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On September 13 2013 23:39 plgElwood wrote: Thats how phones are made today, they choose componets print a circuit board to hook em up and make either a samsung or lg or iphone case around it.
Making phones with changeable components... And then suddenly you need extra circuits/connections in "base". Or the new gen of memory needs other bus. Fact od the matter, companies want you to throw away your phone after 2 years. It has to become obsolete so they can keep producing phones. Also they want you to throw away the complete phone if one component is faulty, to sell a new one. Thats how it is. If you want to change itm make a company yourself and get it to work, dont complain about the other´s success with throwaway electronics.
In the end this is no different from how PCs have worked for ages. Sure, you can tweak your old PC a bit by swapping in a bigger HDD, plug in more memory or buy a faster CPU or graphics card. However, for a serious upgrade you need a new mainboard, which means you need to replace about 90% of the expensive things inside (and in some cases the case/PSU as well). You could extend the life of your PC, but you'd still end up buying a new one every 5 years or so.
Phone technology is moving faster, so your phone is outdated after 2 years. You may be able to stretch that with such a modular approach, but it won't stretch that far either; especially as it'll be less optimized than it is now due to the modular approach (compare the way an iMac and iOS can get away with lower clockspeeds than a PC can, because everything is optimized to run on THAT hardware and nothing else).
And that's assuming you can get the major manufacturers to agree to something like this in the first place.
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As a designer, id like to know if they are taking care with phone's planned obsolescence ????
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time.
Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor who might also rely on planned obsolescence.
For an industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging purchasers to buy sooner if they still want a functioning product. Planned obsolescence is common in many different products, including wheeled can openers, screws, ear protectors, sunglasses, headphones, shoes, book bindings, automobile batteries, and bicycle tires.
There is however the potential backlash of consumers who learn that the manufacturer invested money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers might turn to a producer (if any exists) that offers a more durable alternative. Estimates of planned obsolescence can influence a company's decisions about product engineering. Therefore, the company can use the least expensive components that satisfy product lifetime projections. Such decisions are part of a broader discipline known as value engineering.
Text from Wikkipedia
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sounds great but cant happen because everyone wants ur $$$. When the company buys all of the gear to make a phone . .(a fucking lot) they realise that over time they can make that phone for barely anything at all and charge us through the fucking nose . . .and sell millions of them. Their whole set up would have cost a few million. A fucking load of millions - a few million = loads of millions left over. (revenue-costs=profit for you business guys out there!)I however think this concept is excellent and just how i want it . . . . im so sad my brain is way too optimistic for the human race and live in the hope one day money wont be the root of all the evil
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I can't wait for Project Ara to succeed so people can understand fundamental problems behind this "design".
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another issue that hasn't been mentioned is the thermal issue using only passive cooling (no fan). With such an enclosed area, hardware design and optimization are an important part of the phones design. How thick of a phone are you willing to carry?
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Yea this is a bad idea for so many reasons, even if they make it and it becomes popular it'll never be as good as the latest samsung galaxy or nexus or w/e
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On November 02 2013 05:22 StatixEx wrote: sounds great but cant happen because everyone wants ur $$$. When the company buys all of the gear to make a phone . .(a fucking lot) they realise that over time they can make that phone for barely anything at all and charge us through the fucking nose . . .and sell millions of them. Their whole set up would have cost a few million. A fucking load of millions - a few million = loads of millions left over. (revenue-costs=profit for you business guys out there!)I however think this concept is excellent and just how i want it . . . . im so sad my brain is way too optimistic for the human race and live in the hope one day money wont be the root of all the evil Money is a sign of poverty.
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On November 02 2013 05:22 StatixEx wrote: sounds great but cant happen because everyone wants ur $$$. When the company buys all of the gear to make a phone . .(a fucking lot) they realise that over time they can make that phone for barely anything at all and charge us through the fucking nose . . .and sell millions of them. Their whole set up would have cost a few million. A fucking load of millions - a few million = loads of millions left over. (revenue-costs=profit for you business guys out there!)I however think this concept is excellent and just how i want it . . . . im so sad my brain is way too optimistic for the human race and live in the hope one day money wont be the root of all the evil
In theory if a company is making you pay through the nose then another company will seek to perform a better service for less, thereby taking all of the former company's customers and forcing them to offer a fair deal. The only thing that could really prevent this is if the costs to start up a company are prohibitively high and you need a strong manufacturing base to really make it work. I think that's really the problem, the market just doesn't "self-correct". Like in Canada Bell and Rogers basically own all the high-speed networks and maintain them...no one can really do much else except buy the leftovers because starting up their own network is expensive and way too time consuming.
Don't worry though people will have enough of it eventually and things will get better. It'll probably be some simple common sense government policies like what I've been reading in the US politics thread . After all that its not really money that's evil; we just need to learn how to create a healthy competitive model
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United States22883 Posts
On November 02 2013 04:55 QUECOSA wrote: As a designer, id like to know if they are taking care with phone's planned obsolescence ????
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time.
Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor who might also rely on planned obsolescence.
For an industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging purchasers to buy sooner if they still want a functioning product. Planned obsolescence is common in many different products, including wheeled can openers, screws, ear protectors, sunglasses, headphones, shoes, book bindings, automobile batteries, and bicycle tires.
There is however the potential backlash of consumers who learn that the manufacturer invested money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers might turn to a producer (if any exists) that offers a more durable alternative. Estimates of planned obsolescence can influence a company's decisions about product engineering. Therefore, the company can use the least expensive components that satisfy product lifetime projections. Such decisions are part of a broader discipline known as value engineering.
Text from Wikkipedia The problem is when one producer jumps ship and everyone else is left behind.
Xerox's old business model used to be based on planned obsolescence and repairs, and then Canon destroyed them with a reliable copier.
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agreed with above we hope competition exists but if you look at it, they only undercut by a small bit, i used to work as a programmer and the memory sticks were given to us by a manufacturer, they give us a box load of them (it was a big box 2x as big as a shoe box i would say) and charge us £50, each stick would have been sold for 39.99, depending on the rebrand they went through . . there were 100 - 250 sticks in this box. . so. . . going off this rl experience i begin to wonder just how much profit they made from the £50 . . scares me really
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Like lots of people must have been saying, it'll be really really difficult to get this to take hold because modern industry and/or technology is fundamentally built on planned obsolescence.
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On November 02 2013 07:21 radscorpion9 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 05:22 StatixEx wrote: sounds great but cant happen because everyone wants ur $$$. When the company buys all of the gear to make a phone . .(a fucking lot) they realise that over time they can make that phone for barely anything at all and charge us through the fucking nose . . .and sell millions of them. Their whole set up would have cost a few million. A fucking load of millions - a few million = loads of millions left over. (revenue-costs=profit for you business guys out there!)I however think this concept is excellent and just how i want it . . . . im so sad my brain is way too optimistic for the human race and live in the hope one day money wont be the root of all the evil In theory if a company is making you pay through the nose then another company will seek to perform a better service for less, thereby taking all of the former company's customers and forcing them to offer a fair deal. The only thing that could really prevent this is if the costs to start up a company are prohibitively high and you need a strong manufacturing base to really make it work. I think that's really the problem, the market just doesn't "self-correct". Like in Canada Bell and Rogers basically own all the high-speed networks and maintain them...no one can really do much else except buy the leftovers because starting up their own network is expensive and way too time consuming.
Well if no company wants to start their own high speed network, it's mostly because you cant actually make money out of it, the prices are already low enough.
A company could still start its own network in a local area and grow later... That's how it's working in France actually, with Free ISP during the beginning of the high speed internet, and with Ovh investing to become an ISP too.
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However cool and idealistic this is, it just isn't gonna happen anytime soon. It's a neat idea though.
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On November 02 2013 05:22 StatixEx wrote: sounds great but cant happen because everyone wants ur $$$. When the company buys all of the gear to make a phone . .(a fucking lot) they realise that over time they can make that phone for barely anything at all and charge us through the fucking nose . . .and sell millions of them. Their whole set up would have cost a few million. A fucking load of millions - a few million = loads of millions left over. (revenue-costs=profit for you business guys out there!)I however think this concept is excellent and just how i want it . . . . im so sad my brain is way too optimistic for the human race and live in the hope one day money wont be the root of all the evil For the longest time, apple was the only one making profit on these things. samsung is doing well now, but htc is just about break even I think. And ya, components of a phone may only cost ~100$, but money is also spent on development, marketing, not to mention profit needs to cover for flops. And you should include the companies that fail, remember palm? blackberry? Apple may make large margins, but that's because they took a risk and won, just as blackberry is being sold because they took a risk and lost.
On November 02 2013 08:41 StatixEx wrote: agreed with above we hope competition exists but if you look at it, they only undercut by a small bit, i used to work as a programmer and the memory sticks were given to us by a manufacturer, they give us a box load of them (it was a big box 2x as big as a shoe box i would say) and charge us £50, each stick would have been sold for 39.99, depending on the rebrand they went through . . there were 100 - 250 sticks in this box. . so. . . going off this rl experience i begin to wonder just how much profit they made from the £50 . . scares me really direct from manufacturer is cheap, microcenter gets good processor deals because of it. But remember that not all this 39.99 would go to manufacturer if it were sold in a store. A bit goes to the store, a bit to wholesaler (maybe), and a bit goes to commission (maybe).
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People keep saying it can't be done, it's too hard, it's not possible, it'll never sell. Every great innovation has these people, it's best to just ignore them. I am looking forward to what could be done with something like this. It could fail this is true, but it's a good idea and good ideas tend to happen sooner or later. I'd actually purchase a smart phone if I could design it how I'd want. I think most people would as well.
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In the age of the internet, most headlines ending in a question mark usually have the same simple answer: No.
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Sweden5553 Posts
Yeah none of the obstacles are insurmountable. for example the planned obsolescence as a business practice will only remain the prevalent one as long as consumers don't demand better products. Smart Phones are still relatively new. Phone development have been very fast, people will catch up, eventually. If this does break through (which it might since Motorola seems to be investing quite a bit into it) it just take a few other companies to jump on-board for it to be a thriving platform. And we are becoming more aware of our personal impact on the earth. If more people are made aware of the appalling conditions with which we extract the rare earths from the few known deposits of them around the globe which are crucial to making our smart phones and if people knew the horrendous way that the electronic waste is "recycled" to try and regain some of the precious metals that are not design with a seconds thought to recycling.... yeah ... then they might be more aware that they should demand products which don't break after 2 years. Demand products that has components that can be recycled and re-used. If you have these kinds of divices perhaps some part company can produce a component that they will then buy back from you once it is no longer useful to you and use a machine similar to their assemblyline to disassemble the component into it's various different parts, reuse the ones that will work again, recycle the ones which it can't.
The problem of upgrades, and such, to non techsavy people, as long as you just design it into the concept making it easy for people to check possible upgrades, benefits and costs to them, having cellphone stores close by where they can upgrade their phones during a lunch break etc, it will be done by enough phone stores, cause they want to sell phones and upgrades and peripherals, the more often a costumer comes to them the better.
The problem of manufacturing scale, that for a phone you just have 1 factory producing 1 display, instead of having to have 2-5 different models. However this 1 factory producing 1 display will go into 1 phone. These 2-5 factories producing 2-5 displays will go into a huge variety of set-ups so if there's 10 different part types IIRC it'll be (n^9)/4 which is then 128 to ~500 000. (9 instead of 10 to remove the options where they just use one type of part, and a whole of other non realistic occurrences, divided by four is so it removes the mirrored and rotated set-ups which are identical)
The problem of compatibility etc., this can be controlled better by having a good database structure in place to handle compatibility queries to see how you can make a phone and how you can upgrade a phone you already have and which parts don't work with which. Sure that's a really difficult thing, getting every part tested with every other part in every configuration that has ever existed. But this is also where smaller companies will come in to make prefabricated set-ups. just like with PCs...
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On November 02 2013 17:59 salle wrote: Yeah none of the obstacles are insurmountable. for example the planned obsolescence as a business practice will only remain the prevalent one as long as consumers don't demand better products. Smart Phones are still relatively new. Phone development have been very fast, people will catch up, eventually. If this does break through (which it might since Motorola seems to be investing quite a bit into it) it just take a few other companies to jump on-board for it to be a thriving platform. And we are becoming more aware of our personal impact on the earth. If more people are made aware of the appalling conditions with which we extract the rare earths from the few known deposits of them around the globe which are crucial to making our smart phones and if people knew the horrendous way that the electronic waste is "recycled" to try and regain some of the precious metals that are not design with a seconds thought to recycling.... yeah ... then they might be more aware that they should demand products which don't break after 2 years. Demand products that has components that can be recycled and re-used. If you have these kinds of divices perhaps some part company can produce a component that they will then buy back from you once it is no longer useful to you and use a machine similar to their assemblyline to disassemble the component into it's various different parts, reuse the ones that will work again, recycle the ones which it can't.
The problem of upgrades, and such, to non techsavy people, as long as you just design it into the concept making it easy for people to check possible upgrades, benefits and costs to them, having cellphone stores close by where they can upgrade their phones during a lunch break etc, it will be done by enough phone stores, cause they want to sell phones and upgrades and peripherals, the more often a costumer comes to them the better.
The problem of manufacturing scale, that for a phone you just have 1 factory producing 1 display, instead of having to have 2-5 different models. However this 1 factory producing 1 display will go into 1 phone. These 2-5 factories producing 2-5 displays will go into a huge variety of set-ups so if there's 10 different part types IIRC it'll be (n^9)/4 which is then 128 to ~500 000. (9 instead of 10 to remove the options where they just use one type of part, and a whole of other non realistic occurrences, divided by four is so it removes the mirrored and rotated set-ups which are identical)
The problem of compatibility etc., this can be controlled better by having a good database structure in place to handle compatibility queries to see how you can make a phone and how you can upgrade a phone you already have and which parts don't work with which. Sure that's a really difficult thing, getting every part tested with every other part in every configuration that has ever existed. But this is also where smaller companies will come in to make prefabricated set-ups. just like with PCs...
Here here! What Salle said. It won't be easy but I think it will work
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