it's just a smaller implementation of the PC. They might try to sue over ideas in the touchscreen GUI software I guess, but other companies have got around that and implemented similar systems before. The 4G module is really the only difficult part remaining, since companies are already making 5" diagonal USB powerpacks.
mkozakewich - Tuesday, September 6, 2016 - link
The way I see it, you can already get a really small device for pretty cheap, with Bluetooth peripherals. You can hack the device to run Linux, and then you've basically got something Pi-like.The most important reason is that today's CPUs tend to fit into anything, and the smallest one is generally powerful enough to run Linux and a web browser. We've reached the point of offering $9 computers.
basket687 - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
At least give us smartphones with removable batteries, I am OK with that level of modularity.lilmoe - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
It's kind of sad that we've reached this point really...ddriver - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
Why should they. M$ charges 500$ to replace the batteries of a surface pro, why should they throw away that money for your convenience? Today people don't even really own the devices they purchase, the maker "lets them use" those devices in ways that they seem fit, which is usually something that brings more money into their pockets.It is a sad, sad thing that nowadays people use their devices FAR LESS than they are being used through their devices by corporations.
The True Morbus - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
Why should they? Because they want my business. As it stands, there's no way I'm buying a lap top with a removable battery. Unless it's cheap as crap and I plan to throw it away in two years. But I'm not rich.ddriver - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
Their game is simple - they are all practically colluding, as long as they all offer the same garbage, people will have no other option but to buy it, because there is nothing better. And it is a good deal for them as well, as this way they make far more profit than they would on more open, durable, upgradable and easy to fix devices. They will still get your business anyway.mkozakewich - Tuesday, September 6, 2016 - link
Those devices are slimmer and feel much more sturdy. I agree that replaceable batteries are good (my Note II battery died after two years, but I just swapped in another), but market forces are the real driver in this case. People want the thin, good-feeling devices. There *are* devices with replaceable batteries, and people aren't buying very many of them.Tams80 - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
It's ironic though, that for example Samsung could have saved itself a lot of money if only they had used a replaceable battery...FunBunny2 - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
the reason we have PC and smartphone and tablet etc. the way they are is that decreasing node size (and the cost of getting to each node) means more function can be integrated (and must be to recoup the cost) into a chip. once the industry figures out that the asymptote as really, really flattened out, only then will modularity return as cost effective. we're still in the monopoly wins mode.jtgmerk - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
many of the comments say that this was a stupid idea and was doomed to failure from the beginning. And in one sense they are right. But I think google learned a lot from the project on how things should work. A lot of google project never gain a lot of traction and die but i love google's attitude of trying to make it work instead of just lying down and saying the world is flat.ddriver - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
With the amount of resources at their disposal, it is pretty much an epic embarrassment. Of course, this assumes they actually intended to succeed, but given the course they took, it is far more logical that they intended it to fail, which would achieve plenty in their interest - show all the gullible individuals such as yourself that they are trying, and at the same time convince the world in the infeasibility of the very notion, which plays in the interest of the industry google is a part of. Just in case you missed - google ain't there to do anyone favors, their sole goal is profit. Surely, as every other corporation, they put on a mask and a play to convince people of their noble aspirations, but in reality they are just as rotten as every other corporation, the only thing that varies is the ability to mask it out.michael2k - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link
You got it backwards. They trying to make it work was like trying to prove the world is flat.LG and Motorola both have a very limited modular system. Existing systems allow you to upgrade storage too. Ara was trying to create a PC, with busses and such, but required much more robust HW.
watzupken - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
I feel this is a great concept, but tricky to implement. Also, the cost of the modules may not be worth the part by part upgrade too. LG tried with the G5, but clearly was not well received.phoenix_rizzen - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link
Big problem with the G5 is the requirement to power of the device in order to swap modules.Vlad_Da_Great - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
Nexus is next. You heard it here first.phoenix_rizzen - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link
No, it's been reported on several sites already. :) Nexus is dead, long live Pixel!Valantar - Saturday, September 3, 2016 - link
Well that sucks. I've been holding out on getting a new phone until I could get something that might last more than a couple of years. I guess my options now are either PuzzlePhone or FairPhone, both of which are sadly too underpowered for my wishes.michael2k - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link
Um, iPhones regularly last for several years. The performance of the 5S, released in 2013, is still fine now and will likely still be fine in 2017.Valantar - Tuesday, September 6, 2016 - link
As is the performance of my current Xperia Z2. It's perfectly "fine". But it definitely isn't fast - to the degree that its starting to bother me - and its battery is starting to show its age somewhat. And for heavier tasks, like opening large documents, that I'm needing more and more, it's barely usable. Also, its camera is laughably bad by today's standards, and its storage is abysmally slow.What I want: A phone that performs well by today's standards, that is easily repairable, and that - in perhaps two or three years - lets me swap in a faster SoC, a new camera module, and probably a new battery. For now, the closest thing available is the FairPhone (checks two out of three boxes, and entirely conflict and slave labor free to boot!), but it uses the same SoC as my Z2. No dice.
ruthan - Saturday, September 3, 2016 - link
Hmm so only modular and flexible device is non still pc, maybe we could have pc so small, that it could be used as phone..boeush - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link
I've always felt the idea behind Ara would have been better suited to laptops/tablets/AIOs (not of the ultra-thin variety, though.)I mean, who wouldn't like the ability to easily swap/upgrade the screen, or keyboard, or speakers, or port panel(s), or touchpad, or motherboard/CPU or GPU or memory or storage - without having to disassemble half the machine and sweating bullets about potential compatibility problems in case the upgrade is even possible in the first place?
Granted, a company like Google is less likely to lead on that than, say, Intel. But then again, Google has ventured into PC space with Chromebooks already - so why not try to push further and continue disrupting the status quo?
fanofanand - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link
This makes a lot more sense for tablets especially, but I think they could get away with simply allowing a GPU, storage, and memory swap. Make the screen and body one piece. With the form factor you don't have to worry as much about the bulk.sweetca - Sunday, September 4, 2016 - link
Weird. Google starts a project and subsequently abandons it.Mugur - Monday, September 5, 2016 - link
Maybe one other reason for cancelling was that the growth factor for the smartphone market is currently quite flat. Probably we are not far from the "good enough" state of current desktop and notebook markets? Also, this modular approach never really succeeded in notebooks (comparing with desktops), so why would succeed in smartphones where more technological barriers should be passed?boeush - Monday, September 5, 2016 - link
"this modular approach never really succeeded in notebooks" -- ???I don't know if it was ever even tried. There's a modicum of modularity with most laptops allowing you to upgrade/replace memory and some drives. And yes, some laptop makers had modular bays where you could swap an extra battery for an optical drive or a hard drive or some such. But -- all these solutions were always proprietary, with total vendor lock-in; nobody ever tried to create a common standard or a robust ecosystem around them.
And beyond/besides all that, has there ever been a laptop that allowed you to upgrade/replace the screen? Or the keyboard? Or the network controller or WiFi radio or the webcam or the fingerprint reader, etc? (For instance, the fingerprint reader on my current laptop is really flaky, but I like all the other components... well mostly. I'd sure like to be able to replace the fingerprint reader with a better one -- but the monolithic design precludes such a possibility.)
Notmyusualid - Monday, September 5, 2016 - link
Very sad news indeed.Working for a manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, I was mindful of the physical and electronic limitations they'd be presented with, however, I had hoped that if anyone's money could do it - Google's could.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, September 6, 2016 - link
I'm not even remotely surprised the project's dead, but it would have been cool...KoolAidMan1 - Wednesday, September 7, 2016 - link
Google kills product, shocking.Gunbuster - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
The engineers milked this project for all it was worth. They should send a gift basket to whoever cooked up those slick CG renders though. That gave them at minimum +1 year on the doomed project as uber geeks diddled to the images.Top misstep: the shoddy real life modules with rainbows and golden retrievers printed on them...
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