Google shelves plan for phone with interchangeable parts

Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knew this was the ultimate result on the very day they announced it.<p>To make something modular you need to wrap each piece in its own case, add bulky connectors, etc. Both weight and volume are at an extreme premium in mobile devices. All that metal&#x2F;plastic going in to making the pieces modular is stealing volume and weight from the battery.<p>The only realistic way to make the power envelope is to use an SoC, which means the CPU, GPU, and RAM must all be in the same module. That doesn&#x27;t leave a lot worth upgrading... maybe just the radio module. Jumping up in screen resolution would mean replacing the SoC to get a better GPU too.<p>Modularity worked in desktop PCs because they have gobs of space and an AC power connection.

I&#x27;ve speculated for a long time that basically anything interesting Google says they&#x27;re doing is essentially meant to be a jobs program to keep employees from leaving, PR for external stakeholders like investors, media, being attractive to potential employees, etc. They seem to have lots of formal ways to keep employees from leaving&#x2F;close as well including investments off of Google&#x27;s balance sheet (not GV or Google Capital) into ex-employee startups and just flat out paying people not to leave (which is the arrangement I&#x27;m guessing that Matt Cutts is under). It all seems very Microsoft of old.<p>Can anyone at Google (or ex-employees) tell me if this is true?

It&#x27;s really sad to think about how far we&#x27;ve fallen in terms of hardware customizability since the desktop PC era. It was once a given that you could build your own device from scratch and change out any part you wanted to. You could keep systems usable for 10+ years this way and we got a generation of hardware hackers and enthusiasts who went on to make cool things.<p>Now our corporate overlord announces a way to let you replace a few basic components like your camera and battery and when they later cancel it the dominant reaction is &quot;no big surprise there.&quot; Replace the magic candy bar in your pocket every 2 years, don&#x27;t look inside, don&#x27;t think about how it works, just embrace your new role in the modern tech industry as part of the top 1%&#x27;s recurring revenue strategy.<p>The big money won, consumers lost, hackers lost. Sure it&#x27;s business and you can never expect corporations to be altruistic, they have a profit motive. But that&#x27;s never meant that you should give an anti-consumer attitude a free pass either. Every year that goes by now drives me deeper into the open source camp and Stallman&#x27;s welcoming embrace.

There are too many tangible benefits to close integration between CPU, screen, battery, and antennas -- the latter of which is probably the most difficult to modularize.<p>A much better tactic would&#x27;ve been 1-2 expansion ports for specialized hardware modules -- everything from credit card readers (a la Square), medical sensors, portable oscilloscope, etc. A standardized peripheral interface for hardware expansion slots across all phone variants could&#x27;ve really enabled a whole bunch of new applications (and industries). I&#x27;m sad to see it abandoned entirely.<p>(I wonder if there weren&#x27;t some strong personalities that kept the &quot;100% modular or bust&quot; mentality?)

Meanwhile elsewhere: Fairphone 2 is available, is modular and user-repairable (iFixit: 10&#x2F;10: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;Teardown&#x2F;Fairphone+2+Teardown&#x2F;52523" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;Teardown&#x2F;Fairphone+2+Teardown&#x2F;52523</a>). Ara looked cooler, but I guess I should cease any high hopes for Google innovation or market disruption. Which is sad, but probably the way things go in this world.

It is 2016 and a lot of people are still not very good with computers, let alone mobile phone components. We live in Silicon Valley so it might be hard to understand this very simple fact. I invite everyone to go to an Apple store and just sit there and watch the scores of folks come in and have to be sat down and explained, slowly, about the simplest concepts for macOS or iOS. I have mad respect for Apple Geniuses.<p>Now, imagine a phone that has all these components and imagine the overhead of supporting that. Now you might say it is for tech people..that market is not big enough to warrant the R&amp;D and support. Right call Google.

Whenever I saw articles about this my first thought was always that it didn&#x27;t make any sense. 1. Why do consumers need to decide what goes in their phone. Are my needs really different that someone else&#x27;s? 2. Building hardware is hard. Building consumer hardware is really harder. Making it modular is just batshit crazy.<p>I never once thought this would see the light of day.

I&#x27;ve learned to completely ignore anything launched publicly at google IO (wave, ara, glass, etc).

Disappointed about this one - I guess this was just too early (like glass). They had to create a lot of both hardware AND software to make it work. Expensive and risky work for a single company to take on.<p>I was honestly holding off on a cell phone upgrade hoping to get my hands on the developer version of this early 2017.

I&#x27;m not surprised. I can&#x27;t think of any way for it to actually be better for day to day use than a monolithic smartphone.<p>My biggest surprise is that it was still chugging along until now.

I always thought that Ara might be a useful platform not so much for smartphones but for all those hand-held custom devices, you could plug in a credit card reader, laser, special cameras, voltmeter or whatever you need.

If it came out tomorrow it&#x27;d be 10 years too late. Cellphones seem to have hit a plateau. All the parts are now good enough in a cheap phone that no one really needs this.<p>I got a $150 aluminum phone with a huge battery, nice enough camera, fingerprint scanner, 3GBs of RAM, expandable storage, etc. etc. ... I don&#x27;t feel like I need expansion options. What can the higher-specs really offer now a days?<p>Samsung has the right idea, maybe we&#x27;ll need better phones for VR. Or maybe built in picoprojectors will be a game changer. But for that you&#x27;ll need a whole new phone - not just a module snaps on.

&gt; Axing Project Ara is one of the first steps in a campaign to unify Google&#x27;s various hardware efforts, which range from Chromebook laptops to Nexus phones.<p>Their new phone line will be called <i>Pixels</i>.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.androidpolice.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;01&#x2F;exclusive-googles-new-phones-will-be-called-the-pixel-and-pixel-xl&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.androidpolice.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;01&#x2F;exclusive-googles-ne...</a>

It was an interesting idea but I could never see it working myself. It looked like a solution in search of a problem.<p>So you&#x27;re meant to buy a phone shell and separate components to plug into this, where you can upgrade different components over time? Ignoring technical issues, wouldn&#x27;t the shell get out of date quickly as well as the components (with some components being incompatible with other shells and components)?<p>It doesn&#x27;t sound cost effective considering how cheap phones are getting and how often we are seeing physical hardware changes still (e.g. fingerprint readers, screen size, thinnest).

This project was longed to die. It should have died 3 years back. I wonder why the project team didn&#x27;t understand or realize the dynamics of smartphone market. The equation is simple, there is no market for phone with interchangeable components. period. Chinese companies are manufacturing dead cheap smartphones. Indian market is flooded with cheap phone options. An average life cycle of android phone is now less than 2 years. People throw their old phone and buy a new one because new phones are cheap and easy to buy plus they get an overall upgrade. Maybe they didn&#x27;t realize because the project was carried out in US where there is not much competition from phone manufacturers and Apple takes away major share of the market.<p>This interchangeable components idea is much like Assembled computers back in early 2000s. Most people went for assembled computers because it was easy to upgrade single components&#x2F;pieces. They should have realized that people don&#x27;t do that with computers these days either. Only may be few enthusiasts and geeks, but definitely not by a common man.<p>One more project dies at Google...

That makes sense. All those connector pins and latches were inherently going to be troublesome and fragile.<p>There&#x27;s a market for various instruments one could attach to a phone, but it&#x27;s not a mass market. You can get USB devices which give you a spectrum analyzer or an OBD-II connector, and there are apps to drive them. They&#x27;re not something you get at phone stores.

As the Moto Z will likely confirm, no one is really interested in modular phones.

I am quite surprised, that instead of allowing users to change modules (and thus are forced to build it up with casing and connectors) they didn&#x27;t release certification on doing it and let people drop their phones to the mobile service points all over the world for free or small fee like $1 (including vacuuming insides to add extra value). Such shops would make money on selling modules. Modules could be less protected and delivered without the casing. Changing modules would take ~1-2minutes since the store clerk would be trained to do it and use 2-3 universal tools to open the phone and change the modules.<p>Those 2-3 tools would be also available to buy, so owners could change the modules themselves. But since it would be quite advanced - same as with changing PC parts - it would void the guarantee for whole phone.

So a modular phone is a bad idea, but what about the spec? I could imagine widgets that connect to mountain bikes, toasters, and ski helmets; the phone is just enabling.<p>&gt; the company may work with partners to bring Project Ara’s technology to market<p>...vague, but maybe.

This doesn&#x27;t surprise me. I feel like the concept is nice, but they have to do a kick-ass job as making sure everything goes together well and can&#x27;t just randomly fail -- I would hate if my phone&#x27;s data got corrupted because a piece of it randomly fell off my phone or accidentally spilling some water on it, which would not affect a normal phone but may seep into between a pair of component edges. But beyond that, and more importantly, it has to make economic sense. Would it have been cheaper than a random cheap phone, especially in the developing world?

I never saw the potential of this project given how slim the phones are getting and how the hardware is literally attached to screen. The design and aesthetic would have to be compromised for these modular phones. The two places where this would have been useful are camera and battery but there is literally no innovation happening in these two departments so expect for the next 2-3 years, our batteries and camera specs will not significantly change due to technology limitations and size constraints.

Of course. Something like that would be a compatibility and testing nightmare. Users aren&#x27;t going to be content dealing with PC style driver issues with a mobile device. And to gain what? The ability to upgrade or customize a phone? Why? Do your mobile device needs change that often?<p>A better idea is to attack the areas where apple and samsung are retreating. Replaceable batteries, memory cards, peripheral connections etc...

Phones are at the point desktops hit about 10 years ago, they&#x27;re good enough to use for general purpose until the end of time. Everything people typically want can be done instantaneously, cameras are way better than anyone really cared about and screens are perfectly clear. The only thing stopping us from having a phone for life is forced obsolescence. All we need back is removable batteries and storage.

Modular smartphones or computers are still a great idea. They may have had trouble easily capitalizing at this time without interfering with other products.

&gt; <i>“This was a science experiment that failed, and they are moving on,” he said.</i><p>Semi-seriously, but I&#x27;d like to know where exactly they are moving on now.

I was excited about this, but after going dark for nearly a year and then resurfacing with a model that had most of the important components integrated onto the board, the writing was on the wall.<p>It&#x27;s a cool concept, but I don&#x27;t think current technology would allow this to work in a reasonable way.

There was an Israeli startup that tried to do this ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Modu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Modu</a> ) and apparently Google acquired some of that IP. I wonder if this effort is related.

It may shound harsh, but why should I want a modular Android phone? To update my hardware over the years to come while still running the same Android version without receiving updates.<p>Google, your Android updating system is fucked up. Fix it first, and then we can talk about exending the life of hardware.

You can add new camera or bluetooth controller but you can&#x27;t (sanely) update firmware to latest Android version. Great.<p>(I mean sanely if it was like installing Windows or Linux and not specific build for single phone model made from hacks and insane backmerges)

I had high hopes for this, but seeing how fragmentation is harming Android when the phone is a single integrated device - seems unrealistic they would be able to get all these components to play well together among various OEMs.

This is my attitude regarding Red camera&#x27;s lauded modularity.<p>Ok so you can keep your handle and grip, and the little viewfinder. The sum of Those useless pieces doesn&#x27;t mean you&#x27;ve &quot;upgraded&quot; your camera

No Google! That is not acceptable! You can not always make people hope for years and then just drop it. When you start with marketing you take on some responsibility. You lost someone who believed in you.

I am not surprised either. It is more of a gimmicky idea, than a revolutionary moonshot one. It is somehow hard to picture where is the market and how to convince customers to buy it.

Finally. The first modular phone prototype I saw in Logitech HQ in 1999 or so was shelved for the exact same reasons.<p>I&#x27;m expecting a similar announcement about project Makani.

Speaking off the cuff here. I think google wants ideas that might work then put a team on them. Close it down and aquire a company that makes it successful.

Isn&#x27;t software the best interchangeable parts for a phone? Modular add-ons were doomed to fail from the go and no idea why they got any traction.

Its all about money -&gt; Do incremental &quot;innovation&quot; but make people pay for the whole thing again and again each and every year.

Everyone always knew this was never reach the mainstream consumer but I would&#x27;ve liked to seen something released.

I think its cool that they at least gave it a shot, but in the process it used up their stocks of unicorn blood.

At least this time they killed the product _before_ rolling it out to users. Google is improving every day!

What is the strong reason behind nodularization if we can have almost every component in place for cheap?

This is a Fuchsia casualty, and it won&#x27;t be the last. Google cannot afford to innovate with hardware until they are done replacing the open-source kernel in Android. Once that&#x27;s done, and OEMs are accustomed to writing Fuchsia drivers instead, they can use increased leverage over manufacturers to drive hardware innovations in directions they want.

I hope some of this reappears eventually as a scheme for a modular tiny desktop computer.

Have they released anything? Or was the lg g4 the closest thing to a modular smartphone?

Can anyone name other modular products in high volume production.

Surprise.

Ever since the idea of a modular phone was first introduced &quot;Phonebloks, or whatever it was&quot; I have known for a fact that it was a fundamentally flawed concept and would never see the light of day, despite the enormous hype and support it received.<p>Is this proof that I am more intelligent than everyone who believed in this idea? I think so?

Finally I can say this was a stupid idea<p>and by stupid, I meant economically infeasible, no product market fit<p>words we associate with waste of time, in this sector