LG abandoning the modular smartphone idea | Hacker News Reader

LG abandoning the modular smartphone idea

theverge.com

3 pointsIsamu9 comments

I can see why hackers (especially at Google) liked this idea, but who in their right mind would think the average consumer would ever want a modular phone?

All other things being equal, why wouldn't an average consumer want a modular smart phone?

Why? Because they don't want to spend a microsecond of their time thinking about whether they could save a few bucks upgrading a part of their phone vs getting a whole new shiny new phone.

You could argue all day long that it makes more sense for consumers to have modular phones but you would be arguing against human nature.

As an aside I also suspect (but cannot confirm) that the reality of modular phones would not live up to its promise.

Why? Because they don't want to spend a microsecond of their time thinking about whether they could save a few bucks upgrading a part of their phone vs getting a whole new shiny new phone.

Given carrier subsidization of phone costs, I guess I could buy that. IF consumers were actually routinely paying full retail costs for their phones, I expect it would be a different story.

But even so, given how a large segment of consumers (although clearly not all) are interested in piece-meal upgrades to everything else in their lives - computers, stereos, cars, blah, blah, blah, one wonders why they would treat phones so particularly differently.

I wonder if the problem with LG's initiative wasn't more along the lines of "all other things weren't actually equal". If the "modular" phone is much (bigger|heavier|more expensive|whatever) then it's easier to see how the benefits might fail to offset the downside.

> given how a large segment of consumers (although clearly not all) are interested in piece-meal upgrades to everything else in their lives - computers, stereos, cars,

Two things: first I'd question how popular modularity really is in those categories -- do most people buy modular stereo's today or just bluetooth speakers for their phones (or just headphones for their phones)? Consoles and laptops with glued in components seem pretty popular too. And while people update certain things about their cars are that many people really messing around with the embedded electronics that run their Camry? This leads to the second point: smartphones are already modular in a sense, just at a different level. There are a zillion cases you can buy, third party chargers, battery packs, camera lenses, a whole array of bluetooth widgets and of course all those apps and cloud services.

And while people update certain things about their cars are that many people really messing around with the embedded electronics that run their Camry?

Well, I doubt the majority of people do that. But there's definitely a real market for after-market mods of that nature. But I don't know that anybody markets a car specifically on the basis of its "tinkerability". Historically cars were fairly open to modding by default. It's only been recently, with DMCA shit, etc. that cars have really started getting locked down.

This leads to the second point: smartphones are already modular in a sense, just at a different level. There are a zillion cases you can buy, third party chargers, battery packs, camera lenses, a whole array of bluetooth widgets and of course all those apps and cloud services.

Fair enough. That may actually be the more salient point.

I guess my thinking is this: a "modular" phone probably wouldn't ever be the "iPhone killer", but if it's done right, I would expect there would be enough people who would want it, to make it a profitable niche item. At least, that would be my naive assessment. Obviously phones are a complicated market due to carrier subsidies and exclusive offers, etc., etc.

> All other things being equal, why wouldn't an average consumer want a modular smart phone?

All other things being equal they might, but in practice all other things are never equal. Modularity comes with trade-offs, and those trade-offs often aren't a net win for many users.

Because the space needed for modularity forces a compromise in either battery life, bulk/weight and/or performance which are all more important to the average consumer.

edit: also reliability

i think the idea itself is not essentially bad, the fatal flaw is battery life, ive mentioned this before but ill take the example of the audio add on. as a bit of an audio nerd the idea of good sound from a phone was appealing in a way, but back when i had my note 2 which ran a wolfson dac and didnt sound half bad i had a habit of draining my battery pretty quickly and that was with lower end headphones and mp3s.

now if you were going to shell out and buy the modular add on then chances are youre the sort of person who is also into your music and listens to a reasonable amount on decent headphones with lossless files eating your battery alive. as far as im aware the add on comes with some level of extended battery but the DAC in the modular add on is of higher quality than the wolfson that was in the note i mentioned earlier, for that i have a few extra comparisons.

before i moved to using a stand alone player i did something not that dissimilar to what the LG audio mod does, i connected a good quality portable USB DAC to my phone via OTG, the results were excellent, the sound quality was impeccable but at a hefty price, even the short 45 min bus ride to work could eat over 30% of my battery.

but that was an old phone and not really designed to be running external accessories, so for further comparison ill move on to my separate player, a FiiO X5ii, a device made for one purpose, playing music. while not as tall it is thicker and heavier than just about any smartphone out there and has no touch screen, this (incredible) device will pump out around 10 continuous hours of music, just enough to get through a full working day including commute, so to put it simply pumping out decent quality audio sucks quite a lot of juice. (another more "smartphoney" comparison is my old ibasso DX90, an android based audiophile player with a small touchscreen which used the galaxy S3 battery, even with a 3rd party mugenpower extended battery it only ran for around 7 hours)

so even with any extended battery offered by the add on using it is going to seriously drain your devices life and few of us want to be without our beloved devices meaning youll end up rationing your use of it eventually forgetting about it altogether.

this doesnt just apply to the audio mod either, if you are the kind of person willing to drop a decent chunk of extra cash on upgraded functionality then youre probably the kind of person who uses that feature enough to make using the module a problem for battery life, meaning youre probably better off spending the money on a dedicated device for the job.

once battery tech finally evolves to the point that we can have high level tech from other devices integrated into a single one ill probably be all for the idea but right now my phone can barely handle a day doing what it does already, once that is a little better then we can start thinking of bringing in really high grade tech.

CPU and other component refinements etc are one thing but they can only go so far and were getting pretty near that limit now, we NEED some sort of power breakthrough, whether that comes in the form of a better battery or a better wireless power system is yet to be seen but it needs to happen before truly convergent devices can really progress much further.

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