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comment by veen
veen  ·  3652 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why Google’s Modular Smartphone Might Actually Succeed | Google Project Ara

    I'm not Google though.

You'd make a good Google (Bloogle? sounds like an alcoholic drink to me).

    Then I'd come out with a chassis that doesn't go together like legos, but can be upgraded in fifteen minutes by a semi-skilled technician with a satchel full of tools.

I really like this approach. Especially if anyone with Google and a toolbox can fix their phone.

It's weird, now that you've put it like this, that they want to go completely modular and not just in a more modular direction. Currently you need an expert to pull apart something as sophisticated as the latest iPhone. So in response these guys want to go overboard and use something like Lego. People just want to be able to pull apart their devices (and replace them), is that too much to ask? You'd still have the same benefits but less of the my-phone-mighy-fall-apart-when-I-drop-it stuff.





kleinbl00  ·  3652 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well, watchmaker's tools. Or the equivalent. You need semi-specialized tools to work on anything small and technical, but they're pretty easy to get on the Internet. But yeah - I'd open up the ecosystem to anyone willing to kill a couple hours on an online certification and let anybody who'd done a hands-on under supervision play "authorized service center."

I think it's okay to have modular stuff that you can take apart and put together with anything this side of a SMT rework station. Makes the hackers feel more 1337 and allows you to make the thing feel "real" to people who can't be sussed to whip out a jeweler's Torx. And hey - that way developers who aren't too savvy on having their product skunked in the reviews because it's fiddly to install are still able to sell stuff. Some things just aren't that modular and shouldn't be.