The problem is that the “exoskeleton” architecture, the motherboard, is also subject to technological advancement. I seriously doubt that Google will still be pushing the same exoskeleton in 5 years. So eventually you’ll go to upgrade your processor and discover that your old motherboard isn’t fast enough to support it, so you need a new mobo, and it might require a newer, faster type of RAM, and it’s probably time to upgrade your video anyway, and all this new hardware has a higher power draw so you need to upgrade your PSU…
Er - not sure if you’re being serious, or subtly pointing out the limitations of upgrading hardware due to architecture changing.
Now granted I have been out of the PC building picture awhile, but when I was in it, making a PC was a very modular and upgradeable - to a degree.
Even with like the last Dell I bought, you could swap out the CPU, RAM, video card, hard drive, etc to boost performance and storage. However there are limitations.
A computer is built around a mother board - it’s the main board that the CPU and everything else plugs into. Usually motherboards can do things like slap out one CPU for another, faster one, or take more or new RAM. But the problem is the tech changes so fast. Even if the CPU is technically still the same chip set, the speed settings and bus sizes might have changed so that the old board can’t handle the newest chip out there. Or say you could buy the new RAM, but it actually runs at a higher bus speed, so even though it ‘works’ you aren’t seeing the performance boost that you would with a newer mother board.
Then you have the fact that the ever 2-3 years (maybe less now) the form factor of the CPU chips change, so you physically can’t fit the new chips into the old mother board. Yeah, you can get a new mother board, but then you would need to get a new CPU and RAM too. And if you do that, you will want a new video card to handle the new games. And of course your hard drive is getting full now with all that Hentai, so you will want to get a new one of those too. And before you know it, it’s just cheaper to buy a whole new PC.
Home appliance power needs have stayed pretty constant (within an order of magnitude, at least) for the last century. Imagine if the power draw for lamps and hair dryers doubled roughly every two years. You’d have to be constantly rewiring your house, and there’d be no assurance at all that a building wired ten years ago would support your appliances without blowing a breaker.
Of course the iPhone can fit all that stuff on a tiny board, because you can’t replace/upgrade/customize any of it. That’s what this project is meant to accomplish. I love the idea, and in say 10 years or so when the components can be small enough/mass-marketed enough to make it something I really want, I imagine something else will have come along to completely revolutionize the industry.
But that’s the point: to make this work, you need an architecture roadmap that maintains compatibility between the processor (on a smartphone, almost everything is integrated into the SoC), RAM, battery, camera, screen, and other components for years. The chances are you’ll have months to upgrade any particular part to something “better” and beyond that, yeah, you can swap parts but they will be old.
But even then, what will you really get to swap? Who needs to swap screens unless broken? Everthing else is largely integrated into the SoC which will be integrated into the exoskeleton. I can already swap screens and batteries if needed. So… maybe just the camera and a few “extraneous sensors” or edge-case mods? Smartphone manufacturers (with the exception of Apple and Samsung) aren’t making money now. How much money are they going to make on a $25 camera mod to a 2 year old phone that they didn’t sell you?
You are one of the first people I’ve noticed who also see the challenges with this and voice it this way…this requires a ridiculous amount of forethought to ensure that all components will work together…compatibility is going to be nearly impossible and ensuring the software is always current with the hardware…ugh…
OH another thing to think about is that a modular system is going to be bulkier. Look at a laptop vs desktop computers. The desktop you usually can swap parts to replace or upgrade - more so than the laptop - but the lap top has more things integrated into a compact package. So something tells me people are going to opt for a slimline regular phone, vs a brickier modular phone.
Also - doesn’t everyone’s phone get pretty ratty after 2 years? I get a new free phone every 2 years, and by then the paint on the keys are rubbed off, stuff is scratched up, and the battery life isnt the same. Granted I haven’t shelled out for a smart phone yet, so I may be more inclined to eek another year or two out of something I paid money for.
I’m hard pressed to understand how it’s a shame. If you were attempting to design a motherboard that could accept any and all future processors (including those not developed yet), RAM (various flavors of DDR, various data rates, various capacities), different GPUs, different screens, different ports, say, 8 years ago, you’d probably still be designing it and when you’d finish you’d end up with something more costly and likely slower than what someone else simply would have replaced 3 times over.
You’d have a PowerMac G5 with an i-series Intel processor… and a dual 1.25 GHz front side bus (at best), DDR2-4200 RAM limited to 16 GBs, 802.11g wifi, and USB2 and Firewire 400/800 ports (and maybe even still have an AGP-based video card, depending on which G5 you have). Woohoo!
It’s a shame in the sense that buying a whole new tower demands significantly more in resources and disposal than replacing a small component. I suspect that we’d see manufacturers dedicating more effort to these kinds of challenges if they had to cover the cost of their products’ environmental impact.
That’s my point: it doesn’t. The cost, resources, and time trying to make an 8 year old PC perform like one today is GREATER than replacement (heck, it can be so just trying to make it work the way it did 8 years ago!). (I know: I worked in PC repair and have worked with numerous downstream recyclers and charities who accept or rebuild used computers. There are opportunities to salvage materials and to make a profit but they are getting more and more and more limited.)
This is not to say that you shouldn’t get the most life possible out of your possessions, that you shouldn’t upgrade, that you shouldn’t replace or repair faulty components, that you shouldn’t pass older hardware down to someone for who it suffices, that you shouldn’t recycle. I’m merely arguing against constraining present day development in the hopes of anticipating the next 4-8 years and then constraining any subsequent designs after the fact to comply with that earlier “modular” design. An argument that the tech today is “good enough” to create a worthwhile modular design presupposes that anything that can be “better” in the future is wholly anticipated by present tech. That’s nonsense.
Apple recycles their products, but they’re the worst offender in terms of making non-upgradable computers. I suppose that’s why they set up the recycling…
Apple may make the most “non-upgradable” PCs, but any upgrades beyond what Apple affords (RAM (less and less so these days, admittedly), storage, batteries, expansion slots on PowerMacs, etc) are rarely taken advantage of on PCs (even in the case of RAM, few are taking advantage of the ability to upgrade beyond 8 GBs when able). Meanwhile, their PCs are probably the least harmful to the environment, often consume the least amount of power, likely enjoy longer upgrade cycles, and retain their value the most, and (between Apple and third party aftermarkets) provide the easiest path to recycle, reuse, or repurpose outdated devices at the highest value to the owner.
In short, recyclability and/or impact to the environment (even repairability — I can replace magsafe adapters, displays, keyboards, power buttons, fans, iMac and PowerMac PSUs, etc) are not directly correlated to upgradability.
How many different parts can you expect to be available? Different battery sizes and replacement screens? Is anyone really going to spend 20 to 30 bucks on a phone’s camera to get 3 more megapixels?
What if this concept was more about factory custom phones instead of user modular phones? Choose the slimmest model or the biggest battery, choose a slider or a water resistant case, or choose the meanest processor or the energy sipper. This is common for laptops, and even phones like moto X are dabbling in it. This concept might still be useful to the modders working in the niche markets, and also retain good ideas like user replaced screens for the mass market.
I believe they are being held in place with electropermanent magnets. The components are have an outer plastic layer and the body is recessed, so at worst with the dented plastic the outer component case will have to be replaced. I’m skeptical of this tech being a cost-effective competitor to integrated designs, but not for the reason you give.
PCs are modular like this. I build mine out of off the shelf parts built by a variety of companies. It is a little scarry in there but the parts are essentially plug and play.
What an awful idea. We’ve already seen attempts at doing an open-platform, completely-upgradeable laptop come and go, and doing the same with a phone would only result in an ugly, lopsided, heavy, non-ergonomic device. Some things just don’t scale down. (Consider the example of the Handspring Visor, the only PDA/smartphone that I’m aware of that ever had swappable modules, including one that turned the PDA into a smartphone; Handspring was in existence for all of five years, and the last year introduced the Treo, a nonmodular smartphone, to replace the Visor.)
