Company releasing modular Android phones - design your own | Hacker News Reader

Company releasing modular Android phones - design your own

neowin.net

27 pointsAndrewDucker17 comments

Where's the option for a 5-row keyboard, and a trackball? This is conceptually cool, and I think the first Android phone available with a gig of memory, but it doesn't have any of the options I really want.

Agreed. The only option that keeps me from buying all the coolest phones is the lack of a tactile keyboard. I don't like typing on a screen.

That I can choose other options is neat, but really, it's more novelty than anything else. When they build an equally pluggable phone with a keyboard platform, then I'll be good to go.

I'd also like options for lens quality on the camera (or some way to tell). I don't think any phone cameras have the optics to merit more than 3 or 5 megapixels, but some are offering 12. I guess megapixels sell, but I just want decent looking photos.

Call me negative, but I am certain it will either be vaporware (never be released) or a failure like the WeTab.

Yep. Decent idea though.

You don't think it's a bit niche?

I can see a lot of geeks being into the idea but I can't see it being mass market. The question will be will the geeks be willing to pay the premium that would make this workable with a smaller customer base.

I suspect not when there are perfectly good Android phones out there.

Initially, but if they can get enough volume to start differentiating price based on features, a substantial market will show up for people who like the idea of not paying for things they don't want.

Generally though economies of scale make it cheaper to buy something with extra features which has been mass produced, than a closer to custom made model without them.

I've learned this trying to buy a simple mobile phone for my technophobe father and a VCR that just played stuff (no recording) for my aging grandmother.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

The main theme of the reddit topic on this seemed to be people excited about 'only paying for what they want', yet by doing so you remove the main advantage of mass production; lower per unit price.

I guess part of the consideration should be that while the final product may be custom all the components are mass produced. As such you're going to have to pay for the custom assembly but the cost for the components will be more reasonable.

While this is undoubtably true, it's important to consider the absolute razor thin margins that fierce competition and huge volume production creates.

This interesting article on the manufacture of microSD gives a small glimpse; http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918 The second to last paragraph is particularly interesting.

Once you remove standardization all kinds of hidden costs creep in, from not being able to order such large volumes of components right down to hardware testing.

then why does Dell work ?

Fair point.

My guess would be because in the PC world it's expected - people demand a certain level of choice and configuration. Beyond a very basic level (capacity, colour), I'm not sure that demand exists for mobile devices.

But looking at the site in more detail, it does seem price competitive (I made a phone spec-ed to the HTC Desire and it's pretty much bang on the same price), though obviously you can't get it on a contract.

We'll see. One thing that does occur is that their phones will presumably ship with vanilla Android rather than a network / manufacturer modified version. I know people who'd pay extra for that.

UPDATE: Just realised that the HTC price included tax, the custom build didn't. Wouldn't be huge but would make it maybe 10% more than the Desire,

> You don't think it's a bit niche?

Maybe, but there could be lots of niches. Actually I'd like to see it taken a step further where you can buy your own peripherals from different manufacturers and attach them to your phone. The device might not even end up being or looking like a 'phone'. But why not use a modern mobile OS as a controller for other mobile peripherals?

One day we couldn't customize computers, and now we can, I can't wait for the day I can customize my phone with the specs I choose, just like I did to my notebook.

Maybe it won't be this company who will succeed at doing it, maybe there will be lots of companies doing it, but I can certainly see that someday we will have this kind of option. I just hope it happens sooner than later.

Some day.

Look, aw3c2 wasn't saying there weren't ever going to be custom phones, but this company's been doing an awful lot of press work, only having a Photoshop mockup and website to show for it.

The picture of the circuit board isn't even a mobile phone circuit. The company's makes no mention of prototypes or any hardware engineering. I would expect to see this stuff for a company shipping Q1 2011.

They say quad-band, but which 4 bands? You need to know that in the US, depending on if you want to go with AT&T or T-Mobile.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com