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Comment by TylerE | Hacker News Reader

This is very different than Phonebloks, which was and is totally impractical. This seems to be for peripherals only, not the core system.

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From the official Motorola Blog:

> "A module can be anything, from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter--or something not yet thought of!" [1]

So it doesn't seem too-far removed from the original Phonebloks concept. And you can't really tell me that had this new version been presented as the original, we wouldn't have seen the same feedback.

[1] http://motorola-blog.blogspot.com/2013/10/goodbye-sticky-hel...

The definition of what is "core" to a computer is nebulous at best. Nothing stops you from having a SOC mainboard with some flash memory and an embedded processor that can run on its own, with peripheral attachments to add in beefier hardware as need be. That is what PCI is for, after all.

I think that may be one the largest failures of modern computing - we never built a hardware platform where just socketing (especially in a plug and play way) new processors, memory, busses etc was fluid and feasible. The performance penalties were always huge (albeit understandable with a monolithic virtual memory abstraction if you don't account for varying degrees of locality).

> And really, skies the limit when it comes to the modules that can be attached to an endo. Hardware keyboard, faster processor, bigger battery, or something different altogether (taser gun perhaps?). Anything you can dream up.

Emphasis mine.

Hardly seems like just peripherals.

Adding an ADDITIONAL faster processor is proven tech. Heck, Nintendo was doing that with $70 cartridges 20 years (e.g. the FX ship used in games like Starfox essentially overrode the built-in processor, but the main CPU in the console was still used for basic IO.

It's when you're talking about actually REMOVING that built in processor that things get really interesting.

Well, there's no particular reason that part couldn't be swapped too, sort of like swapping the motherboard in a PC and then connecting everything else you already had. Yes, that would be essentially upgrading to a "new" phone but if the standard held you could still use the screen, camera, memory and so forth which isn't possible now (potentially later upgrading those bit by bit as need be).

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