The main thrust of the comments so far are negative, but in my opinion this was a great idea.<p>Phones are personal devices. Plenty of time is spent on smoothly machined surfaces, wood cases, etc. A little biosphere is a beautiful idea, and likely cost a fraction of the overall project.
This is like the rumor of 1970's platform shoes filled with water and fish floating inside.<p>But to be serious here are some of the other modules they planned on:<p><a href="http://www.modularphonesforum.com/news/yezz-another-28-module-concepts-project-ara-1887/" rel="nofollow">http://www.modularphonesforum.com/news/yezz-another-28-modul...</a><p>And yeah some look pretty cool, a scale, iris detector, a better microphone and speaker, laser range finder, smoke detector (but could imagine perhaps other hazardous materials). Might think of other specialty application, but the problem is in any of those fields, there are probably higher quality tools already available not tied to an experimental expensive phone. They'd have to first make the phone as ubiquitous as an iPhone then start selling add-ons. Not make add-ons as as a major feature of the phone.<p>But tardigrades just seems like a way to get someone in management to notice and say "Wait wut, we are spending the money on this? Somebody, please defund this project".
These sealed aquatic systems are really cool. How do you go about finding out how much of everything you need to put in them for long term survival?<p>Can the biological processes of these simple organisms be modeled as checmical equations and all you need to do is balance them out and solve for the mols of everything you need to pour in?
We might have hit peak phone. As much as I try I don't get the reasoning on this one. How is it that these top techs could not find a better idea?<p>Forget the aquarium, how about a really strong microscope. Or a portable testing lab or a television or some kind of art project.
Sad to see Ara die. I don't understand why they took three years to realise the path they were pursuing didn't work. Why couldn't they figure out earlier so they still had time to do something that works?<p>Google should have pursued a less ambitious and more practical version of the idea. Instead of making everything replaceable, maybe just identify one component that would be. Like the camera. Why do I have to buy a new phone if all I want is a new camera? Would a phone with only one or two replaceable components be feasible to build, and not impose too many tradeoffs?<p>The Ara team pursued the "everything should be replaceable" dream for too long, and failed. I wonder if a limited version would have been feasible.<p>It doesn't make sense that you should buy a new smartphone, priced at as much as ₹80K ($1000) even if all you want is one new component. Imagine if you had to buy a new laptop for more storage for your movies, and external hard discs didn't exist. Or a bigger screen, when you could use an external monitor. And so on.
Those poor tardigrades would be killed by all of the dangerous radiation coming from the phone.<p>Just kidding, they'd be killed by the dangerous <i>conduction</i> from the phone. The little guys can't handle the rapid heat changes caused by the battery and CPU.
It would be cool if in the future a device can scan (real life scene, blood, piece of chalk) anything and tell you the composition and everything you ask. Think Pokedex and those fictional gadgets in sci-fi movies.
Would make an interesting random number generator (which are tough to find on some systems). Waterbears are rad hard as well :) Would be tough for Mallory to "reduce their entropy."
> One pitch outlined a module that transmits touch, like a high-tech version of the heartbeat feature in the Apple Watch.<p>Seems unfair to group this with the far fetched ideas. I for one think this is a killer feature in a world that could use more opportunities for meaningful connections.
Coming across the Lapka concept for Project Ara[0] made me realize that the problem was to market this as a "phone" in the first place.<p>Few people are willing to take the risk on a phone with an entirely new form factor, let alone an entirely novel premise, and no one would carry two phones around in their pocket.<p>It seems like they missed an opportunity to position this as a customizable mobile computing platform. Or perhaps they did and thought it was too niche.<p>[0] <a href="https://medium.com/@my_lapka/lapka-x-project-ara-78fc5fe9f50a" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@my_lapka/lapka-x-project-ara-78fc5fe9f50...</a>
Another crazy idea. Why not integrate a soldering iron?<p>Soldering irons that are powered via USB with 1500mA and 5V exist and are basically just a heating element plus a 555 timer chip.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-8D5t6TJYU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-8D5t6TJYU</a>
"Hey, the Ara is going nowhere, but it would be a shame to not get any return from it... Lets see how many click bait blog articles we can generate from it!"
Cruelty to animals. I eat meat but do not like seeing anything suffer for purposes of amusement. These are small, but mistreating even insects can be a crime in the US (specifically if you film it). Give them a digital version and leave the actual animals out of such displays.