Lego Phone

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Argus

Spack Jazzrabbit
Feb 13, 2008
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I love how in the related videos, there's a video called "Why Phonebloks Aren't Going To Happen".
 

Zur

surrealistic mad cow
Jul 8, 2002
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Think a big mobile manufacturer said they were interested. Wait and see.
 

Twisted Metal

Anfractuous Aluminum
Jul 28, 2001
7,122
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Long Island, NY
Gotta be the stupidest idea I've ever seen. You know how uncomfortable it will be to hold a right angled phone with a million seams in it? Not to mention the structural integrity. It's gonna be rickety as hell, especially if you're pulling it apart and putting it together over and over again. It's gonna be thick, it's gonna weigh a lot... I'd take a quality aluminum unibody over that any day.

Google has the right idea with their Nexus lineup. Create a top of the line, *ACTUALLY AFFORDABLE* phone with no contract or tie down to any carrier.
 

N1ghtmare

Sweet Dreams
Jul 17, 2005
2,411
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Where least expected
Because today's phones have *cough* amazing *cough* structural integrity. Someone seems defensive about buying phones regularly.

Speaking of legos, how about a lego car?

[M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ObE4_nMCjE[/M]
 

Jacks:Revenge

╠╣E╚╚O
Jun 18, 2006
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somewhere; sometime?
the concept is what's cool.
whether or not the particular model in question becomes reality isn't as important as the idea.

I would much rather treat my phones like my computers which I buy much less often because individual components can simply be upgraded to keep with the times.
great idea. the current cell phone industry is shite with the constant replacements.
 

dragonfliet

I write stuffs
Apr 24, 2006
3,754
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the concept is what's cool.
whether or not the particular model in question becomes reality isn't as important as the idea.

I would much rather treat my phones like my computers which I buy much less often because individual components can simply be upgraded to keep with the times.
great idea. the current cell phone industry is shite with the constant replacements.

While yes, the concept is cool, it's also completely and utterly naive.

For instance, remember when laptops used to have removable batteries? It was great. Laptop makers liked it too, because then they got to sell you the extra batteries at ridiculous prices so you could change them out on your flight, or whatever. Why are those gone? Well, they're gone because battery life was pretty terrible, and laptop makers realized that to get more battery life they needed bigger batteries. They also realized that people wanted smaller and smaller laptops. Hmm.. So instead of wasting all of this space with plastic dividers and holding clips, and locking mechanisms, they would just build the battery in, and the, glory of glories, they ALSO had more room because they could make them in different shapes to fit with the components. Battery life today is freakishly good, but gone are those lovely replaceable batteries--because of physical limitations.

This is the exact same thing here. The reason that cell phones are SO SMALL and SO POWERFUL is because each time they are custom making it so that things will fit in the best way possible, exploiting every bit of space and power that they can, stressing the creative imaginations of their engineers (you see only a rectangle, but it's creative as hell to fit that in there). Each new display tech means for very slightly different width, length and depth, different circuitry, different power requirements, etc., and the same for memory and processing and cellular antennas.

You can just swap out your computer because it's an enormous box that doesn't have to deal with any of this, because if it breaks, you'll have an annoying afternoon, but you won't be stranded on the side of the road in an emergency. With a phone, none of this is realistic.

It's an awesome idea, but in the same way the rocket powered boots that will take me to the moon is an awesome idea.
 

Jacks:Revenge

╠╣E╚╚O
Jun 18, 2006
10,065
218
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somewhere; sometime?
you're just confusing realism with pessimism :tup:
This is the exact same thing here. The reason that cell phones are SO SMALL and SO POWERFUL is because each time they are custom making it so that things will fit in the best way possible, exploiting every bit of space and power that they can, stressing the creative imaginations of their engineers (you see only a rectangle, but it's creative as hell to fit that in there).
but it's not the exact same thing.
laptops are of a certain scale and dimension by nature. the more you shrink a laptop, the less laptop it becomes. eventually you've got just another smart phone.

your logic doesn't follow.
you can only make traditional cell phones so small. while phones will continue to become exponentially more powerful, they won't continue to become exponentially smaller lest they cease being phones and start being subcutaneous implants connected to our auditory and visual nerves (and wouldn't that be something).

as the technology becomes more powerful the size becomes irrelevant.
there's no reason why the Phoneblok concept cannot be a commercially viable competitor to the current cell phone industry model. there comes a point when you don't have to "custom" fit everything just to "maximize" capability. standard components which could be swapped out can be just as capable and powerful as those features found in the contemporary smart phone. the technology today is very fluid.
 

Crotale

_________________________ _______________
Jan 20, 2008
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I am interested to see how well the plugin modules are integrated. I am assuming it won't actually look like a "Lego" phone, but would have accessible ports similar to the latest ports used for sim and memory cards on cell phones. What piques my curiosity here is how Motorola or other manufacturers will integrate these modular components in a manner that will minimize any impact of shock on the phone itself. Case in point, I recently destroyed my last Droid and it took a serious intentional beating in order to finally make it die. Seeing how the sim and memory cards are not critical parts of the machine itself, how will these modular phones fare if and when they are dropped?

The other item that warrants mention is the compatibility of future components. Will a phone you buy in 2014 be able to use critical upgrade modules in 20152018 or later? Will the new GPU, CPU and memory be bottlenecked and thus hindering any real increase in performance or capabilities when installing new components? Will the "motherboard" support newer technologies? What about battery life and possible upgrades?
 
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dragonfliet

I write stuffs
Apr 24, 2006
3,754
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you're just confusing realism with pessimism :tup:

but it's not the exact same thing.
laptops are of a certain scale and dimension by nature. the more you shrink a laptop, the less laptop it becomes. eventually you've got just another smart phone.

your logic doesn't follow.
you can only make traditional cell phones so small. while phones will continue to become exponentially more powerful, they won't continue to become exponentially smaller lest they cease being phones and start being subcutaneous implants connected to our auditory and visual nerves (and wouldn't that be something).

as the technology becomes more powerful the size becomes irrelevant.
there's no reason why the Phoneblok concept cannot be a commercially viable competitor to the current cell phone industry model. there comes a point when you don't have to "custom" fit everything just to "maximize" capability. standard components which could be swapped out can be just as capable and powerful as those features found in the contemporary smart phone. the technology today is very fluid.

Your argument works if we're talking something like 15-30 years from now. Sure, in the future, provided that manufacturers want to stop selling whole phone experiences, and don't want to keep making things more powerful, then it's possible (not probable, but possible) we'll see something that goes down that route. But laptops are still trying to get smaller and smaller and still having trouble with it, becoming more and more intricate and harder and harder to make parts switchable than in the past. To see phones as somehow avoiding this because of a neat, but naive video is a bit ridiculous.

I'd be very happy to be wrong, but you seem to be asserting that laptops aren't thinner and lighter because that would make them not a laptop, which is very certainly not the case. I would pay like a mofo for a 1lb 13" laptop with a wqhd monitor and 10 hour battery life, but it's not not happening, and won't for a good deal more time (and even then it will mean significant compromises).
 

Vaskadar

It's time I look back from outer space
Feb 12, 2008
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Batteries and why they die.
http://phys.org/news/2013-10-lithium-ion-batteries.html

Modular design, or at least standardized design reduces production costs, improves marketability, and reduces waste. Proprietary design increases waste, (a problem that Apple has recreated in the electronics industry), and increases consumer conditioning.

A universalized phone parts system would be a step in the right direction, as resources are limited, or at least resource control, as well as component re-usability is fairly limited.

Computers are modular by generation, are they not? The reason Apple wants exclusivity with their parts is to maximize sales of their proprietary hardware. They recently cut out third party iProduct cord producers by switching over to this unique (and probably patented) charging/connector cable interface.
 
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Benfica

European Redneck
Feb 6, 2006
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I'd love a phone like that. I surely don't need it to be small, a 5'' screen is nice to have.

I would pay like a mofo for a 1lb 13" laptop with a wqhd monitor and 10 hour battery life, but it's not not happening, and won't for a good deal more time (and even then it will mean significant compromises).
What eats power is often the OS. Macbook Pro 13'' retina is close to what you're asking for (except for the weight)

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/
 
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