Modular Phone: Why It (Doesn’t) Work
A telephone that you can set up yourself: the modular telephone has been in the design studio for a while. But it is not the solution, it seems. Why not and could it be?
Freedom of choice is sacred. When you have everything to choose, you make the perfect choices for you, which don’t have to be perfect for someone else. If something consists of several components, a bit of mixing with those components is fun and you can make a unique product for you. Think, for example, of computers you built yourself: if you want to combine a powerful graphics card with somewhat more cost-saving other options, you can assemble everything as you want.
Modular telephone
Why don’t we do that en masse with smartphones? Attempts have been enough. The executive form would be a base into which you can plug in all kinds of things. For example, each component (processor, graphics card, motherboard, screen, cameras and more) can be its own ‘block’ and you can add it to the base as you want. Do you want a large screen, but other specifications are not of much interest to you? Then you can add all kinds of cheap components to a large screen. Does it have to be compact but powerful enough for games and have a good camera? Pick and mix! Examples of manufacturers who dare to do this are Google with Project Ara, but also Phonebloks, the LG G5 and a number of other examples.
Cons
It sounds like the perfect freedom of building and using smartphones. But there are some drawbacks. The first is very simple: can you make a phone sturdy enough with all kinds of separate parts? From the days when the back of a phone could still be removed to change the battery, it often happened that the back came loose when dropped. Of course you don’t want your expensive smartphone to fall apart like a LEGO construction. There were solutions for this, such as magnets, but people were skeptical to say the least.
Also, there is such a thing as too many choices. Because it’s not a huge problem that many buyers have that a phone doesn’t do enough. If you’re looking for a phone that’s better than competitors in a certain area, it’s probably already there. Without having to deal with a modular phone. It therefore does not solve any problems for the majority of buyers, so the question is whether it can be done.
In addition, there is also the question of whether you should ask consumers to put together a modular telephone. It is physically not possible to make a dirt cheap processor work well with an extremely powerful video card. In addition, it is probably not even cheaper to buy all components separately instead of an already fully assembled smartphone. And current smartphones are put together in such a way that all components fit together perfectly like a puzzle, which is more difficult with modular phones. So it’s probably going to be a pretty big phone with relatively little hardware at all times.
Perhaps the biggest problem lies with the smartphone makers themselves. If you can constantly improve an ancient smartphone by adding new components, the chance is much smaller that you buy the successor. If your iPhone becomes slow after a while, you are almost forced to buy a new iPhone. With a modular telephone you can simply replace the broken component, possibly with a component from a third party. Not really profitable for the maker.
Good idea?
A fully modular phone is still in the future and the question is whether the market for it will ever be big enough. An example of a still partly modular telephone is the FairPhone. The components of the FairPhone are all assembled without glue and other tricks, so you can easily replace parts. This is because FairPhone cares about the longevity of the phone, and not so much about their own gain in that situation. The FairPhones are not a huge success, but the idea is still very good.
Would you ever consider a modular phone?
