Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Modular Smartphones: Explained!”.
Okay, google define modular modular, employing or involving a module or modules as the basis of design or construction, define module module each of a set of standardized parts or independent units that can be used to construct a more complex structure such as an item of furniture or A building or a smartphone thanks for watching now, so the simplest easiest to understand definition of modular is something where all the parts can be removed or replaced. So if something’s completely modular, all the parts, even the necessary ones, can be removed or replaced. If it’s semi-modular, then some of the parts can be removed and replaced, and if it’s not modular, then all the parts are fixed. So this, for example, is not modular. This is, this is not modular. This is, this is not modular, and this is and modular tech is usually the best kind of tech, because when you can take out parts and replace them like a graphics card and a computer, that also means that you can upgrade parts at any time.
Just one piece at a time at your will, which means you don’t even have to wait until something’s broken. If you just decide, you want a piece of something to be better than it is now you can buy the replacement, upgrade it and just make it happen. So recently, we’ve been thinking of ways to make things in tech that haven’t been modular in the past modular like smartphones, and we started getting really optimistic about modular smartphones like just the whole idea of being able to swap the parts in and out at any time. So let’s say your phone, you really like your phone, but it’s starting to get a little bit slow. Instead of buying a whole new smartphone to replace it, you can just buy a new cpu module swap out that and your phone’s good as new or let’s say you want to take better photos and some new, better optics are coming out.
You can swap out a camera module and you’re good to go, or, let’s say you’re going on a road trip this summer swap out a bigger battery module. A video about this exact topic got about 20 million views, or so in a week it was called phone blocks. It’S made of blogs detachable blocks, they are all connected to the base and the base connects everything together. So this phone blocks was a crowdfunded campaign that looked like it was going to be an actually brand new, brilliant awesome idea, because it kind of was i mean this was the first time people were actually considering doing a fully modular smartphone, not just a removable battery Or not just expandable storage, but everything i mean look at the screenshot. This is from the actual video and i mean it makes it look like you can replace anything, the audio jack, the gyroscope other sensors. I mean i don’t know: what’s in the speed module, maybe my soc, but i can replace that too. That seems awesome and then we heard nothing for a while. Like i mean we got the occasional update, like oh we’re, still trying or we’ll st we’re still working on this, but for the most part it just stayed in concept form for a long time that was kind of disappointing.
But then we got our hopes up again with project aura, which was a sort of a resurfaced version of phone blocks. They had a lot of the same, looks from phone blocks, the modules that slide into a base, hot-swappable upgradable parts and even a little bit of a better looking design. I would say, but again this was more than a year ago and it’s still all concept form.
We never got any phones to play with just dummies of what the phone would look like so a couple weeks ago at google, i o we got our project r update, which is great. We actually got some prototypes of working modular phones, which is awesome to see, but these were a far cry from the original concept as we kind of expected. These are more like semi-modular phones, because now project aura doesn’t let you swap you know the cpu, the gpu, the ram heck. Even the speakers and the screen are all fixed. You will be able to swap things like the camera and the battery, so naturally that news is a bit disappointing to those of us who are really waiting for that idea. But it’s still exciting that we will see a project aura developer device by the end of this year and then a consumer device that we can buy starting next year. Of course, this is all dependent on google getting all these third-party manufacturers to actually make a whole bunch of different modules for us to choose from so there’s an actual reason for us to try it fast forward to today and we’re still kind of high on this Idea of modular smartphones and we’ve gotten devices like this lg g5 g5 by itself, is a pretty good phone.
It’S pretty decent. It’S not my full review of it. Obviously, but it’s a pretty good phone, but its main selling point is that it’s modular kinda, because it has modules this would again fall under the category of semi-modular. In fact, the truth is the g5 is barely modular like. I would hesitate to even use that word to describe it.
It has a couple of attachable accessories, but you can’t swap the memory or anything you can’t swap the cameras. You can’t swap any sensors or ports, it’s basically just the battery. So it’s sort of like a rough draft and i love lg for trying, but this is like 25 of a modular phone.
It could have been way more awesome if there were more third-party accessories like aura is planning to have, and there are also rumored plans for a motorola modular moto x, with pins on the back and accessories that can attach later this year. That will also depend on how many third-party manufacturers make these accessories. Here’S the thing, though, this generation, this first generation of modular smartphones, that we’re getting now is sort of like a rough draft of those crazy ideas that we had a couple years ago. There’S no new tech to make these crazy new ideas happen since then.
So what we’re doing is using old tech and sort of trying to morph it into this sort of a modular thing which is pretty crazy and bold and daring, but 99 of people don’t really care about a lego like build your own modular, smartphone type of thing And the last one percent, who do also want it to be pretty cheap plus, if you think about it, making the ideal future proof fully modular smartphone for us now, whatever company does, that would kind of be screwing themselves over in the long run when they want To introduce a new phone – let’s say next year: no one’s going to want to buy it because they’ll all just want to buy new modules for their own. Instead, i actually asked about this on twitter, and someone’s reply was all i care about. Is the ability to swap out stock batteries for higher capacity ones and adding more memory via sd cards when i need it so number one smartphone manufacturers already know that and they’re kind of willing to build that into certain models. As long as you pay a little extra for it and number two, is that really modular barely so the truly fully modular smartphone could be the best thing that happens to the smartphone market when it does happen both for us consumers, because it’s going to be awesome For the environment, so we don’t have to buy all these new phones all the time and for geeks, because it’s just a dope concept, but it’s a long way off fingers crossed for project ara, though thanks for watching i’ll talk to you guys, the next one peace .
