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Comment by xenadu02 | Hacker News Reader

Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knew this was the ultimate result on the very day they announced it.

To make something modular you need to wrap each piece in its own case, add bulky connectors, etc. Both weight and volume are at an extreme premium in mobile devices. All that metal/plastic going in to making the pieces modular is stealing volume and weight from the battery.

The only realistic way to make the power envelope is to use an SoC, which means the CPU, GPU, and RAM must all be in the same module. That doesn't leave a lot worth upgrading... maybe just the radio module. Jumping up in screen resolution would mean replacing the SoC to get a better GPU too.

Modularity worked in desktop PCs because they have gobs of space and an AC power connection.

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First thing that came into mind when I heard about project Ara was that, laptops aren't modular because the increased size and weight will out weigh the benefits. Seemed like the same situation applies to smartphones, only worse.

Some people are obsessed with weight/thickness in mobile devices, but not as many as the manufacturers think there are. "modular" really comes down to "repairable" which means extra engineering would have to go in to the fact that you couldn't just glue most pieces together.

It _would_ add a little size/mass overhead, but it wouldn't have to add a lot. It would just cut in to bottom lines to build and maintain a consistent form factor. Allowing people to replace parts means they'll be buying fewer new units. My last two laptop purchases were definitely due to a hypothetically fixable problem in an unrepairable form factor.

I also wouldn't mind slightly thicker phones, but not necessarily for modularity. I just want to see phones that can be dropped flat on their faces on a concrete sidewalk and still remain in usable condition (i.e. no shattered screen).

Making the screen completely modular would be one way to achieve this, since you can just replace the screen with a new one if the old one breaks in a drop. But it can be achieved much more easily and cheaply by simply slightly recessing the screen (or by slightly raising everything around the screen) so the glass never has to make direct contact with concrete in the event of a drop.

This is how bumper cases work, and my $3 bumper case has saved my $400 phone enough times that I'd never use a new phone without one. That said, I really wish this kind of resilience was built into the phone itself, so I'd never have to have to cover up the nice design and great feeling materials on my phone with a cheap, bulky, hideous case.

You could instead just make phones be cheap enough that you don't mind dropping them.

That's the American spirit!

Then just buy a case with a nice design. Buy a $20 case instead of a $3 bumper.

Using a separate case still adds a lot more bulk than would be necessary if the protective layer was built into the phone itself. This is just yet another example of the unavoidable cost of modularity that people have been bringing up everywhere in this thread. And even the nicest and most expensive cases I've tried have never really been able to compare with my actual phone in terms of quality of material and design.

Yeah, absolutely. You can't buy a high-quality one if you want to.

Ruggedized phones exist. They look like childproof rubber bricks, but they exist.

> Making the screen completely modular would be one way to achieve this, since you can just replace the screen with a new one if the old one breaks in a drop

iPhone 4/4S did this just fine, undo two screws and the glass comes right off ready to be replaced for like $10.

iPhone 5> they started fusing the glass to the sensor IIRC so this became far more expensive/cumbersome

My original Galaxy S was built like this. The screen was recessed slightly into the bezel.

Slightly recessing the screen may not be enough. It's certainly not enough for asphalt. You'll need several millimeters of distance, and are probably much better by just placing some protective screen above it (although that increases the chance of something getting damaged - it'll just be the protective screen instead of the real one).

I've had good luck in choosing phones with cases just elastic enough to break a bit while protecting the screen (even without any kind of cover). But I never brought into the hard-case movement by Apple.

I'm not sure if your assertions are true, but I passionately want them to be so.

>Some people are obsessed with weight/thickness in mobile devices, but not as many as the manufacturers think there are. "

That's not what sales numbers say. People repeatedly buy the thinner/lighter models (which also seem more "advanced to then") over heavier alternatives.

But often you don't even have the option for a thicker model... So how can anyone even claim that?

From the times that you do have it.

This could easily be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Focus most of your efforts putting the good stuff into the thin phones and then run the numbers how everyone is buying thin phones!

> "modular" really comes down to "repairable" which means extra engineering would have to go in to the fact that you couldn't just glue most pieces together.

I think those are quite different: a phone that screws/clips together where you can replace a damaged screen is a very different prospect from one made of pluggable blocks.

They used to be modular until companies started to follow Apple down the current path. I had a Dell Inspiron with removable battery, removable DVD drive, and PCMCIA slot for modular functionality.

Now we have come somewhat full circle with Apple's Macbook which has meagre hardware functionality and relies on USB-C to provide the missing functionality in a modular fashion. However it means a nest of cables so it's probably not what anyone wants when they want a modular laptop.

I had the same thing. Sure it was bulky, heavy plastic at the time, but it never had the investment to evolve into something more efficient.

We didn't have to go down the road to soldering all the bits to a tiny motherboard, but Apple's vision of "small and light at all costs", including performance and battery life, killed all the other paths for the foreseeable future.

I might investigate EOMA68 stuff, though it is likely years before it'll be viable, if ever (especially given their anti-intel sentiment): http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68

> including performance and battery life

Apple is the only vendor that has a 15" laptop with high-res screen and quad-core processor that gets 8+ hours of battery life. The only laptops with greater battery capacity than the Macbook Pros are the Thinkpads with extended batteries that stick out of the machine.

Apple has driven the market back to the days of 8 and 16 bit computers.

The PC was the outlier that allowed for easy expansion.

Now we have USB instead of Amiga expansion bays, that required a table with big enough width. Instead we scatter cables and hubs.

Realistically your Dell Inspiron was only slightly more modular than most early Android phones. Battery and external storage were swappable, but the bulk of the remainder was all integrated.

What do you mean by "meagre hardware functionality" ?

I remember the old mid-2000 MacBooks. I had one with an easily accessible hard drive and ram right under the replaceable battery (which I did have to replace once too).

People forget Apple was sued, and lost, in the 1990s for telling people to buy new iPods instead of selling replacement batteries. They started moving to user serviceable stuff briefly, but then went back to their own ways and people haven't challenged them since.

Re iPod:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#iPod_bat...

It was the 2000s, 2005 was the settlement date, iPods didn't exist in the 1990s. They didn't lose, strictly speaking, they settled (which is not the same as admitting fault). Settling lets them save face, even if they may not have had a liability, by not dragging their name through the muck with regards to the poor performance of the batteries and iPods.

I believe Apple offers battery replacement programs for most (if not all) of their products now.

You still have modular laptops. For example, for a Clevo W230SS (known as "Sager NP7338" in some parts), you can choose the display (1080p or 2560x1440 matte IPS, or 3200x1600 glossy), CPU, up to two hard drives (or was it three? Can't recall), W-Lan module, keyboard layout, RAM amount+brand+frequency et cetera. For its bigger brother (which is 17.1'', as opposed to the 13.3'' W230SS), you can also select the optical drive (different brands of DVD and Blu-Ray R-only or R/W drives --- the 13.3'' variant is too small to fit one).

The battery is swappable, and the whole thing opens with a set of phillips (you know, the '+' shape) screws.

Although you can't choose the GPU when ordering, newer ones tend to have newer models, implying that's also modular (just fixed to a selection of one at a given time).

So, yeah --- you can get a modular laptop, but you have to know where to look.

> They used to be modular until companies started to follow Apple down the current path. I had a Dell Inspiron with removable battery, removable DVD drive, and PCMCIA slot for modular functionality.

And how much did it weigh? Laptops have come a long way since even just 10 years ago. My rMBP is almost a pound lighter than my original Macbook, despite having a 15.4" versus 13.3" screen, a quad core versus dual-core processor, and a 96 watt-hour battery versus a 55 watt-hour battery.

And even if I was willing to cart around that extra 0.8 pounds, I wouldn't want to spend that extra weight budget on increased modularity. I'd much rather they, say, push the battery life to 14-15 hours instead.

Sure. For me the most important concern of a laptop is mass. Then screen resolution. rMBP is a good choice if you rank these two criteria as highly as I do.

At my current (Dell) laptop I can change RAM, DVD, HD and battery. Seems to be the perfect point between a modular and an integrated designs.

There's no point adding any extra module, people do not upgrade anything besides RAM, and everything that wears off is included.

"They used to be modular until companies started to follow Apple down the current path. I had a Dell Inspiron with removable battery, removable DVD drive, and PCMCIA slot for modular functionality."

PCMCIA was so great. In my entire experience of computing and consumer electronics, I think PCMCIA is still my favorite technology. I miss it a lot.

Laptops are less modular than desktops but way more modular than phones. HDDs, SSDs, and RAM can generally be upgraded, whereas in phones only the SD card can be upgraded. (In both, batteries and screens can be replaced with OEM parts.)

I think LG have done something very neat with the new G5 and modular phone design. Having that accessory swap bay on the phone allows you to add all sorts of different tools or capabilities to the handset.

It's not ideal because they integrated it with the battery bay, so you have shut the device off to make a swap you're replacing the end of the removable battery tray, which is also a pretty boss feature given the complete sealed flagships everyone else produces now).

But, it mates both a solid, SoC platform with some modular flexibility, vice having to bluetooth tether accessory cases to your phone.

But they have committed the ultimate sin for androids with that, it uses a non-standart power connector.

AFAICS it just uses USB type C, which a bunch of phones are using now instead of microUSB type B. That's hardly "non-standard."

It may have been a reference to this:

http://www.androidauthority.com/htc-10-lg-g5-breach-usb-type...

I agree USB-C is standard and will be THE new standard (over Micro-USB). But very few manufacturers are getting USB-C right.

Ah, thanks, I hadn't known about that, but I'm not remotely surprised by it.

I'm not even especially concerned by it, though I'd (obviously) prefer if everyone just used the standard charge protocols rather than thirty different "nod-and-a-wink" handshakes.

I suppose absent external pressure there's not much reason for the SoC vendors to opt for the standard over their own proprietary thing, though, is there.

Isn't that an extension port rather than a modular phone? You can add some features via extension modules but the phone itself isn't modular. And technically that's "just" the phone acting as a USB host, coupled to the software support for modules.

> Both weight and volume are at an extreme premium in mobile devices. All that metal/plastic going in to making the pieces modular is stealing volume and weight from the battery.

This is probably mostly right, except that the size and weight of current mobile phones is probably largely determined by display, battery and case design/protection. I'd like to see some real numbers here. My guess is that 5-10g of plastic and connectors wouldn't make much of a difference and could easily be compensated with a slightly smaller battery and screen if size/weight become an issue.

> Modularity worked in desktop PCs because they have gobs of space and an AC power connection.

Many things have changed since the 80s, modularity is now unattractive for most users.

> modularity is now unattractive for most users.

It's not that modularity has become unattractive, it's that smaller form factors have become more attractive.

A larger form factor is a potential side effect of modularity.

I don't think modularity was ever very attractive in most consumer electronics for the "average joe" who just wants something that does the job they bought it for.

Agreed. I'm surprised they thrashed for so long. My current smartphone is glued together, and there are all kinds of cabling gymnastics behind the screen that make repair tricky.

A modular cellphone would be bulky, likely power hungry, and despite its modularity, it would not be easy to upgrade whatsoever.

Ara was DOA.

Wait, was there ever a plan to use anything but a SoC? That's all that's available as far as processors go as far as I'm aware. The modules would go

- screen - battery - processor (cpu/gpu/memory/radio) - everything else (sensors, interconnects, speakers, storage, etc.)

Almost all phone processors are a BGP stack with memory on top of cpu/gpu/radio on a single die.

even if there wasn't a plan to do that, that's how the idea was received. Compare the reactions from HN when it was made clear that you could not upgrade CPU/GPU/RAM/battery/screen individually

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11740451

That was the original notion. Although radio probably could've gone into a separate module if they wanted it to, given the radio's frequently a discrete component anyways.

The big change that happened with the "reset" was that the display, primary battery, and AP (SoC) all became part of the frame. The original notion was that all the parts of the phone were modules, all connecting to the AP (which is also a module) via the frame's UniPro network-- the frame itself has little intelligence. (The way this works is actually pretty neat; I hope some of the network stack sees the light of day in some form or another.)

What does AP stand for?

AP or APU stands for Application Processor [Unit] which is more or less synonymous with SoC. The semantics of it are pretty boring, and the term seems a little strange considering modern cell phones are fairly identical to modern computers besides the fact that a few more functions are packages in a single IC.

Some background ... I have been very, very interested in a modular phone platform for many years now - mainly due to my desire to isolate computing modules from baseband modules and have hard switches for things like GPS/microphone/wifi/etc. For me the goal was control and security, not gimmicks like projector modules, etc.

In fact, I went so far as to contact several small electronics designers and fabricators and drew up some initial plans. rsync.net and (pre-release) 0x.co kept me busy, so I didn't get much further than that.

But in answer to your point:

"To make something modular you need to wrap each piece in its own case, add bulky connectors, etc. Both weight and volume are at an extreme premium in mobile devices."

No, not really ... the design direction I was going in was a to have one or two or three plastic cases, depending on how large (how many modules) you wanted your phone to be and then the modules themselves were bare daughterboards that had connectors such that you could assemble them like a grid.

So in that fashion, each module would not need its own packaging and case - you simply started with a plastic package (case) that was large enough for whatever "grid" you wanted to assemble.

And, of course, you could add a second (or third, or fourth) battery module.

You would still need redundant connectors that give weight and take volume.

Yep. My only surprise is that they took them this long to stop working on it.

I can understand why this could be a useful internal experiment. But, clearly, some people at Google expected this to be a viable product. Baffling.

Naa. It was an obvious PR play from the start. An "open" phone platform?? Give me a break... But music to the ears of all those "open source" zombies.

If so, seems like a rather bad PR _stunt_.

>Yep. My only surprise is that they took them this long to stop working on it.

Where they really working on it?

There was an update at this year's IO, but some of the team leads already had other descriptions on their twitter accounts.

Screen replacement, camera, DSP and audio out, radio, sensors, USB port, all could be upgradeable or at least, replaceable to fix breakage.

Yes the phone would be bigger, but I believe the main reason this has gone nowhere is that people have got used to seeing phones as replaceable units at the phone level, not at the component level, and there's more money in selling a shiny new Galaxy Over9000 than there is in selling a swap-out for a busted screen.

Doesnt Motorola have a phone out right now that's modular? I see advertisements every day for it on the El train in Chicago. It looks silly and impracticable but it's clearly possible.

That phone only has modular accessories (better camera lens, bigger battery, louder speakers, etc).

As terrible as this idea is for phones -- it's perfect for home automation.

Having each and every widget doing its own network and software stack is just a mess. Nevermind having to power all these gadgets.

There's very little reason to have more than one base in a room, that could handle all the non-switch/non-outlet duties. (cameras, air quality sensors, motion sensors, mics and speakers for echo-type interaction, tv input, etc.)

If all those features were just modules that stacked on top of a base (and could be swapped independently), you'd really have something.

I don't understand at all...

Home automation is, by the nature of it, a series of distinct functions spread throughout the home (e.g. front door lock, garage control, temperature control, lights in each room, sprinkler system, washer/dryer alerts, etc); so you're going to need each of these geographically separate things communicating into a central control "hub."

You cannot physically move these things into a module on the central control hub. Most of them have to be in the location they're already at (e.g. physically in the front door).

How does making the control hub a modular unit help with the complexity of home automation? If anything it further adds to the complexity. A lot of the solutions now just use WiFi networking and a standard protocol.

I'm just not understanding your concept at all.

I think what he's saying is that rather than selling a bunch of different devices (or one device with every sensor under the sun), you sell a "room base", and a bunch of different monitoring plugs that can slot into the "room base".

If your laundry room doesn't really need a camera, it just needs a thermometer, you just slot in the thermometer plug into that room base, etc.

Basically, yeah. Some stuff is necessarily distinct. But an awful lot of it is not. And given the way this tech is advancing, and the cost of retrofitting, most of the stuff people will first encounter and install will fall under the umbrella of "not distinct".

(e.g. people are going to buy an Echo or a Dropcam long before they refit their house for smart switches/outlets/bulbs/appliances.)

Yeah, some people knew it wouldn't happen. It might be interesting to revisit the comments and debates from years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8527774

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7597090

It's too bad we can't keep a score of people's accuracy. We might be able to learn something.

It wouldn't be so terrible if they adapted it to laptops though.

You missed one other possibility and that's structural components. If any of the parts of the device can be part of the hardened envelope then you lose less space.

For instance, a thinner PCB bonded to or traced onto the inside of the case. Or look at the research in automotive circles for batteries that can support a physical load.

And also one of my peeves about Apple phones is that the chassis is so strong that you don't need a cover, but only a few people I know don't use a case, so phone plus case is heavier.

I'd like to see someone build a phone that HAS to have a case, and comes with one, which you can replace. You could do the same with the modular design and then you wouldn't have to make individual pieces bomb proof.

It's not that I don't think it's inevitable that the project was cancelled now. I'm just thinking in ten years when some of this is sorted out and we have no reason to keep making phones smaller, this plan might come back again. It's just another project that came out before its time.

EOMA68 goes a long ways to providing this sort of thing for general purpose machines (laptops/desktops).

https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop

> And also one of my peeves about Apple phones is that the chassis is so strong that you don't need a cover, but only a few people I know don't use a case

If Apple would stop making their phones so damn sleek and slippery I would skip the case too. The primary purpose of my case is to make it harder to drop in the first place.

If my previous phone had been modular, I expect I'd still have it, but with a 2×nanosim module in place of the previous sim.

What I'm saying is that replacing the VGA card isn't the only sensible form of modularity. Replacing the case/screen with a watertight one when you move house to somewhere really rainy makes sense, etc.

> That doesn't leave a lot worth upgrading... maybe just the radio module.

Camera upgrades would sell like hot cakes.

And even that is going away.

Now with USB and Thunderbolt it seems we are back to the 8 and 16 bit days of selling computers as appliances, specially due to the thin margins that are currently being used.

Outside gamers, even customizable desktops seem to be a dying breed.

For almost everyone, a computer is an appliance. And that's okay.

Myself included.

I was fine with the old ways.

The move from Spectrums to the PC was mostly driven by my parents. I would have gotten an Amiga 500 if given the choice.

Like many others commenting on this news, every I got to upgrade my PC during the 90's and early 2000, I had to buy a new one due to the cascade of required updates.

Since 2003 I only use laptops and am fine with the limited upgrade options.

I have a desktop machine, originally intended for games which I discovered shortly after building it that I no longer especially cared to play. I don't know that I'm going to bother with another one; the only reason I can think of that I might want to do so is because I can fit more monitors on it than I can on a laptop.

Not to mention that every time I buy new phone (every 3 years roughly), the old one is worn down to the point of falling apart.

Yes, they could make it stronger in the modular approach. But this means even more unnecessary plastic and metal casing.

In a far, far future, where a processor would be say 1/10th of the size it is now, I could see it work though.

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