Embedded Systems Engineer's Dream - "PhoneBloks" The 100% Customizable Phone That LASTS - Polidicks

[QUOTE]A phone only lasts a couple of years before it breaks or becomes obsolete. Although it's often just one part which killed it we throw everything away since it's almost impossible to repair or upgrade. visit [url]www.phonebloks.com[/url] to show your support and raise your voice.[/QUOTE] [video=youtube;oDAw7vW7H0c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAw7vW7H0c[/video] [URL="https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/2931-phonebloks"]Source[/URL] (Currently offline due to shear volume of people) I'd love to help out with this project as the title says, its definitely a go ahead when it come to compatibility. Compatibility equals cost reduction and ease of replacement generally speaking.

Show me a product that actually works. As great and cool as this sounds, it also sounds completely improbable.

Don't exactly care for how plain it looks, but it's a more than worthy sacrifice for that much on the fly customization.

Now, I love the idea, but it seems like it'd have: -Overheating issues -Poor use of space (since each this has to have its own box, which takes up room) -Impossible design? (I'm not sure, but I'm fairly certain the base can't just accept any block anywhere, unless each spot was designated for only one thing (e.g., a camera block, a CPU block)

I can understand swapping out the camera for another camera or some other identical component in its place, but once you go rearranging shit like that, the idea doesn't hold up. That's just not how electronics work.

I'm not sure this qualifies as news, as it doesn't exist (yet?). I will do my part to sum up what was shared the discussion from the video thread. Pros: -Competition among those invested. -Cheaper to maintian+upgrade than one regular model (possibly). -Customization based on what the user wants Cons: -What if the base board breaks -How will the base board know to send what signal where -Common coding among different manufactures, so that different companies parts work together. As someone who owns an old flip phone, the major thing keeping me from upgrading is choosing a model and keeping a cheap plan. If I had a PhoneBlok, I wouldn't be paying for extra parts I don't need (all I do is make calls and take pictures).

Wasn't there already a thread about this?

Looks cool as fuck. I'd be interested.

[QUOTE=Splash Attack;42161490]I can understand swapping out the camera for another camera or some other identical component in its place, but once you go rearranging shit like that, the idea doesn't hold up. That's just not how electronics work.[/QUOTE] I'd agree when it comes to rotating different components, however you can work off of different communication protocols that offer physically parallel connections (I2C for example)

[QUOTE=synthiac;42161626]You're not going to be using a CPU with a low-speed serial bus.[/QUOTE] Thats just a simple example, a derivative of SATA is a faster example

It's like trying to design a device that will somehow anticipate future technologies that don't exist. Kinda like hoping your LGA775 socket will support a Core i7-3990X

What OS would it run on, in the video it seems like a custom OS, I think it'd be stupid if they didn't choose Android

It's a good idea, I would love to be able to incorporate a 3d scanner into my phone since I deal with C.A.D. All day. Or better yet, just being able to have the phone I want without getting stuff I don't.

One of the nicest aspects of a system like this is the individual parts of a phone would become competitive Like in the market right now a new phone doesn't necessarily need to compete on say... storage space. It's kinda become a universally agreed deal to just say "meh up to but not more than 64GB", but if each part was being made by competing manufacturers they'd probably get improved. Still as awesome as this would be there's so many problems - a lot of electronics get layered on top of each other in odd shapes and this is trying to just fit them into separate blocks which is complicated and likely to have heating issues

cute idea, utterly impossible

EE here. The amount of bandwidth flowing between different components and frequencies involved on a pcb and the sheer number of connections just screams integration. Not to mention the amount of engineering that goes into things like thermal management, antennas, signal integrity, emi compliance, and power management. It may be doable but I don't think its worth doing. [editline]11th September 2013[/editline] [QUOTE]Embedded Systems Engineer's Dream[/QUOTE] LOL, more like any engineer's nightmare.

This is electronics, nothing is impossible... ...It would just be very difficult to do. The cpu would just have to know where all the various inputs are. The only thing that shouldn't be able to move is the CPU, and of course it would only be able to be upgraded by another type of it that has higher clock speeds, not a different equivalent of pin configurations.

[QUOTE=credesniper;42161491] -Cheaper to maintian+upgrade than one regular model (possibly). [/QUOTE] No not really, if you make the parts modular then on the same board costs go up. What's driving the affordability of mobile devices in the hardware are the reduction of components, the reduced time to learn new ICs, and plenty of others not off the top of my head that don't deal with warehouse infrastructure and labor. Phones the shape of soap bars are less ergonomic then phones of yore due to not only fitting in your pocket but surviving in and out of your pocket while reducing as much cost as possible. I've thought long and hard on modular mobile devices and to make it feasible but the elevator pitch of a cellphone wallet to make it more intriguing still fails. (I'll make it some day just for myself). The sad truth is building your own desktop pc, though a lot easier then it was 20 to 30 years ago, is fading away in favor of pc/monitors then just mobile devices due to it being cheaper. What it boils down to is that income is not like it was 20 years ago, if the technology of now was sent back in time and adjusted to the price of then, complaints of xbone high price would be little to laugh at. I saw this in the video section and do agree with the op there of it being the KONY 2012 of cell phones. [quote]One of the nicest aspects of a system like this is the individual parts of a phone would become competitive Like in the market right now a new phone doesn't necessarily need to compete on say... storage space. It's kinda become a universally agreed deal to just say "meh up to but not more than 64GB", but if each part was being made by competing manufacturers they'd probably get improved.[/quote] parts that arn't manufactured by people developing the phone will look for hardware components like semiconductors which is a highly competitive market which fluctuates. The complexity of making devices has been hidden away from the consumer lead by apple's ideology of "it comes in colors". I have to add this already exists to a degree. [url]http://blog.arduino.cc/2013/08/12/diy-cellphone/[/url]

great concept super impractical to put into commercial manufacture though

[img]http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png[/img] You might get away with the pin connectivity if you can somehow devise a way where you can arrange parts in certain orientations and they'll never use the wrong pin.

It could work with heavy limitations. The way I see this working is that you can replace the broken parts of your phone with identical ones but you most likely won't be able to upgrade. Now that I think about it, I can't see any electronics companies being in favor of this at all since a lot of them -such as apple- make a business on having you turn in your old phone and buying a new one.

This kind of thing will never come to fruition, it's poor business practices.

[QUOTE=DaCommie1;42162008]This kind of thing will never come to fruition, it's poor business practices.[/QUOTE] I really don't understand how you can say something like that or others making comments on how its imposssible/impractical, if it spreads and there is a high demand for it, it will most likely sell and if anything it seems very practical, at least to me.

The simple fact that each block has to be self contained will ruin this, let alone anything else. That alone is a metric fuckton of additional plastic and weight. Weight that a conventional phone/tablet/other gadget doesn't need to have. In a non portable world that is not a concern, nor is space, and modular components are everywhere. Look at desktop PCs. You can get parts that meet any criteria you could dream of. In the mobile world it just doesn't work like that, specifically because you have to non metaphorically cut corners to cut down on wasted space and weight.

[QUOTE=Kameshoga;42162155]I really don't understand how you can say something like that or others making comments on how its imposssible/impractical, if it spreads and there is a high demand for it, it will most likely sell and if anything it seems very practical, at least to me.[/QUOTE] Companies can lose money if they sell equipment that never breaks. You can get that first big push of buyers and then it sharply drops off because nobody is looking to replace theirs. You can't really upgrade the phone either unless you stay loyal to the pin bus and if you can't ever make new models you're stuck making the same and eventually obsolete parts for decades.

[QUOTE=Zephyrs;42162243]The simple fact that each block has to be self contained will ruin this, let alone anything else. That alone is a metric fuckton of additional plastic and weight. Weight that a conventional phone/tablet/other gadget doesn't need to have. In a non portable world that is not a concern, nor is space, and modular components are everywhere. Look at desktop PCs. You can get parts that meet any criteria you could dream of. In the mobile world it just doesn't work like that, specifically because you have to non metaphorically cut corners to cut down on wasted space and weight.[/QUOTE] And also, the baseplate seems to be "anything goes" as opposed to computers which have very specific slots for every component, you cant fit a GPU in the CPU slot or connect your SATA to the memory slots.

I can't see this working, How on earth are you going to make a single connection that can handle both a battery, CPU or camera via the same pins? How are you going to wire them up through the base board? (You can't have a preconfigured wiring scheme, since that limits expandability, look at CPU sockets in desktops needing to be changed every couple of years) [QUOTE=fruxodaily;42161709]What OS would it run on, in the video it seems like a custom OS, I think it'd be stupid if they didn't choose Android[/QUOTE] Tizen, just for the hell of it.

This is really far fetched, almost as if the guy has no idea what he's talking about. The phone companies would never allow this.

The pins thing is definitely a doable thing, not too hard either.

Straight up impossible, sorry. [quote]It's not as simple as just saying "lets make everything blocks and modular". Hardware doesn't work like that. Phone hardware is specially designed and fabricated usually onto one board. If it wasn't done this way then our phones would be much larger. Phone designers are masters of getting all these tiny components to somehow fit into a small design by taking advantage of clever device routing. That's the first strike against making parts modular. Next, in order to make everything modular you would need some sort of scheme to expose the proper pins for each section to communicate with each other. Doing this in a generic way seems almost impossible. These connections are incredibly small and vary a lot, and are often soldered by computers. To make the design modular and flexible where you could just plug things in like the video will also increase the phone size a lot. A longer pin connection distance is going to decrease performance too. What if a standard changes or a breakthrough technology comes around which needs more pins? You will have to throw away everything anyways. There's a reason why CPU sockets have evolved over the years. Lastly, the amount of testing required to make parts interchangeable like this would be an incredible feat itself. If a new upgrade comes out it would need to be regression tested against every old component combination. Improper configurations could give unsteady voltage levels and fry the very sensitive components in your phone.[/quote]