Tag Archives: Modular Smartphone

Xiaomi tries building what Google and Motorola couldn’t – the modular smartphone

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The modular smartphone still remains an elusive pipe dream, nearly a decade after the Phonebloks surfaced on the internet. Google tried it, Motorola managed to execute a strange version of it with the Moto Mods, and every company that considered it eventually abandoned it because it was a logistical nightmare with very little net positive benefit. It’s safe to say Xiaomi isn’t ‘every company’. The Chinese giant’s company’s name loosely translates to ‘little grain’, and it talks about a philosophy of building a lot from a little. This means they’re not averse to taking risks, and they’ve definitely surprised before, with their phones like the Mi MIX 2 that was designed by Philippe Starck, the Mi TV LUX, a transparent television, and even their latest bit of innovation in the Mi MIX Fold, with its liquid camera lens. According to LetsGoDigital, it seems like the company is also trying its hand out at designing the modular smartphone by splitting the device into four distinct parts – the screen, the camera, the battery+pcb, and the speakers.

LetsGoDigital uncovered the patent on the 26th of April, and partnered with Jermaine Smit (aka Concept Creator) to bring the patent drawings to life. The phone’s components attach to one another using sliding dovetail joinery, with contact points that allow for communication between modules. Finally, a primary screen snaps on the front, hiding the crease-lines and providing a large, bezel-less display. The three modules play a rather interesting role when combined together. The upper module houses the camera, but also contains the phone’s motherboard. The central module houses the battery, while the third contains the speaker along with the phone’s charging port. Conceptually, the modules would be interchangeable, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you had to switch the phone off prior to swapping parts.

Jermaine Smit’s camera modules give this conceptual Xiaomi smartphone a variety of features, including camera modules with different capabilities. The different modules have anywhere from a 3-4 lens setup, with one of the higher-end ones even coming with its own backward-facing display that’s emblematic of the Mi 11 Ultra that released earlier this year. Unlike the Ultra, which had a tiny display, this concept’s display is a respectable 2-inches diagonally. I’d assume it would be big enough to use as a viewfinder for selfies (given that the phone doesn’t have a front-facing camera) and even for notifications.

Although this concept, and Xiaomi’s patent, unlocks some pretty interesting possibilities, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Not many of these patents really make it to a public reveal or to a retail outlet, but instead, aim at protecting a company’s intellectual property and research. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if Xiaomi just announced it as a one-off concept to show that their tech isn’t just a dream, it works in reality too. Until then, all we have are these (pretty intriguing) renders!

Designer: Jermaine Smit for LetsGoDigital

Image Credits: LetsGoDigital

Fairphone 2 Gets a Range of Wooden 3D Printed Accessories

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Modular Fairphone 2 Smartphone Wooden 3D Printed Accessories 01

The world’s first commercially available modular smartphone, Fairphone 2, has just gotten a pair of wooden 3D printed accessories, in the form of an amplifier and nightstand.

Promoted by its Dutch developer as an ethical smartphone, Fairphone 2 is supposed to prevent users from throwing money out the window when trying to stay in touch with the latest developments in the world of mobile devices. Their solution is to provide a backbone to which users can add modules and change them as they see fit. Of course, such a revolutionary device deserves to be used in tandem with some equally revolutionary accessories, and the amplifier and nightstand that were 3D printed using wood filaments definitely match that title.

To make the 3D printed accessories, Fairphone collaborated with 3D Hubs, an online 3D printing service platform that’s also headquartered in the Netherlands. Here’s what 3D Hubs had to say about this partnership:

“To help kick off the launch of the Fairphone 2, we’ve teamed up with Fairphone to introduce a new collection of 3D printable accessories for Fairphone owners. These accessories will add additional functionality and style to your Fairphone 2.

Instead of being mass-produced like most other smartphone accessories, these accessories are 3D printed on demand, preventing both unnecessary transport and overproduction. Even better, the designs are printed using a unique material made from recycled wood fibers and bioplastic PLA.”

The recycled wood fibers mentioned above are in fact called ColorFabb woodFill, and are supposed to take the smartphone’s sustainability to a whole new level. Not only will Fairphone 2 reduce the amount of waste that’s typically generated by people who are constantly upgrading their smartphone, but so will the accessories designed for this device.

“Designed by professional industrial designer Alan Nguyen and printed using woodFill 3D printing filament, the Fairphone 2 Nightstand is the ideal charging and resting spot for your device during twilight hours,” added 3D Hubs on their website.

Below is a video of how the Fairphone 2 was designed.

The wooden 3D printed Fairphone 2 nightstand is available on the manufacturer’s website for €19.50 (approximately $21.40), while the Fairphone 2 amplifier is a tad more expensive, as it costs €26.50 (around $29). Much like the modular smartphone itself, the 3D printed accessories are only available in Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Denmark and Norway. We can only hope that the company is planning to sell its products globally.

The only other culprit, besides the smartphone’s limited availability, is that the Fairphone 2 costs €529.38 ($580), which is a bit of a steep price, considering the outdated specs. The manufacturer should have launched the product with better components, if it wanted people to even consider buying it. This way, they’ll have to think of upgrading it right after making the purchase, which is definitely not the way to go in the rapidly evolving industry that is mobile tech.

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[via 3D Hubs]

Indiegogo Pulls the Plug on Scammy Modular Phone Campaign

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Fonkraft

A couple of days ago, many tech sites were pointing and laughing at Google’s Project Ara, saying that Fonkraft, a Viennese startup, had beat it to the punch.

The flex-fund Indiegogo campaign would’ve been a success for the two Austrians behind Fonkraft, even if the $50,000 funding goal wasn’t met. There are so many problems here, that it’s difficult for me to choose one to start with. Remember when Canonical (the makers of Ubuntu) looked to raise $32m on Indiegogo for what would have been Ubuntu Edge, the first smarthone to run their flavor of Linux? Had that been a flex-fund campaign, Canonical would have obtained the $12m the backers pledged by the campaign’s end, and would’ve started working on their product. Believing that a Project Ara-killer could’ve been done with $50K is a sign of unimaginable naivety.

Secondly, the two guys representing “Fonkfraft Technologies” (it does sound fancy and credible, doesn’t it?) seem to be some ghosts. They have no social media profiles, no LinkedIn pages, and basically nothing to suggest that they have any experience in the phone industry. I can’t help but wonder how two guys would’ve manufactured four different models of modular phones with $50K.

As seen in the following video, the prototype is represented by two pieces of plastic. Knowing this, learning that backers had pledged more than $20,000 before Indiegogo decided to suspend the campaign is simply unbelievable.

This is not the first time things go awry in crowdfunding. In October 2014, Kickstarter decided to shut down the campaign for Anonabox, a “privacy router,” that was supposed to make use of some custom hardware to achieve the promised results, until it didn’t. This time, it’s Indiegogo’s turn to prove that it has no standards when it comes to accepting projects for crowdfunding. Fortunately, the crowdfunding platform has realized early that the Fonkraft campaign is a scam, and pulled the plug on it before backers lost their money.

I just wish people weren’t so ignorant when it came to investing their money in something that was never seen before. After all, if a modular phone, along with a bunch of modules, were so cheap to make, chances are we would have already had such a product, by now. Unfortunately, some still have to learn that not everything that flies was born with wings.

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Puzzlephone Modular Smartphone Lets You Upgrade Its Heart and Brain

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Puzzlephone 02

The story of modular smartphones goes beyond Project Ara. In fact, knowing how long Google X Projects take to become commercially available, we might get a modular device sooner, in the form of the Puzzlephone.

The problem with our smartphones (or rather with us) nowadays is they they get morally obsolete sooner than becoming unable to run the latest apps and games. With that in mind, it would really be a pity (not to mention a waste of money and a way of showing the middle finger to Mother Nature) to throw away a perfectly nice phone simply because you’re not happy anymore with how long the battery lasts or how fast the CPU is. Enter Puzzlephone, a modular smartphone that refers to its components as body parts, probably in order to establish a better rapport with its customers.

Coming from Finland (as a matter of fact, from Nokia’s hometown), Puzzlephone won’t sport as many modules as Project Ara, since the manufacturers have figured out that some components could be packed together. Besides, if a high quality display and a nice pair of speakers are provided from the very beginning, these could be part of the smartphone’s framework, which in this case is called the Spine.

The Heart includes the battery and some of the electronics (such as sensors), while the brain packs the camera and the smartphone’s CPU (and most probably the GPU and RAM, as well). New sensors are developed on a regular basis, and the life of batteries decreases in time, so there’s no denying that the Heart should be changed every three years or so. The Brain could use a refresh every now and then, as well, as apps get greedier with the device’s resources with each passing day. Both of these modules slide into place quite easily, so swapping them will definitely not be rocket science.

The following video, which was posted by Puzzlephone back in February, explains why a modular smartphone is so much better than a conventional one:

Puzzlephone promises to have a prototype ready be the end of the year, so peel your eyes open for this modular smartphone. Also, the company claims it does its best to launch the device sometime next year, and I bet the wait will be worth it!

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Google’s Project Ara to Have Its Own Component Store

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Google Project Ara Component Store

Much like the Google Play Store, which also sells Android devices besides millions of apps, the Project Ara component store will offer people plenty of options when building a modular smartphone.

Since Google did not launch separate websites for its Android devices, you might wonder what could determine the company to create a dedicated component store for Project Ara. The Play Store already offers a great experience when it comes to buying Nexus smartphones and tablets, but it doesn’t include a review system. On top of that, the Project Ara component store will feature recommendations on how to mix and match various smartphone modules in order to get the best performance for specific tasks.

Team leader Paul Eremenko explained in an interview at a Purdue University event that the Project Ara component store will resemble the Google Play Store, not just in the design, but also in the overall shopping experience.”By following the Android model, we are creating a free and open platform… The Ara MDK (Module Developers Kit) is free and open and available to everybody, so everybody could create a module per the specifications of the developer’s kit and put it in the Ara module marketplace, which is analogous to the Google Play store, and sell directly to consumers.”

The idea of basing the component store on an already successful recipe is not bad at all. If it’s not broken, why not use it again? There are still a few questions to be answered by Google, such as the approximate number of modules will be available in the component store at the time of the launch. Also, the world has yet to find out who Google’s partners are in terms of smartphone module manufacturing. Is it the usual suspects all over again? Surely Samsung, LG, Motorola, Asus and HTC have plenty of experience in making Nexus devices, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some new players besides them.

In the interview, which is available above in its entirety, Eremenko didn’t say anything about the current status of Project Ara, so we don’t know when the modular smartphone will become a reality. Considering that Google has only organized one of the three Ara Developers’ Conferences announced for this year, we might be in for a surprise this holiday season.

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Google Will Give Developers a Lesson in Modular Smartphones in April

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Google Modular Smartphone, Project Ara

The alpha version of the Project Ara MDK (module developers’ kit) will be unveiled by Google on April 15-16, at the first Ara Developers’ Conference.

Motorola ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects), the home of Projects Ara and Tango, is one of the things Google kept after selling Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, the others being about 17,000 patents. The concept behind Ara was first presented by Motorola last year in October, and the project is said to also be based on several patents that Google bought from Modu prior to acquiring Motorola Mobility.

What seems to be the ultimate modular smartphone could turn into a nightmare for other smartphone manufacturers. Google wants to enable people to change the underperforming modules when new ones hit the market, rather than changing the entire smartphone, something that doesn’t seem to bother iPhone users, despite the exorbitant prices practiced by Apple.

Google plans to organize a series of three Ara Developers’ Conferences this year, the first one being scheduled for April 15-16. This is a sign that the search giant might not launch the modular smartphone before 2015, but even if it is so, the wait will be worth it. Let’s face it, Motorola under Google ownership did not really launch anything otherworldly, but Ara has great chances of being something revolutionary. It might be for the best that Google wants to launch smartphones under its own name, considering the weight of this brand.

One other thing that will set Ara apart from all the other smartphones, be them modular or not, is the price. According to the latest reports, the barebone smartphone will cost $50, while the price of the modules will depend on the capabilities of each one of them. Do you want a great camera, but don’t care that much about gaming and the smartphone’s GPU? Do you need a lot of RAM because you run a lot of apps at the same time? There are plenty of other scenarios in which Project Ara looks like the perfect solution.

Rest assured, Google’s Project Ara is not the only modular smartphone out there. Competition includes Boeing Black, Phonebloks and ZTE Eco-Mobius. I’m glad that this is becoming a trend, as it’s much better to replace a single module than the entire smartphone when new features appear.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about Google’s Project Tango, a 3D mapping smartphone, and Boeing Black, another modular smartphone.