What happened to modular phones?

They never happened?

But that's the opposite of what everyone is saying. Everyone including Jow Forums says that modular phones are technically impossible.

The only reason we can fit so much shit in a phone now is because its spread out and inter weaving cables and such. A separate "unit" or block would take up too much space.

Reality happened.

Look at computers and how "modular" they are. New CPU? That will be a new mainboard please. Ohh, you have a new graphics card, too bad, your PCI is a generation behind, get a new mainboard please. What's this, your on board wlan is too slow? You guessed it, get a new mainboard.

(((They))) don't like you being able to remove the mircophone and cameras.
Also only having to replace the parts that break is cheaper for the consumer, so exactly the opposite of the goal of a capitalistic company.

"Oh damn, my bluetooth broke, i wish i could replace it." Said no one ever.

The things that actuall do break:
-Screen - it's still going to cost you loads to replace it
-Battery - it's still cheap to replace it (except with Aplel)

Putting all the functions shown in OPs pic bottom left onto a single pcb is far far cheaper than designing, producing and distributing single parts that do that.

Google's first more known "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" project
original dude sold it to them, google played the hype for a year or so and then killed it

They want to sell a new $999 phone to you every year. How would that work if you can just buy spare parts?

modularity is a meme

Motherboard would always make it impossible. I said as much when this meme first started. Died even before arrival.

Because the design philosophy was hilariously inefficient and out of touch.
>Worse durability
>Bigger form factor
>More expensive
Lets say your phone survives beyond warranty of 2 years and the screen goes bust right? If you had a phoneblock type device then you would shill out the extra 50-70 bucks for an upgraded display.

Seems reasonable, however your battery is probably on its last legs too so thats an extra 20 bucks. At that point you hit the spot of 80 USD where the getting a new phone for a little more is actually the economical and sensible thing to do. You upgrade the whole device for 200 USD in total instead of screwing around with the mix of old and new components.

From engineering aspect you cant really straight up upgrade camera in the favor of SoC either. Modern smartphone cameras require newer SoCs to work and viceversa so its a package deal anyways. You blow 1000-150 bucks on a new camera/SoC system while retaining an aging battery and display. Same goes for some connections or USBs

It does not work in practice and is bad value.

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Phones could be made serviceable, but that wouldn't make them modular or easy to modify. Simply don't solder stuff that shouldn't be soldered and don't add glue anywhere, and design the body with some external way to open it without specialist tools.
Also, some stuff really can't be serviceable - I've never heard of a socketed SoC, at least not on devices meant to be small (maybe some of those mini-atx tier "SoC" boards might have sockets). A reliable socket is very bulky compared to just sticking it into a hole then dousing with molten metal.

All it requires is an easy system for having drivers loaded when modules are installed, should just work after that especially in modern android with gsis

SoC + RAM + radio + a few gigs of storage for the ROM - main module.
These parts are too tightly integrated, as of now there's little sense to separate them.
Everything else as separate modules + sd card for storage - it's already connected by cables as seen in any teardown video, they wouldn't need to change anything.
The only thing that stopped them is their own jewishness.

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could be done easily using some form of USB C controller and having all of the modules using the USBC protocol, would make it easy for hotswapping at least.

Phone manufacturers threatened Google to stop research.

>that point you hit the spot of 80 USD where the getting a new phone for a little more is actually the economical and sensible thing to do
Except a good phone costs $300 minimum, much higher for premium options.
The reason is that it's a dumb idea that was never practical unless you had the main components inside the phone and left the blocks for things like extra battery, cameras, etc. which would defeat the entire point.

That's not true.

shit idea from the beginning

Google realized they could just cripple old devices and force your hand on a regular basis, much more often than you'd replace any other consumer electronic device, so why not make you just buy a whole phone

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the idea is so terrible i don't understand the appeal, new phones are cheap as fuck if they aren't flagship

>Except a good phone costs $300 minimum
nah, I just bought a moto x4 for like half that. If you get older phones you get something super decent for cheap

Nigga you bought a used phone lmao

companies want to seel you new phones every year, they are not interesting in making upgradable ones

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Spotted the Intelfag.

I always thought this was a better idea for tablets than phones, phones are a little to tricky and small for this but tablets could be perfect to experiment with the idea and see whats plausible.

I just spent the last 2 hours setting up my new modular phone, what are you talking about? They're still around.

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bitch please, brand new in box sealed and everything Android One edition 32GB is still going for $150. Cheapest IP68 phone you could buy today, nearly stock android, and SD630. Hard as fuck deal to beat

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baste, I just really fucking wish they didn't kill the Force line with the shattershield. If the Turbo 2 got a cracked bootloader it would still be my phone today but I fucking hate Verizon. Now it's just a device dedicated to playing games and watching youtube videos and stuff

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>he didn't buy the 64gb/4gb version for a measly $50 extra
poorfag detected

Ara ara...

What year did it come out? Doesn't Android One only cover like 24 months of updates

Mobile phones as most people know them are an inherently flawed design in that it is pretty much impossible to customize the hardware and software, due to its size and the fact that companies deliberately prevent customization.

They're not profitable for phone manufacturers, only the parts suppliers

Modularity is only commercially viable in certain form factors, such as desktop computers. In other form factors, such as phones, there are too many sacrifices for what the consumer would consider too little reward.

Yeah, unfortunately it's close to EOL. Android One has a policy of 2 OS updates and 3 years of security updates if you stay stock. It's currently on Pie which is the last official OS update. It's 'promised' security updates until August 2020 for stock OS. The good thing is that moto makes bootloader unlock easy but going with how they've been focusing on the low to mid range segment, I'll probably buy another $150-200 next year and repurpose this device like I did with except this time I get to play around with third party ROMs and OSs

>that
>good

people never wanted them in first place
fixed battery breaks its concept and people prefer it over a replaceable one
this is most basic example why it failed

Try and find some adds for that LG not too long ago that was """""modular""""". The marketing to normalfags for it was bad

the real problem google had was that the modular bus they invented for the components to communicate was just too slow for real world use in comparison to a standard phone

tl:dr
too hard to make and not enough money in the market

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My OS professor was working for this company

He was gonna leave academia, for this but then google closed this project and now he's back.

Imagine tasting freedom and then having your freedom tongue cut off. Damn...

a very stupid idea that was poorly implemented. That said, at the same time I dislike how there's a new model of phone every single year too.

>-Battery - it's still cheap to replace it (except with Aplel)

>muh water indicator

nigga my 2006 core 2 shmuo can take the latest nvidia meme vidjeo card tf you talking about?

I mean, there are better phones for the price but I need IP68 since I work outside. For the same price there's the G7 Power

why put all the r/d into a modular phone for the 2000 people in the world that would appreciate it? there are dozens of different smartphone models available, just find one and unlock it and enjoy it

The i3 8100 can be made to work on the same motherboard as a 4 year old i3 6100. It's just intel being a bunch of greedy fucks is why you need a hack to do so.

This is horrifying

The shitty planned obsolescent industry killed them.

My new fetish

>SoC getting slow
>replace SoC with a better one
>don't throw away the good working old parts
>don't pay as much
Hurf durf, modularity makes no sense cause I say so

bought by Google and abandoned because Google wanted to earn money on nexus and pixel, which would be out-competed by their less valuable modular phone

>replace SoC with a better one
>But now it is limited by RAM
>Replace RAM
>still shitty screen and camera, no anthennas for 5G, etc

Google barely sells any phones thought. They make more money from ads on iPhones without really doing anything for that.

They ditched them because they weren't perfect money grabbing models. Oy Vey!

So you'll waste $200 every year instead of buying better phone for $500 and keeping it for 5 years?
You're not smart

It was just brainlet idea.

I have the same phone and the USB port is borked. Did that happen to you too?

Like all bad ideas, it fizzled out

>screen
Maybe I like the screen
>camera
Lmao, who cares. Retarded facebook nigger cattle
>RAM
Upgrade the RAM as well moron. With the money saved on all the other components you can afford it.

>back button on left

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>every bodies
Phonefag detected

Spotted the Samshit shill.