Comment by squeaky-clean | Hacker News Reader

Comment by squeaky-clean | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> because many of the initially removable components are no longer removable

It's not that "many" of the components aren't available, it's all the components anyone cared about. It seems like you won't be able to swap out the CPU, GPU, RAM, battery or screen. So if you want a phone with a faster CPU, you need to buy an entirely new phone, which goes against all the hype for these modular phone plans.

From the venturebeat article linked below: "The idea of Ara is to ensure that your devices are future-proofed, meaning that the whole “upgrade every two years” mentality is no longer a thing. ". This certainly isn't true. Though I guess it could be slightly cheaper, since you would be just buying a frame, and could pop in your old camera module.

There also aren't any modules being shown that can clue you into what the potential is. The only thing recognizable is a camera module, and what I'm guessing is a small e-ink display., every other module is just an unlabeled colored/textured rectangle. In every article about it the only example ever used is a camera.

The module idea actually seems really cool, a standard way for anyone to create hardware for your phone. But I think the "modular phone. Upgrade one bit a time. Never obsolete." marketing angle is a blatant lie.

Edit: I agree with one of the jokes in that Reddit thread about this

    Here's what I want for my six modules:
      1. Camera
      2. Battery
      3. Battery
      4. Battery
      5. Battery
      6. Battery

Because really, what else is there?

Different types of cameras such as night vision or infrared heat camera. Also laser range finder modules or something capable of stereoscopic vision. Altimeters. Barometric pressure sensors. Communicator modules for other peripherals when Bluetooth isn't appropriate. Temperature sensor. Wind speed device (would have to protrude beyond the phone's edge so wind can pass through). Light sensor for automatic white balance measurements. Chording keypads to enable more interesting input for power users.

Anyways that's just a stream of conscious I came up with in 5 minutes of noodling. There is potential. Maybe not as much for day to day, but definitely options for professionals that make their living outdoors.

Medical sensors -- eg. portable blood analyzer.

Theranos can pivot!

Having access to those things sounds brilliant. I'd guess that while we might see Ara on the market one day, we're also likely to see standard Android phones with a single Ara accessory port on the back, perhaps replacing the built in camera. That gives users the swappable modules advantage of Ara with the cost/weight/durability benefits of a typical device.

And Google will be glad to deliver all those types of cameras, because they can't bring StreetView in your home - yet.

So ... streetview requires nightvision and won't be happy with cameras beeing there allready?

>but definitely options for professionals that make their living outdoors

My thinking was also that this makes a great platform for professional tools that are currently standalone devices. Multimeters, surveying equipment, thermal inspection tools. Maybe a microscope or even a microfluidics device.

(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google.)

> It's not that "many" of the components aren't available, it's all the components anyone cared about. It seems like you won't be able to swap out the CPU, GPU, RAM, battery or screen.

The article addresses this directly:

"After lots of research and testing, they made a big decision: rather than turn every single piece of the phone into modules, from the processor to the RAM to the hard drive, they’d consolidate all that into the standard frame. They found that people don't care about, or want to think about, the processor in their phone. And they especially don't want to worry about it being compatible with all their apps. Users just want a good phone with good specs that does all the basics well, and then they want a place to play on top of that."

They did the research. It turned out that people didn't care about those components after all.

If you think your research is better, build the product.

And you don't find it curious that what made the original concept implausible suddenly is found to "not be desired" by costumers?

I find it entirely reasonable that research shows consumers don't want products that don't work very well. The text I quoted explicitly called out that it would be a software compatibility nightmare.

So then what modularity do they think consumers do care about?

And yes, that was exactly what everyone was saying from the beginning: it's infeasible to do what Ara was dreamt up to do.

Sure, I can find that section of the article for you:

"Which brings us to the most important question still facing Project Ara: what the hell kind of modules are people going to build? Woolridge and his team took their user research to the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona in February, where they started showing it to potential partners: carriers, tech companies, fashion brands, everyone.

Turns out they all have ideas. Better speakers, flashlights, panic buttons, fitness trackers, projectors, app-shortcut buttons, kickstands, a million other things. Some are incredibly high-tech—pro-level cameras clearly fascinate the Ara team, and they all get excited at the idea of replacing my hideous tape recorder with a microphone module—but some aren’t. Bertrand shows me a small compact case for storing makeup, and a small hollow pillbox. They’re also building “style” modules, which don’t do anything except look nice. Apparently, when given the opportunity to make anything that plugs into their phone, people come up with some pretty useless ideas."

> potential partners... Carriers, tech companies, fashion brands

Aka the people whose weird priorities got us to this position (needing/wanting Ara) to begin with?

Did the research ask how many people wanted to carry around a bag/box of spare modules they might need during the day, or how big the bag/box would need to be?

>If you think your research is better, build the product.

Or not.

I'm all for experimentation, but hardware is always tricky, and the original idea - open source hardware - has always been problematic.

It looks like the cost of module development is going to be way outside the budget of individuals, security is going to be an issue, and unless the platform builds a big ecosystem very quickly - possible, but unlikely - there's going to be little incentive for companies to join up.

ARA makes perfect sense as a concept phone for hardware research, but I'm less convinced it can ever be a viable popular commercial product.

> If you think your research is better, build the product.

I've been saying since the announcement of Ara (and even earlier with that Phonebloks Kickstarter) that it will not work.

So if you'd like to put it that way... I guess my research was better. Also, I have not built a modular phone, but neither has Google. Since I didn't spend 2 years not building the phone, I guess my non-existent product is better too.

Id go for two cameras, and try to hack some 3D recording out of it.

and replacement inertial sensors, those always seem to break on me.

edit: actually, it would be cool to put an FPGA on there.

What would you do with it?

In theory a lot of things. Depending on how much hardware you could synthesize, you'd only be limited by your IO and size. You could have a module that is able to be modified by software.

off of the top of my head:

SDR, Storage, bigger/better Speakers, more USB/whatever ports, HDMI output, video Projector, JTAG (why not?), RFID

edit: oh, temperature/barometer built into the device would be pretty cool too.

From the article:

>“The key here,” Camargo says, “is to develop the functionality you don’t get on your smartphone today. I’ll give you the smartphone, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

It sounds to me the reason their "dev kit" includes so much "out of the box" is to spur development of newer more interesting modules.

Like you said, we all know that camera, storage, battery modules will be there, but they are pushing to see what others can come up with (blood sugar testers, credit-card readers, touchpads, temperature sensors, etc...)

2 Cameras for recording in 3D? ;-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com