Epic idea nonetheless.
Phonebloks - the future of phones? - Page 3
Forum Index > General Forum |
B.I.G.
3251 Posts
Epic idea nonetheless. | ||
BurningSera
Ireland19621 Posts
Unless some big companies willing to risk everything just to break the biggest competitor in the same field (like iphone i guess) and make a bold move. | ||
kemihan
Brazil16 Posts
On September 14 2013 00:27 besez wrote: The biggest, most glaring flaw that proponents of this idea are missing is that technology isn't iteratively evolved. Surely, if you can standardize the connections to the "motherboard" and the communication protocols, we are looking at a two year compatibility life span. Tops. Technology, as I mentioned isn't simply iteratively evolved around a single stack of protocols, but great leaps in performance are done on a generational basis. This will mean that your precious motherboard, and all the blocks that you would like to keep are worth as much as rubbish in roughly the same time frame that you would wear out a regular smartphone anyway. If you're the type of person that has the resources to switch up your display every month, or want a few hundred MHz of extra power in your CPU before your block motherboard is ready for the dumpster then this is the technology for you. If you're more of the type of person that is out for generational leaps of power, stick with the pro phone makers for the time being. And for all the people saying that I'm a hater for having this opinion: Please explain to me how you're going to construct a motherboard that will be able to handle a new CPU or display or GFX that pushes 4x the amount of pixels through the motherboard (going from FullHD to UHD[4K], 2MPix>8MPix) without the added benefit of component miniaturization and wider pipelines/buses. Humbug! Retro-compatibility between consecutive generations. It's the same way that the current motherboards solve the same problem. You update the motherboard to a more powerfull one, but it will be compatible with all your current devices + have support to new ones. So, if you want to get that knew outsdanding GPU, you change your MOBO, your GPU, but not your RAM, HD, DISPLAY, CPU, etc, etc, etc. | ||
Incognoto
France10239 Posts
On September 14 2013 00:35 kemihan wrote: Retro-compatibility between consecutive generations. It's the same way that the current motherboards solve the same problem. You update the motherboard to a more powerfull one, but it will be compatible with all your current devices + have support to new ones. So, if you want to get that knew outsdanding GPU, you change your MOBO, your GPU, but not your RAM, HD, DISPLAY, CPU, etc, etc, etc. That sounds like a hassle. If you're going to upgrade your mobo so that it now handles beefier parts, why not also upgrade those parts while you're at it? You might as well upgrade everything. I like this idea in that you should be able to fix one part of your phone that's broken without throwing away the entire phone. As for upgrading, well some people are showing good arguments as to why it's not feasible, both technologically and economically. | ||
doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On September 13 2013 22:56 theBALLS wrote: This is so silly. It's a wonderful idea, but engineers would scoff it off. Quite the opposite. Engineers love to tinker with stuff, and don't usually mind when there are a few compatibility issues, they are happy to try and hack a way around it, heck it's half the fun of unpolished technology. In general, by the same principle, most engineers are happy with Linux. The problem is both the business and consumer side of things would scoff at it. Lets face it, the average consumer is 'tech savvy' in that they are good with technology in its designed operating parameters, but when it comes to repairs, modifications or understanding the fundamental operations of their device, they suddenly turn into a population of morons. It's the only reason I can think of that Apple is still able to sell desktop computers and laptops/notebooks, the fact of the matter is, in theory, being able to replace parts and tinkering with your device is great, in practice, not only does the average consumer not want to do it, they will pay a significant premium to not have to. The business side of things is going to resist it just as hard, with this idea shutting down planned obsolescence (consider how frequent people change phones, and how staggeringly expensive these phones are), and new form factors to give marketing something to... well... market (Cos face it, a data sheet on how performance has improved doesn't excite the average consumer like it would us engineers). Our big consumer electronic companies with their 'decision by accounting' philosophy to the engineering market are simply not going to like the business model when the existing model is so profitable. These pressures coupled with the fact that this architecture would render it impossible to optimise to the extent the modern phones are, and the fact that changing form factors (which modern phones still undergo with size/thickness changes) would mean in all likelyhood, you'd have to replace the vast majority of components on the Phoneblok periodically makes it a very tough sell. | ||
kemihan
Brazil16 Posts
On September 14 2013 00:39 Incognoto wrote: That sounds like a hassle. If you're going to upgrade your mobo so that it now handles beefier parts, why not also upgrade those parts while you're at it? You might as well upgrade everything. I like this idea in that you should be able to fix one part of your phone that's broken without throwing away the entire phone. As for upgrading, well some people are showing good arguments as to why it's not feasible, both technologically and economically. You wouldn't change everything to save money/resources. That's the only reason to implement a solution like that. It's ecologically very efficient. Sadly, as other pointed out very smartly, in today's economy, planed obsolescence is very profitable. It's a very good example on a bad part of our current financial model. Money > efficient use of earth resources. | ||
treeqt
Germany237 Posts
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1m4rh8/saw_this_on_the_frontpage_comments_are_5050_so_is/ Not only is it physically impossible, it also wouldn't make sense economically and be impossible to provide software for among an abundance of other reasons. | ||
Greggle
United States1131 Posts
Also, looking at all the ridiculous tech lawsuits do you really think these companies will ever get together and support this one platform? Apple at the very least has time and time again told consumers it doesn't give a shit what we want. This is one of those cute ideas that just isn't grounded in reality. | ||
elimzkE
Australia92 Posts
| ||
C[h]ili
Germany167 Posts
| ||
Amui
Canada10563 Posts
On September 14 2013 01:18 treeqt wrote: If you think this is a legitimately good concept or just wonder why it isn't, I suggest reading this thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1m4rh8/saw_this_on_the_frontpage_comments_are_5050_so_is/ Not only is it physically impossible, it also wouldn't make sense economically and be impossible to provide software for among an abundance of other reasons. Might not be physically impossible. Impractical would probably be better.. I'm sure if a ton of companies put their minds to it and standardized connectors and interfaces and whatnot you could make a semi-modular phone(battery, antenna modules, speakers, storage, and possibly a few others). But these are also the modules that are most easily changed anyways and least important. Fully modular on the scale of a PC is absolutely impractical though. The main computing chips are soldered onto the mainboard for a good reason, fragility, the hundreds or thousands of tiny soldered joints(sub mm spacing) and other things that are straight up impractical to make modular. | ||
Brutaxilos
United States2621 Posts
But I think the whole, share this idea on a certain day is really annoying. Reminds me of the whole Kony 2012 crap. | ||
JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On September 14 2013 01:17 kemihan wrote: You wouldn't change everything to save money/resources. That's the only reason to implement a solution like that. It's ecologically very efficient. Sadly, as other pointed out very smartly, in today's economy, planed obsolescence is very profitable. It's a very good example on a bad part of our current financial model. Money > efficient use of earth resources. It depends how things played out. You'd be turning a one sku phone into a multi sku phone (the individual modular components) so you could wind up with more resources devoted to packaging, shipping and inventory. | ||
Sated
England4983 Posts
| ||
treeqt
Germany237 Posts
On September 14 2013 01:42 Sated wrote: It only creates problems if the developer is lazy... PC games don't have this problem despite the wide variety of screen sizes and computer components/combinations out there. PC games very much DO have this problem. You can't play games on a 4k monitor with a build that maxes out at 1080p. And there is nothing that software developers can do about it, because it's in no way related to the software. What makes software development such a pain in the ass would be guaranteeing any form of absolute compatibility which is a practical impossibility. | ||
TheRabidDeer
United States3806 Posts
On September 14 2013 01:42 Sated wrote: It only creates problems if the developer is lazy... PC games don't have this problem despite the wide variety of screen sizes and computer components/combinations out there. The main reason I mentioned this is because I remember an app that was developed here on TL for iPhone, and they said it wouldnt be on droid because of pixel density or something that threw off the aesthetics. | ||
Incognoto
France10239 Posts
On September 14 2013 01:49 treeqt wrote: PC games very much DO have this problem. You can't play games on a 4k monitor with a build that maxes out at 1080p. And there is nothing that software developers can do about it, because it's in no way related to the software. What makes software development such a pain in the ass would be guaranteeing any form of absolute compatibility which is a practical impossibility. Wouldn't that actually be a compatibility problem between the high resolution monitor and the system that can only perform up to 1080p? I don't get your argument | ||
Paperplane
Netherlands1823 Posts
| ||
Chairman Ray
United States11903 Posts
| ||
Destructicon
4713 Posts
Technologically I'm sure any initial problems these kind of phones have, would be resolved in the following years by advances in the technology that comes into them, including better and better optimization and refinement of the hardware. The only thing that makes me skeptical regarding this tech is how it will be received by consumers and businesses. The big companies like Apple and Samsung make an obscene amount of money from people buying their most expensive phones and then throwing them away a year or 2 later in favor of a newer more expensive phone. I doubt even these big tech giants can produce enough new parts regularly, to create a need for constant upgrading, also the price of a single part would most certainly never reach the price of an entire phone. Lastly with a trend more geared to optimization and customization you might even have people that stop upgrading their phone until a really big need for it arises, thus reducing the revenues further for the big companies. As much a good idea as this is, I doubt it will be put into practice, and the reason is quite simply, human greed. Of course, as soon as one of the big companies finds a way to monetize this idea, they will probably jump on it though, but I don't expect it ti happen very soon. | ||
| ||