Hacker News Reader

Comment by enscr | Hacker News Reader

People are viewing this project as a 'lego' phone that sounds great in theory but doesn't charm practically. However manufacturers can take a middle ground approach where future electronics slowly move towards hot swappable components. Upgrading & replacing defective parts shouldn't require a screw driver and perhaps as easy as plugging in a USB cable.

When I'm buying a high end phone & spending $600, I'd want it to last 5-6+ years. However the current ones typically stay relevant for barely 2 years and the residual value is below $200. How about a phone that I'm not scared to drop because if something breaks, I can easily swap out a new LCD, ofcourse at a reasonable cost. Many users like me would be willing to sacrifice the form factor slightly to get the ability to make my device last longer.

However all this goes against how manufacturers make money i.e. make you buy new product frequently & charge an arm & a leg for repairs.

View on HN

There are other models, like sell the razor cheap and charge more for the blades, which can support a product ecosystem, albeit a smaller one than that for grooming products.

Consider that the FOB price for replacement cellphone cameras is under $5 in quantities of $100. The hardware is cheap, the labor of installing it into a phone that needs repair is not. But if you make it user-installable (as here), you can sell the exact same camera for maybe $20-30, with only a minimal increase in the cost of production for the modular package. So this could work out quite nicely for component manufacturers by giving them a small additional revenue stream from enthusiast/hobby buyers.

All those people complaining that it won't be competitive with other phones for consumer dollars are totally missing the point. Of course consumers will continue to prefer all-in-one products from brand name manufacturers like Apple and Samsung, for the same reason that most consumers want a car that Just Works rather one that requires them to be an amateur mechanic.

And yet, there's a thriving retail business in auto parts, because a lot of people do like to hack on their cars or carry out their own repairs. And likewise, there's a market for modular phones among hackers, engineers, high school and college students, and all sorts of other niches, who want flexibility but don't necessarily want to go down the Arduino route with soldering and building their own cases and PCBs. Simple example: stick two camera modules into one of these things, and you have a super cheap 3d camera platform.

This will be absolutely huge in the developing world where utility >> convenience or aesthetics.

I like this train of thought.

I doubt they can make a good, commercially viable phone straight away. If they just could release a backbone and a starter set of modules at a nexus7-ish price point, that might get things going. They need to get this thing into some people's hands (especially potential module developers) and see what they can do with it.

Also, selling this as a way of long lived phone sounds like a terrible USB. I would put 'easily repairable' above it but the real value is the potential module ecosystem. Without that it's just some form of cheaper and that's a hard promise to keep.

Phone is a relatively small part of what smartphones are. Is the phone a module here? It would be interesting to know what all the starter set modules do.

It's disappointed to see all the cynicism on this thread. Commercial viability aside (come on, who knows), this is a cool fun project with interesting possibilities for making hardware innovation accessible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com