Phone Blocks

[Vagrant0]

Even for a niche market I don't see this resulting in much. It took PC building a good 20 years before the individual components had a good enough reliability and were robust enough that your average person could put together a PC without high risk of something breaking in the process. Then you have part compatibility issues or just a lack of variety for most of the hardware allowing those companies that make that hardware to charge whatever they want with a sub-standard product.

[JimboUK]

as i said, contracts could be going by the way side.

 

also, if people realized they could upgrade pieces of their phone whenever they wanted, better CPU, more responsive screen, etc, then it could beat out waiting 2 years for a contract end date, or waiting for the next $700 flagship from one of 3 companies.

 

this phone is only an idea. to say it would be successful or not, so early, is, as we know, fruitless. could end up being something huge, or a flop. even if this phone itself doesnt go anywhere, i like the idea.

 

But contracts aren't going anywhere, they're used to tie people in so service providers aren't going to be in any hurry to support this, neither will manufacturers who make a lot of money selling these things. You can't just upgrade your CPU either, you'd also need to upgrade the battery, a bigger battery would leave less space for other things, are people going to sacrifice their camera, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for a bigger battery?

[Werne]

You can't just upgrade your CPU either, you'd also need to upgrade the battery, a bigger battery would leave less space for other things, are people going to sacrifice their camera, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for a bigger battery?

A battery doesn't necessarily have to be bigger, batteries used in these cellphones are pathetic, pretty much a big piece with an average of 950-1150mAh capacity. Even the batteries in a remote have more capacity while being 1/5 of the size. Reason - price, if manufacturers were to put a 4Ah battery, the end product would cost a lot more once taxes and stuff are applied to it.

 

Also, a circuit board can't be changed dynamically like the rest of the parts. You'd have a slot with a certain size where you can put your component, so you wouldn't be able to shove a battery that's 1/3 the size of the phone. You also couldn't shove a 50W CPU onto a mobo that supports CPUs up to 35W because you would fry it.

 

Why not have different-sized parts? Did you ever try to shove a CPU into a PCI-E slot? Or a PCI card into a USB plug? That's why, a circuit board is a circuit board, contacts and connections on the board can't be changed dynamically as components are replaced. If a board is made for the battery that has 4 pins and is 35x40mm than it will support that battery or the one compatible, but not a bigger one, or one with 3 pins. Or if it supports a CPU with a certain socket and number of pins, you can't put a different CPU in it, just like you can't use a 1155 CPU on a 1150 mobo.

 

Each upgrade would be getting a new circuit board that supports the hardware combination you have and if the board doesn't support it, you'd be forced to upgrade other parts as well. It's a decent idea but things can't stay the same forever, connectors change as hardware is improved, nearly every generation you'd be forced to just replace the whole thing, which becomes what we have already. It may be good for those wanting to have the bleeding edge hardware all the time and buy new parts as soon as they appear, but for anyone else it would be pretty much useless.

 

My opinion is purely on the hardware side, I don't care much about the idealistic part of this.

[hoofhearted4]

oh but they are. its the service providers that want to get rid of them. people buying a new $700 phone every year or so is more money then people buying a $200 phone on a contracts every 2 years. actually, what some people do is cancel their contract and switch providers to get the newest phone. which costs the providers even more.