[sdfx]

I think John Gruber over at Daring Fireball said it best:

"I remain highly skeptical that a modular design can compete in a product category where size, weight, and battery life are at such a premium. Even if they can bring something to market, why would any normal person be interested in a phone like this?"

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/04/15/project-ara

[josefresco]

Size matters? My Android friends have huge phones (and cases) - Clearly they don't mind a phone being big and if the phone had cheap replaceable parts, that giant "life proof" case wouldn't be needed.

Weight matters? I have never heard "I wish my phone was lighter" from anyone, anywhere. In fact I've heard from several who think a heavier phone means it's "better made".

Battery life - Again my Android friends (and a few 5c friends) suffer from poor battery life - How would a phone where you could easily swap for a new/better battery be inferior?

Gruber should remind himself of the first generation of pretty much any tech product. Bulky, ugly, and clumsy could describe a lot of projects that push technology to it's limits.

[jan_g]

It does matter when comparing with alternatives. Modular phone with comparable specs to other phones (screen size, cpu, camera, etc) would probably be bigger, thicker, heavier and uglier. In other words, even when a customer is buying a big 5"+ phone, then I think he/she will probably not choose the modular one.

[josefresco]

I think the key is the purchasing model. A "free phone" with contract every 2 years creates a situation where the consumer doesn't value repairing/upgrading their phone.

If you had to pay say $600-$800 for a phone upfront, one is upgradable/repairable and the other is not (but faster/sexier) I think some (maybe many) would choose the former.

[lewaldman]

I think you guys are missing the point here.

The point is: A barebone model for 50 bucks that you could transform in a high-end device expending more money on it when you can afford it.

Also... need more battery life? Why not replace that extra RAM memory module for battery one? Or even... why not to replace the 4 Gb RAM module for one with 1Gb + more battery?

[eric_cc]

I get what you're saying and yet the more I read about this the more I find myself shaking my head thinking how stupid this really is. It's clearly not marketed at me. I will continue to buy standard STRESS-FREE devices.

[Guvante]

Not every device is made to satisfy the entire market.

And they have already acknowledged they plan on having "effort free" choices available for consumers. Probably have a "about the same as a Samsung" option, a cheap option that has the important bells and maybe a minimal option you can build off of.

[adestefan]

I know people that just toss an $800 laptop like it's nothing when something goes wrong. We truly live in a disposable society.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "I know people that just toss an $800 laptop like it's nothing when something goes wrong. We truly live in a disposable society."

Nope. You just happen to know people who can afford to toss an $800 laptop. For most of the 'lower middle class' people I know purchasing a laptop is a big deal and only happens once every 3/4/5 years. Even then they don't spend more than £400. Even when their laptop is practically unusable through age, damaged parts, viruses etc. they continue to use it because £400/$800/a new laptop is a lot of money.

[sp332]

But the only difference is the amount of money, not the attitude. No one thinks "I can afford a new laptop, but I'll rehabilitate this old one anyway."

[dlhavema]

i very much agree, products don't tend to last as long as they do anymore, and servicing them tends to cost close to the cost of new ones..

2-3 years ago I got new sony led tv and my wife was under the impression it would be our TV for the next 10-15 years... if major components don't go out in the next 1-3 years i will be happily suprised

[mhurron]

> heavier and uglier

I can give you bigger and thicker since I would expect those too. Neither is really a problem though. One of the benefits of the otterbox case for my Galaxy G3 is that it made the phone thicker, and it's already on the big side.

Heavier though will probably depend on the modules you choose, and ugly, well I thought what they were showing looked kind of good.

Personally, a lack of a SD card is one of the reasons I didn't get the Nexus or an iPhone. There are people that want these types of features and they win when comparing with alternatives.

[Tyrannosaurs]

The interesting thing about the mobile phone market is how big it is and what that means for niches.

There are about 900m Android phones out there. That means if you assume only 10% of the market might be interested in a particular variant of phone, your total addressable market is still 90 million (and growing).

My instinct is that this level of customisation is probably a relatively niche thing but - as outlined above - that doesn't mean that there isn't room for it to be commercially successful.

[jan_g]

Yes, there are people whose needs are different. And I am much in favor of modular design (at least replaceable battery, SD card and USB OTG, but project Ara goes much further), but that does not seem to be the case with mainstream consumer.

[Fuxy]

Modularity has its advantages too. You could always run a bare bones phone with only the hardware you actually use attached to it while having a very good battery.

[r00fus]

> Weight matters? I have never heard "I wish my phone was lighter" from anyone, anywhere.

Your anecdotal evidence is about as valid as mine, and I can guarantee you that weight matters. Tactile feel matters. Looks, of course matter.

In all these cases, a modular device fares poorly compared to an integrated one. This is a handheld device - can you not imagine the amount of dirt and grime that would cake up between the module gaps if you don't have a case on the device? And if you do have a case, now you have to uncase to switch around the modules.

The era of modularity is past, or not yet ready to come back.

[josefresco]

My evidence is anecdotal, so I searched and found this: http://mashable.com/2012/09/20/qualcomm-smartphone-study/

I don't see weight, tactile feel or looks on the list.

For those with cases, I doubt most even know what their phone really "feels" like, let alone actually weighs or even looks like.

As far as having to remove the case to swap a hardware component .. I don't think that's a major hurdle, we're not talking about a daily, weekly or even monthly task that would make that a pain.

[acjohnson55]

I don't see modularity/repairability on that list either, for what it's worth.

I think it would be really foolish to believe that aesthetics don't play a huge role in smartphone purchasing decisions.

[bane]

If I could get an Android phone that's twice as thick as my current one, with the volume made up of a huge battery, regardless of how heavy it is, I'd buy it tomorrow. This obsession with thinness and lightness is something I frankly don't care about in the least.

[eli]

Then I've got great news for you: http://gorillagadgets.com/

I've got one myself and it works exactly as you describe -- heavier, nearly twice as thick, but with roughly twice as much juice.

[bane]

Thanks! On my list for my next phone purchase.

[_ea1k]

I have a phone with a slightly larger screen than a Galaxy S5, that is also slightly smaller (LG G2). The efficient use of space mitigates the (few) disadvantages of a larger screen.

A phone that is bulky and has a large screen would be impractical. That's why size matters.

I don't really know who they are targetting with this device or their anticipated volume, so it is hard to say whether this will be "successful" or not. It seems certain to me that this is not a mass-market offering, though.

[brown9-2]

I'm not sure that "size matters" here means "small is better than large". But with a modular design where you can swap parts in and out, how could you ever change the size of your screen if you want a larger phone?

[josefresco]

Not sure about increasing the size but being able to replace/fix a broken screen would be huge. I'm no hardware engineer but I would suggest that making the phone/screen bigger would in fact be possible, if the modular platform was designed to accommodate.

[mistermann]

Agree with everything, especially weight and battery comments.

Wouldn't it be nice to have an easily hot swappable battery with a tiny internal battery in the phone so you wouldn't even have to turn it off to do so?

[hellogoodby3]

Too heavy was a common complaint lobbed at the Nokia Lumia 920 by reviewers. I personally don't mind, but a lot of people did.

[jff]

The Gruber flowchart:

  New idea -----> Is Apple doing it yet? -----Yes----> Brilliant!
                                       |
                                       |
                                       +----No----> So stupid, who would want this?

See: big phones, small tablets, etc.

[jareds]

Although I am blind I still consider myself a "normal" person. This could be the answer to my very specific requirements though. I'd love to build a phone with the lowest quality screen I can, no camera, as big a battery as I can get, and possibly a keyboard. For obvious reasons something like this will never be produced by any company.

[gbog]

This is not a phone, as someone noted in another comment.

It is a good old pocket computer, and it is modular, and mine may (or may not) have a telephony module.

I have a Galaxy Note, I think I use it as a phone twice a week on average. I use it as a HN browser, a camera, a podcast downloader and listener, a navigation, a game console, an e-reader, a translator, for contacts and calendar, and phone calls. Having a big screen is helpful in 9 of these 10 activities. Being big is annoying in 1 of them.

Moreover a big device has a much bigger battery, thus a somewhat better battery life (only somewhat because the screen is bigger too, and you use it more.)

[ctdonath]

Indeed, the classic definition of "phone" hardly applies to these devices anymore. They're Cray 2 supercomputers (well, "super" back in the day) shrunk into a matchbox and include, as one tiny program making use of the mic/speaker/radio, a "telephone"-like capability.

[higherpurpose]

He doesn't see any advantage to a modular phone? Then I don't think he's looking hard enough. I stand by my belief that Gruber has backed himself into a corner where he now needs to defend anything Apple does, and attack just about anything the competition does that is at least seen by others as a threat to Apple, if not by him.

[skywhopper]

You've misread his statement. He sees the benefit, but points out that the tradeoffs will be the main areas of competition among smartphones: size, weight, battery life. All three will be worse in a modular phone. You'll also get less for your money overall. Not to mention that having to choose among components just adds an additional layer of option stress that most consumers don't want. Sure, there's a market for a modular phone, but it's not going to seriously compete against the Galaxy or the iPhone in the mass market.

[joezydeco]

As a phone owner with kids, I just don't see this happening in my household. Modules getting dropped/lost (especially the critical one that makes the others go), connectors wearing out from constant playing around or, even worse, smeared with food and crammed with junk.

I have a hard time keeping unified units intact and working, much less letting my family near a Lego kit that needs to be 100% assembled to work properly...

[zheshishei]

>Not to mention that having to choose among components just adds an additional layer of option stress that most consumers don't want.

I think consumers actually like a little choice in their products now. I mean, take a look at the apple laptop website.

Also, I could imagine vendors offering different phone presets (e.g. battery life, photo-taking, media consumption) and then letting the customer further customize it if they want.

[smackfu]

The same arguments can be used against a removable battery, but the flagship Samsung has one.

[sjwright]

And yet, probably 99% of their owners will never purchase a replacement battery.

For a given sized phone, a replaceable battery is necessarily smaller capacity than a fixed equivalent, due to space wasted on additional housings, clips and connectors.

[CHY872]

Well, the problem's just (obviously) that if you ever open up an iPhone (or I suspect any competing phone), every cubic millimetre of it is filled with things that do stuff. To add all the panels that bridge components, the connecting hardware etc can only add weight and space. It'll be interesting to see if Google can make it work, but you can't say that it's not unjustified skepticism. In terms of 'any advantage', I interpreted it as 'any overall advantage', and I think I probably agree with him.

[jacquesm]

No, Gruber has it exactly right, see my comments below on how an older modular phone fared.

[bane]

As a result Gruber has made himself almost entirely irrelevant. I almost can't wait to watch him twist himself into knots when Apple releases a larger phone.

[supercoder]

He's not suggesting there a no advantages , just that the ones that it does provide won't be enough to compete against non modular phones.

[jeez444]

Agreed. This is yet another product that will appeal to techies and first adopters only.

For instance, people could -- in theory -- build their own computers with a bunch of modular components, but instead a lot of them buy a Mac or some other variation of all-in-one solution.

[DCKing]

It's different. With computers, you pick your own motherboard, CPU, GPU, memory config and so on. These things look funny and technical and most people don't even touch them. But even casual users regularly replace/expand their displays, storage (I'm counting external hard drives) and laptop batteries.

With this project, your SoC - which is your CPU, motherboard, networking, memory and baseband chip all in one - is still just one package. Yet you can easily supplement other varieties of packages for displays, storage, batteries, cameras. Each of these things are quite well understood by many casual users.

[venomsnake]

And gamers ...

http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/ and with the influx of new people in PC gaming with self build rigs - the custom PC market is quite healthy right now.

[dlp211]

And it is also very niche. The custom PC market has been, and will continue to be a "healthy" market, but it is by no means a growing market. The difference between a custom built PC, and a modular designed phone, is that for the most part, a static device, that is, it doesn't go anywhere, versus a phone, which will be abused just by the nature of the fact that it is a mobile phone (I mean the presentation is proof of this, the phone broke the day before).

Now am I saying that there is no market for this, absolutely not, but this in no way will become the standard for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one to me, is time. I used to build all my PC's, taking the time to compare parts, read reviews, check out overclockability, and look for deals and get the best bang for my buck, but as I have gotten older, I just want a machine that works, my disdain for everything Apple, has completely turned around, I absolutely love my Macs now, not because I think Apple and Steve are gods gift to computing, but because they work, they maintain resale value, and compared to PC hardware, they are superior.

[leoc]

Than again, a lot of them do self-build. Even if this system is only good enough to attract techies and enthusiasts, that might be enough to give it a viable market.

[phaer]

Well, it has some other benefits which might outweigh those points. Beside the added flexibility in general, ecological benefits might be one of those because you can avoid highly toxic and expensive-to-recycle waste if you can replace parts of your phone and escape the "I need to replace my phone every two years because one small part is now outdated or broken"-cycle.

[acjohnson55]

I'm not sure it's any better to have to manufacture and dispose of dozens of little modules. In fact, I think it's probably worse.

[jan_g]

I tend to agree with Gruber on this one. Modular phone might be perfect for me (will see when and if it gets released), but I am not sure it can attract the masses as well as polished, high-end phones from Apple, Samsung, Nokia, etc. Size, weight and appearance do matter a lot to average customer.

[venomsnake]

I suppose someone has said that about the PC clones in the middle of the 1980s in some hardware vendor central.

If it is properly though out and with the ability to get high end performance on BOM + change prices ... they may have a winner.

[anigbrowl]

But so what? It's perfectly OK for a product to appeal to a small niche as long as it breaks even. I am so tired of the conceit (mostly put about by lazy journalists) that there must be only one best product in any category. That just leads to lowest-common-denominator approaches in which quality is judged on popularity alone.

[personZ]

It's worth noting that Gruber was among the chorus that were outright mocking the Samsung Note.

[anigbrowl]

Why offer electronics components to the general public? After all, most people don't want to create their own electronic devices, therefore making such things available in retail channels is a complete waste of time. I'm not too sure about screwdrivers either.

I can't believe people are giving Gruber's arguments the time of day on a news site for hackers.

[return0]

I don't think Google expects this to be a massive consumer product, but it sounds like it can be great fun for techies. In this case, Gruber's opinion hardly matters.

[ama729]

Except the important thing is "how much", nobody care if it's 1mm thicker or 20g heavier, especially for someone who would value modularity.