Six months ago a geek from somewhere appeared in his own YouTube channel and made a nice and lovely montage about having united modular phone by making a template board (base) can attach phone blocks as the hardware components on in by pins (figures in bottom). Well I still remember giving like to the video and support this thinker to invent something new and out of the box and yes after all he made it Dave Hakkens got his sponsorship from Google’s Motorola to establish this project and make the dream become true.
As he mentioned in the video that the “Electronic devices is not designed to last” and that is a true fact, a statics been founded that up to 80% of the electronics ends up as an e-Waste and less than 12% goes for recycling and this is as good as populating 50 million of toxicwhere it does contains thousands of vulnerable metals such as Palladium, copper, silver and gold which is recoverable. The highest portion of this e-Waste comes from Cell phones and Laptops comes in second place, that because the evolution that the mobile phones vendors bring to the customer plant the outdated feeling in the consumer and the need to have the latest always, back to 10 years ago such gadgets was last to more than 3 years at least before the think of change but now days it is quite difficult to have remaining functioning gadget as the Cell phones for more than 2 years. So basically the result more benefits for manufactures, more loss for the consumer and environment, no wonders producing high quality which is considered as well-manufactured is no longer an option for the majority of the company, they need to create inside the customer the “need to change” feeling and by planting this the consumers will always seek the new and modern, especially with all of these fascinating technologies coming.
So back to PhoneBloks the modular phone it will get rid-off of this matter by having this Base and it allows firstly to attach any block designed for the base, it can be easily detached as easy as unscrew some screws and plug-attach another block and done. Motorola announced that this will be considered as “Free open hardware platform” where many manufacturers will be able to design and create their own blocks and the starter was Motorola started the project nearly a year ago and Dave came up with similar idea and he got the support and the prepared market from nearly million supporter around the world and more than 20 million view for his video in YouTube channel and it is now in the prototype phase. Small notch to mention is Motorola been sold to Lenovo but kept the project of Ara within the company itself and it is under the supervision of Google.
The imagination of the ability to customise the phone and choose whatever brands the customer favour or even develop and create own blocks a dream about to be touched, Google announced earlier that they are finalising the project and probably we may see the PhoneBloks within the beginning of 2015 and the base may be sold for 50 US dollars only. So Brick by Brick and a mobile that worthy to last. For whoever is interesting there will be a conference in the 15th of April held for Project Ara you may keep tuned and the blog will remain updating.
Plugging the blocks in the base by pins.
Several blocks can be attached into the base.
Prototype Phonebloks under the test, will be available for developers next months.
Space to Imagine:
- I may be interested in battery with large capacity and I do not have interest in Camera (use bigger Battery block swapped with smaller Camera block)
- My grandma is more likely to hear and read (Use bigger speakers blocks and bigger screen)
- My brother is photographer and he would to have a perfect photography tool (swap the screen with Full HD screen block and use better camera block)
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