THIS could bring me back to smart phones.

[wark]

Electrical engineers are probably getting a good laugh at everyone who thinks this is even remotely feasible

[F34R]

Will they have a flip phone for Blunt? Don't want the poor guy losing touch with his midnight sextexts.

[Exodus_2pt0]

Electrical engineers are probably getting a good laugh at everyone who thinks this is even remotely feasible

I don't understand what isn't so feasible about it.

Let's break it down a bit.

Say each module uses 3 pins. 1 for power, 1 for ground, 1 for data.

Have a row of power, a row for ground, and a row for data. Just need a standard to the design and it COULD work. This is very simplified, and just a very basic thought, mind you.

I find it amusing that so many are saying it is not possible. While no one cared to address my CAN BUS reference.

Modern vehicles have a LOT of modules. Somehow all of these modules communicate with each other on a 4 wire system. Even on those 4 wires, only 2 are really used all the time. How is it that 20 modules can all communicate with each other on 2 wires, but somehow this isn't possible?

[wark]

I don't understand what isn't so feasible about it.

Let's break it down a bit.

Say each module uses 3 pins. 1 for power, 1 for ground, 1 for data.

Have a row of power, a row for ground, and a row for data. Just need a standard to the design and it COULD work. This is very simplified, and just a very basic thought, mind you.

I find it amusing that so many are saying it is not possible. While no one cared to address my CAN BUS reference.

Modern vehicles have a LOT of modules. Somehow all of these modules communicate with each other on a 4 wire system. Even on those 4 wires, only 2 are really used all the time. How is it that 20 modules can all communicate with each other on 2 wires, but somehow this isn't possible?

Here is a quote for you:


"As an electrical engineer, I'll just go ahead and say this would be an absolute nightmare of a product to design and I really don't think it would be as convenient as it's making itself out to be. The gentleman who came up with this graduated from a design academy, not an engineering school, so I doubt he's put any thought towards all of the insane engineering hurdles present in a project like this. Also, the phonebloks website has typos and crappy grammar, which is unprofessional and bothers me personally.
Small and big companies develop and sell there bloks.
ಠ_ಠ
Modern smartphones are probably the most high-tech consumer products out there. For just one phone design, engineers bust their asses to get everything working together correctly. Electronics isn't just about connecting wires together willy-nilly. For instance, a big part of electrical engineering is planning out acceptable trace lengths and paths, because, in a signal-dense environment, there are going to be a shit-ton (technical term) of non-ideal effects. That means that the actual physical layout of your components is not something that can be safely altered.
And that's literally just the first thing that came to mind. I can think of way more problems that would be associated with this kind of system. This is a bad idea and will never see the light of a testbench.
edit: All of you who assume Steve Jobs didn't have some idea of feasibility before pushing his product designs are sorely misinformed. This is not the same.
edit 2: My answer to the "how is this different from desktop computers?" and related questions.
edit 3: And I want to go on record here by saying that, regardless of feasibility, i think this is just a bad idea in general. I too am concerned about sustainability and E-waste, but this isn't a very good solution. Personally, I like Verizon's program where they send you a prepaid envelope with which to send back your old phone. Then they give those phones to people in need (I think it was low-income survivors of abuse or something like that). Maybe we could incentivise companies to develop recycling programs specific to their devices to ensure that phone E-waste is taken care of properly. It seems more feasible and smarter than this.
final edit: An alarming number of people in these comments seem to have it in their head that "designers" come up with the good ideas and then the engineers implement them. That make be true in a few cases, but you're crazy if you think engineers aren't visionaries. Engineers spend their whole day wondering how to improve on things. Every engineer has some big dream idea they wish they had the time/money for. Engineers, not designers, are the ones who were responsible for the great technology we enjoy today. Many times, their visionary work doesn't translate well to the public, so they never get terribly popular outside their fields. Probably nobody can name the guys who invented the laser, but you benefit from its existence every day.
My point is: stop saying engineers just aren't thinking outside the box when we shoot down an idea. We know better than you, and that's why we're shooting it down."


From the original thread on Reddit about the "phone"

[einhander]

That looks stupid.

[Swanny]

As someone that works in PCB fabrication I love the concept but implementation is far from ever happening. First off try getting manufacturers to agree on a design for that specific form....they already have their own "flagship device" so why would they bother on module design that you'd select pieces from other companies.

2nd problem is that the disposability of the product is exactly how companies stay in business. Selling what would essentially be accessories and not a full phone would throw the companies into a tail spin. Think of the PC now. Most stupid people would just as much buy a new computer than learn the simple ways to fix, remove the failing component, or simply upgrade their device already. I think the design of computers is still to make them look intimidating to the masses so people don't get their hands in there to play around.

3rd is think of how thick this thing would be using current technology. Its insane how thin phones are now as everything is built in. Wonder why so many thin phones don't have removable batteries? They take up more space. Thats a huge reason. I guess the only viable option would be for the PC giants to jump in since the don't offer a phone option. So like acer, asus, lenovo, and the like could kind of work around things like they do a PC. They all have different board designs but are compatible with other manufacturers attachments. Maybe in the future...and the hope for that would be great.

[Exodus_2pt0]

Here is a quote for you:

I see a lot of assumptions in that post. With no real reasoning for why this could not happen.

[Andy.B]

I stopped at "you can just replace the block that effects the speed". Exactly. That's what we do now. We replace EVERYTHING! Because everything effects the speed! Electronics are not Lego's, they are like playing reverse jenga with wet noodles, and every one is a different size, length, and stiffness, and if any of the noodles touch, the whole thing goes poof. And it only works in precisely one way.

And my god... Think of the os that would have to be developed! To everyone who keeps saying 'it's like desktops'... Exactly. You have to turn it off, take it apart, replace the component, turn it back on, install drivers, reboot, configure settings, possibly reboot again, find that several different programs don't play nice anymore, find a solution, find out that other drivers are incompatible, upgrade or downgrade as necessary, restart a few times in between, and then return to work. (As long as the other devices it depends on, and the devices that depend on it, are all working together like you hoped.)

No existing os could handle that device. Micro kernel systems like Mimix might be closest, with almost everything running in user space rather than kernel space, for the goal of self healing processes and drivers, but that would take billions of dollars of development costs to adapt to be a commercially acceptable smartphone os.

[Vtec?lol]

The whole idea is stupid. Upgrading and stuff, sure great idea. I don't want the same design though for years. With upgrades may come physical and asthetic upgrading, that would make this entire idea moot.

[bimmerteck]

I see a lot of assumptions in that post. With no real reasoning for why this could not happen.

Last weekend I helped my 8 year old niece put together an adafruit arduino board she received for her birthday and helped her program it to remind her to feed her cat.

I'm fairly certain even she understands that the chip we installed and programmed needs more than the few pins that you seem to think that every "module" in this phone can be summed down to.

This is what's required for a simple 20 mhz processor to interact with the chassis , a pager style LCD screen, and a speaker.


To say that a modern smartphone's architecture needs a few more is a massive understatement.

[evandael]

typical naive designerbabble.


(i am a design major)

[Wschnitz]

Lol exodus, cars can communicate by one wire because most of the data is transferred in different voltage patterns, amps to low on something, check light comes on wallah. Smartphones are 100x more complicated, computers too, you could never jus use 4 pins and put it where ever you want. Now, a standardized CPU socket could be a route, so when your CPU gets old throw a new one in. But it would be many many more pins then four.

Unless you want an impressively slow phone I'd stop dreaming. Pull a phone apart sometime, it's not possible.

Why is E waste a problem anyway? It's all recycled if the users of it are not asses.

[wark]

I see a lot of assumptions in that post. With no real reasoning for why this could not happen.

Is your post not full of assumptions? The quote I posted came from an electrical engineer, sure they are assumptions, but educated ones made by an expert in that field. That's like getting a diagnosis from a doctor and saying it is BS because it is just assumptions.

[bimmerteck]

Lol exodus, cars can communicate by one wire because most of the data is transferred in different voltage patterns, amps to low on something, check light comes on wallah. Smartphones are 100x more complicated, computers too, you could never jus use 4 pins and put it where ever you want. Now, a standardized CPU socket could be a route, so when your CPU gets old throw a new one in. But it would be many many more pins then four.

Unless you want an impressively slow phone I'd stop dreaming. Pull a phone apart sometime, it's not possible.

Why is E waste a problem anyway? It's all recycled if the users of it are not asses.

Cars do not "communicate" by a single wire. When I went through school a current BMW 7 series(2002) had 6 seperate twisted pair networks, one single wire network, and 1 fiber optic bus. that's 13 wires and a fiber optic cable, and that's just for communication between modules not including any of the hundreds if not thousands of pins of inputs and outputs to all the different modules and controls.

[ST1G]

Last weekend I helped my 8 year old niece put together an adafruit arduino board she received for her birthday and helped her program it to remind her to feed her cat.

I'm fairly certain even she understands that the chip we installed and programmed needs more than the few pins that you seem to think that every "module" in this phone can be summed down to.

This is what's required for a simple 20 mhz processor to interact with the chassis , a pager style LCD screen, and a speaker.


To say that a modern smartphone's architecture needs a few more is a massive understatement.

I've work on a surface mount line. These processor are called "BGA's" and they have so many pins you can not place it by hand, its nearly impossible. You must have a machine do it or you have leads running together and the chip will be use less.

All you need to to is put together a simple Mega Squirt board to start to realize the complications in designing a PCB and further more the impossibility of designing a chip that will work with said PCB without a degree in electrical engineering. There is a reason engineers typically have the highest paying 4 year degrees.

Cars "comunicate" with a 4 wire that leads to a ECU (a printed circuit board with chips) not to a magic peg board.

Although, I'm not surprised the OP is confused. He had difficulties with an iPhone.

I've messed up a BGA with over 1000 pins. all in two or three square inches.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_grid_array