A Day with Project Ara, Google's Modular Phone
wired.com
wired.com
I have three distinct reasons for this belief:
- Current gen' cellphones are extremely dense internally. There is no empty space, a Project Ara phone needs room for connectors, housing, and similar. Where does this space come from? The battery?
- Either the components will be tightly coupled in which case you'll lose the primarily benefit (interchangeable components) or loosely coupled in which case you'll lose performance (as data is transitioned in and out of generic interfaces).
- The connectors can never be "good enough." With the phone heating and cooling (environmentally or from internal sources) and the phone getting knocked around/bent/etc you'll see components disconnect from one another and the thing crash, a lot.
The Project Ara project might generate some cool concepts which they can go forward with, a lot of cool ideas come from other failed ideas. But as a whole concept where you can slide in and out components and it somehow doesn't increase the size, weight, or decrease reliability or battery life just seems like a pipe dream (baring any massive improvement in battery technology).
I genuinely hope they succeed and I'd buy a Project Ara phone if they can engineer something remotely palatable, however the engineering challenges on this one just seem too high to overcome.
PS - I didn't even touch on the software issues and some of the chick-egg problems relating to this (e.g. are they going to have a pre-Android OS run who's only job is to reconfigure Android for the hardware changes?).
PPS - This negativity has nothing to do with the recent demo crashes. That happens during development, it is normal. I am more concerned about the technological challenges they face and if they're over-come-able at all.
It's pretty much a sure bet that this is going to ship.
Now, whether there is enough interest to keep it alive is another thing altogether.
I may not be in the majority segment, but I'd wager there are others who feel the same.
Given how many geeks want better battery life over shaving a few mm off a device, and how that is exactly the opposite of what is happening, I think it's fair to say that the broader market want a slim phone.
I've not seen the dimensions of the prototypes yet, how bulky are they actually?
I think as technology improves, the advantages of modularity with trump any loss of performance.
You can likely reclaim some space by making a really tiny chipset, but batteries and screens combined are over 70% of your phone's total size. Project Ara makes components larger (due to connectors and housing), so you need to find space from somewhere, and there isn't a lot to be taken from most components (they aren't very large already).
Isn't the whole point of project Ara that you can disconnect components and the phone doesn't crash?
> you'll lose performance as data is transitioned in and out of generic interfaces
I was thinking about this - I doubt they'll have a single interface that is generic enough to attach CPU and memory as well as other peripherals - I'm guessing each connector will bundle separate connectors for the CPU and RAM, so that whichever slot the CPU and RAM modules go into, they'll still be on "their" bus. Then you'll have the generic bus, which will be like a USB or PCI bus on a computer - you can attach anything else to it and it's all treated the same. The performance loss would come from the bus itself being inferior, not having to shoehorn disparate devices into using it.
> There is no empty space, a Project Ara phone needs room for connectors, housing, and similar. Where does this space come from?
No doubt, these will be larger phones.
> I genuinely hope they succeed and I'd buy a Project Ara phone if they can engineer something [awesome]
Me too :)
I'm not sure what you're asking here. I was talking about the design/construction challenges. If they are successful the product wouldn't be designed to crash, no.
If the CPU is disconnected from the device it will not continue to function. Failing gracefully is the best you can do and even that is incredibly hard. Are you going to give the CPU its own battery so it can keep its cache when removed?
BUT, that was for one vertical application which the complete application stack is under my total control - all configurations are sync when in hot standby mode.
Android system which anyone is able to install any type of Apps are completely different stories. The design will be much more complex to handle all the cases - I am not sure if that's even possible.
It is a good science project - not sure about any commercial potential.
http://blog.phonebloks.com/post/101254153023/video-project-a...
I believe this is like an eternal prototype, not meant for mainstream.
Make a fat, ugly device with low battery life and experiment with different concepts.
I assumption is they'll take learnings from Project Ara and apply it to a new, 'production' phone that has like a detachable camera or something.
It's not as if anyone truly imagines every part needs to be modular, more that this allows parts to be modular which allows some degree of upgradability in the future or to have base devices more cheaply repurposed for specific usage scenarios.
Are you saying that Project Ara will still allow the consolidation of separate functions into integrated SoCs, when it makes sense to do so?
Or are you saying that the consumer won't be obligated to piece their phone together? Nor swap out modules any more frequently then they currently upgrade phones?
Either way, you are right.
1) Many mobile phones are already modular to an extent. Replaceable batteries, replaceable SD cards, replaceable SIM cards. Then there's an entire ecosystem of add-on cases for phones. Sony is shipping add-on camera lens even.
Ara is just proposing to make some additional things "add-on", like swapping the camera module. If they only made battery and camera the swappable modules alone, it would be a big win, and plenty of people would choose different camera modules.
2) Look at the prosumer camera market, both DSLR and new mirror-less models. A significant population of people desire interchangeable lens. A phone with interchangeable camera module could have all kinds of possibilities.
At a certain point, phones will be so powerful and capable that losing 15% of size/weight efficiency to achieve flexibility, especially as devices become commoditized will be a tradeoff worth making.
It's funny because our phones have already become more than 15% bigger than they were a few years ago, and people were saying then that phones couldn't get any bigger.
There are definitely people who don't like large phones, but the sales of the Samsung line alone (not to mention recent entrants to the "phablet" market like Apple) prove that our earlier assumptions about device size were wrong.
I definitely would appreciate having a slightly larger phone in exchange for some of the modularity you describe.
Yes modular hardware is great for games, and for computing components in general. The highly specialized component manufacturers that popped up around the IBM ATX/mATX/ITX/mITX PC form factors allowed for the multi-billion per year Graphics Card, Hard Drive, Ram, etc. and for each to compete internally.
This internal competition over real estate within a computer has driven a lot of hardware innovation. And with servers also conforming to these standardized form factors, we now see almost everything running on x86_64 ATX form factor components.
The Pi doesn't have wireless -- you have to add that with USB. And then they have this add-on camera module, and a compute board too. Lots of people appear to be adding hi-fi amps and DACs as well to the Pi.
It doesn't feel like USB is really the right solution. With USB, you run into some mechanical problems like flash thumb drives being too wide and blocking more than one port.
I feel like an ATX-type standard would be appropriate to address this problem, and let other manufacturers specialize and compete with different SOCs and peripherals for embedded devices. It seems like some of the expertise from Project Ara would transfer over to this. But I don't know that there's any economic incentive to work on it. Intel or IBM would may be a better steward of such a project.
A modular system to build any computing device you need. Remove the battery and put it on mains power. Replace the GSM radio module with ethernet. Install an ssh server, then pop off the screen. Who ever said you had to build a phone?
I know it's unlikely, but let me dream.
I'm not sure those are great examples of modularity on the march; replaceable batteries and replaceable SD cards, at least, are both much less common on smartphones today than they were (say) five years ago. The trend for the last couple of years has been towards non-user-serviceable batteries and omitting external storage slots altogether.
(I wish it wasn't, since I want my phone to have those features, but that's the way the market has been going.)
I wonder why that is. It's the only thing I don't like about my Moto G.
As a person that likes to carry an awful lot of music allways, it sucks a lot and really limits your choices when buying a new phone.
If you told me I could have a large, high-quality sensor (wouldn't even need full-frame necessarily), and a single fast lens that covered a wide range of focal lengths with excellent sharpness, chromatic aberration, bokeh, etc, I and many other passionate photographers would buy it in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, the reality is that prime lenses, due to fewer components and lens elements, tend to have better specs than zoom lenses. The super-zooms you see on the market with insane focal ranges (like 18-250) are typically very slow (f/4.5 or so), very heavy, and if you look at comparisons their quality is crap.
So I think I would rewrite your comment to read "a significant population of people desire high-performance capabilities, and currently the only way to get on the higher-end of that spectrum is via interchangeable lenses."
Interchangeable lens attachments for phones have been attempted and have not done too well because ultimately they just don't perform as well[1]. Also, if you are bothering to carry around a separate lens attachment for a mobile device, you are probably in a situation where you could carry a mirrorless camera as well. I know if I had the choice between carrying some lenses and a slightly heavier Sony A7 vs. lenses and a phone, it would be the A7 all the way.
If I cracked my phone's screen, it would be great getting to replace it without having to pay for an entirely new phone. I suppose it might be nice to upgrade the camera, if a nicer camera becomes available. I'm not sure what else. The author claims a precedent for modular technology, and mentions computers, cars, and airplanes. But if anything, computers and cars now seem more integrated and more difficult for owners to modify. I've never tried swapping out parts on a plane.
Also, I wonder how Android might support this. It's difficult enough maintaining compatibility among the set of Android phones; increasing the number of possible hardware configurations by orders of magnitude by will probably require some major changes at the OS level.
Anyway, I'm sounding negative. But I do think this is cool. Like DARPA programs, it could have a positive long-term impact in both intended and unexpected ways.
Yes, exactly. Every aspect can be upgraded, at the best time to upgrade that part. I've upgraded entire devices in the past simply to make one component better (switching to higher network speeds, getting a better screen, getting a larger screen, getting a faster processor). Instead of buying 4 entire devices, I could have accomplished the same upgrade path for half the cost. This would not only save me money, but would cause less harm to the environment.
I would love to be able to switch screens on my phone depending on what I am doing. For example, slot in an eink screen when reading on a flight, and enjoy that sweet long lasting battery.
You could switch carriers and keep your phone, just by slotting in a new module.
You could buy a hugely expensive, awesome camera module, and not only be able to keep it even when you want to upgrade to a faster phone or a larger phone, you can share it with your ara using friends.
>> Also, I wonder how Android might support this.
Yes, apparently they've already made a lot of progress in this area.
What's so "this is impossible" about this idea? We live in the 21st century, and we're trying to do things like send people to Mars and cure cancer. We've got cars that run exclusively on electricity, and potentially a propellent-less way of producing thrust -- why is "a modular mobile device" (it doesn't even have to accept phone calls, does it) beyond the realm of possibility?
Just seems super negative, for absolutely no reason.
It's a very common trend on HN to nay-say anything that changes the status quo.
Rather than looking at all those cool things you listed and saying "wow, this has great potential, I hope x,y&z..." It's much more popular on HN to say "This will never work, it's a stupid idea to change the status quo".
It's like HN'ers are afraid of change, or afraid of trying something new.
If it was easy to create or see the potential of universe denting products, then everyone would do it. But it's hard.
This is so common, not just amoung the HN crowd, that the proverbial phrase "missing the forest for the trees" exists to describe it.
Of course, we could just also say "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
Yes. Hackers may be practical and honest about limits, but they focus more on potentials, possibilities. Hackers get excited about projects like Ara. Hackers ask: what can be done with this? Rather than say foolish things like "this is a solution seeking a problem".
And yet that ATAP group working on ara has ploughed through X, Y, and Z; and they keep going.
The real question is: what will consumers do?
I think most consumers are going to turn up their noses to this. But if there is just enough of a community to motivate hardware makers.... then its going to be f'ing awesome.
Sure, you can make a modular phone -that will be (de facto) technologically worse or more expensive than its non-modular counterpart. But does it make any sense to do that? The question is not how many variations of a phone we can have, the question should be how many variations of a phone we need. And I do not think that every customer needs its own variation or that it is worth developing for that one person who needs a phone with a weak processor and a super strong camera.
I personally can't care less about modularity in a phone. Would rather have a 1mm thinner phone over any sort of modularity. Almost all modules can be added wirelessly, unless they are latency-sensitive or very high bandwidth.
Additionally, due to economies of scale, it may make sense to integrate a module that's extremely useful to only a half of the population in every device manufactured and that may still be a net win economically.
Who he is is of little relevance here, by the way. I am not appealing to his authority. I'm simply citing the most prolific source of this mindset I know of to make the concept I am talking about clearer.
Something like a tricorder from Star Trek but with the ability to change and upgrade its components to give it new functions.
I think they are selling it in the wrong direction when they call it a phone. It could ultimately be the next natural progression for hackable hardware i.e. Arduino -> RaspberryPi -> The new google thing.
I know three guys at my work, all software developers, who play SC2 daily on their mac minis.
Project Ara on the other hand is trying to do something else entirely. They have the formfactor defined already, that of a modern smartphone. What makes it so interesting is the fact that they're trying to take that formfactor and add the inherent flexibility that comes with a larger system, but without changing the formfactor. This is akin to getting ATX full tower expansion in the same space as the mac mini or even mac pro. It's a daunting task to say the least, one with a constantly changing frame of reference, as the smartphone evolves into a thinner sleeker and lighter device. This makes the Ara developers jobs doubly hard, as they have to develop for 2 generations ahead of where we are for size and weight constrains, while still keeping the bulky, power hungry, and prone to failure interconnnect that is required to assemble disparate parts into a whole unit, as well as all the modules within this target.
It's a race that they may never win due to how rapidly those targets shift, but we can hope that it's a moonshot project that one day renders tangible benefits for the everyday phone.
To be honest, i'm less and less excited about these physical devices with the set of constraints that being physical devices imparts to them. I really wish that within the next 10 years we hit a Virtualization-level jump in how we interact with information, allowing us to abstract away trivial things like screen size and compute power. The only way this is going to happen is through augmented reality, a clear moonshot project i wish a few more companies invested in rather than the halfhearted attempt that is google glass.
Whee I went off on a tangent there.
Today most servers are built with the ATX form factor in mind since dipping into the sweet cheap ATX form factor components can bring big savings.
At the corporate level. Makes a ton of sense. Consumer level? Hell, we are at the point that the battery isn't even really modular anymore.
Exactly. If Ara succeeds, there is a great deal of potential for the ecosystem to drive down prices while driving up quality of individual components. It won't be the Galaxy S4 vs LG G3, it will be individual cpu units, camera units, individual screens competing against each other. This introduces more granularity into the way the manufacturers compete, and may very likely open up spaces for smaller players to grow.
The Ara project is fundamentally flawed because we don't need to replace parts inside a phone, the phone is a CPU. We need to add parts ON to it. So make the iphone smaller, add a second screen (watch) add some sensors (bluetooth heart rate monitor) and add a few other items which are replaceable and far more useful not hard integrated into the phone anyways.
If you want a better camera, just buy one and 'add' it to your phone via bluetooth. Then you can get a camera that is physically and technologically designed to be the best it can be as an appliance.
All the things I want to add to my phone or replace, I dont need to be on the BUS of the phone itself -- I just need it to be able to communicate.
Its building a device for a market that barely, if ever existed. The replaceable model benefited manufacturers (not customers) by making customizable PCs to sell with price discrimination easier.
Consumers don't need to upgrade their modules to benefit from the economic dynamics that standardization/modularity brings. Modularity brings better components, a greater diversity of systems, and lower prices - even when the consumer doesn't upgrade and change out their hardware themselves.
The "thing" could be a watch, maybe with an integrated Moto Hint-like earbud for calls. Or a pager-like device to carry on your belt or pocket, etc. Each screen would have its own battery, so the "thing" would need less power.
Even now, I'm frequently wishing my laptop screen would just accept video input, for instance.
Fact a lot of old electronic devices including phones gets illegally exported to African countries and China. There they are not recycled in an environmental friendly way.
Here is the documentary e-wastelandfilm, it will make you think twice before ordering the next great smartphone that soon will be obsolete by a better one. http://www.e-wastelandfilm.com/
Thanks to the Google team for creating Project Ara!
What a narrowcast reference. It made me smile, though.
It's a long time in coming, notwithstanding that regulations and FCC compliance seem to be the biggest regulatory obstacles preventing this idea from becoming reality earlier on during the evolution of mobile devices.
The only thing missing is that I had to set up my launcher, install all the apps again, configure my IMAP email client, and configure some third-party apps that didn't sync notification sounds.
[1]: In case you're not familiar, it added the ability to make and receive VoIP calls.
I suspect there's always been a strong element of competition based on physical size in computing. PC cases are about as small as you can take that and still leave room for customisability.
So my guess is the overlap between the competitive hardware concept space, the custom-build concept space, and the pocket device concept space might be big enough to drive a tiny niche, but not a full consumer frenzy.
Modularity is cool but the infrastructure always adds to the cost. The more I think about it, Ara makes no sense in the phone market. This initiative is more about the tricorder market, if you will.
Fairly useless article though. The whole thing just kind of rambles until the one sentence at the end where they describe the working demo.
A functioning Ara ecosystem would allow the economical creation of devices with smaller production runs. One version may have a much bigger amplifier/speaker unit for hard of hearing users. Another may have a huge screen for those with impaired eyesight. Yet another could be optimized for those with extremely limited motor function à la Stephen Hawking.
It will also be a godsend to me, because even though I have giant farmer hands, I detest phones bigger than an iPhone 4S.
What are you imagining here? I don't see how this could help your use case.
Is 'state of the art' a synonym for 'slim' ?
When I think 'state of the art' I think "most advanced hardware".
In theory, if Ara is successful, it will be much easier, more cost effective, and less ecologically harmful to keep your Ara phone constantly at the bleeding edge of 'state of the art' than it would be to constantly upgrade to the latest phones.
Consider also that no single phone on the market combines all the best hardware in one place, one could argue that ONLY with Ara could you have a fully state of the art phone.
the article led me to think this DARPA guy just brought the idea to phones from the satellite world, but especially given the timelines, i can't help but wonder if there's more to the story than that.
When the phoneblocks people became very high profile, the project ara people decided to reach out to them and let the phoneblocks people that project Ara was already trying to bring a similar vision to reality.
Phoneblocks had no engineering ability, only a great vision and an appealing (though impractical) design. So Phoneblocks threw their support behind project Ara.
More seriously, this is indicative of a lot of the old pc crowd not having grasped what a SOC actually is (the clue is in the name) or that package on package memory has been a thing for years. Our non PC devices are far more integrated than people seem to realize, and this is why they have the cost, space and battery usage benefits that they do.
modularity works great on a desktop PC, but I'm skeptical that it will appeal to many people in the mobile space.
ping me in 2 yrs if i'm wrong and i'll eat my words!