It turns out that when you make an unconventional phone that lets you swap out its core components, it can be hard to make that same phone stay put together – at least compared to today’s smartphones. Google’s Project Ara team has tweeted an explanation for why its pilot test plans were reworked and delayed: the current model wasn’t faring well when dropped. “No more electropermanent magnets,” the team tweeted.
That’s what you get when you push the envelope.
When I first read about Project Ara I figured already then that it’s gonna be a lot more fragile than regular phones exactly because you just can’t get the same kind of mechanical stability from multiple removable pieces as you can get from one, solid piece. The only proper solution I can imagine is to basically have all the parts surrounded by a stiff case, but then that’s going to make the phone a lot thicker.
The main problem with project Ara is that most components are actually 1 package already. CPU/GPU/MEM all have to be really close together to perform well while not requiring too much power. Same for radios.
The other problem is that components have to be balanced quite well. So upgrading a camera-module or screen to a better part is not going to work if the rest of the components cannot keep up with the higher requirements of that part. So in reality you will upgrade all components all at once anyway.
(I use a 1020 which is “the” camera phone but didn’t get the latest performance improvements because the SOC wasn’t fast enough to keep up)
Project Ara is going to be awesome…eventually…for people that currently build their own pc’s but not for any mass consumer market. So as a geek I am looking forward to seeing it arrive, but as a consumer there isn’t anything interesting here
Why not just adding a transparent cover to keep everything in place and protect the elements from dust and moisture ? Simple solution…
Because Google doesn’t do simple solutions, they “do it right” (queue Americans invented a ballpoint that could write in space, Russians brought a pencil misquote)
Or perhaps more realistically a cover would look ugly and would make it even thicker and would make swapping components more of a hassle.
Or perhaps most realistically, there were 2 competing views inside Project Ara where 1 team was infatuated with electromagnets and the other team wasn’t. The cool electro-team was winning so far but now the other team got the overhand and can now start doing things they envisioned
Seriously, no need to be an engineer to see such a simple solution :
https://www.google.fr/search?q=firefox+os+phone+transparent&tbm=isch
Ugly, some people would say ? Nope, you can show you own an Ara and check its internal blinking leds
Pushing Lego blocks together is not engineering. The use of magnets suggests incompetence rather than genius.
I hope you realize that those lego blocks still have to communicate with each other and that IS engineering.
Also, they stopped the use of magnets, so now they are genius again, aren’t they?
1985 Called, it wants it’s electrically conductive lego bricks back.
http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/6450_Mobile_Police_Truck
Yes, there were lego bricks that let you create circuits with the bricks. I had this set. I still _have_ this set. It still works.
Cool Lego, but where does it say that this had electrically conductive lego bricks?http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Light_%26_Sound
It just seems contacts and wires to me.
Also, this is engineering!
Also, If a tiny light and sound module requires a huge 9 Volt battery and the interconnects need to transfer data at USB2 speeds (or much higher)…engineering for sure.
(Now Lego Mindstorms, that comes closer but still has a tiny ARM CPU and memory and low speed compared to phones)
Of course I bet those lego bricks don’t support high bandwidth communication busses. Like the uniport protocol used by project ara.
Edited 2015-08-21 02:49 UTC
I love it when people smugly repeat that anecdote. Or, more accurately, I love pointing out the “minor” details that they leave out – like the fact that NASA didn’t develop the space pen themselves, but licensed it from an independent inventor. Or the fact that pencils are not a very good solution, for reasons that are fairly obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a few seconds: in an enclosed low-gravity, high-oxygen space filled with electronic equipment, you generally don’t want little bits of an electrically-conductive material floating around (like, say, the graphite used in pencils).
I dislike it when people only read part of the story and miss the purposefully put word MISQUOTE at the end
I only like that anecdote because it can turn into the Seinfeld pen episode. Where I can expand the current argument to another field to elevate the conversation into a meta demonstration of the general behavior dynamics already present in the argument. Its like lapping the field in racing.
is your comparing your “hardcase” model (apart from the fact that it sounds like a standard current model phone..), actually a bit like comparing an
exoskeletal crab to the endoskeletal human being … ?
the many and various different muscles and internal organs are held strongly in place with a light strong skin and interconnective tissue fibres.
I think I’d rather be the strong resilient “human style”(Ara) phone than the brittle “crab style” phone (in a hard case)
What are you babbling about and how is that related to hardware? And how, exactly, is Ara “resilient” when the article itself says it isn’t?
I think he’s suggesting that instead of a traditional solid-frame phone, you take the modular Ara components and put them into some kind of flexible, bendy material instead… something that’ll absorb shock when dropped, and bend harmlessly in a pocket…
Well, the display or the components won’t bend, so what’d be the point? As for it being able to absorb shock when dropped: I never suggested making it out of glass. You can have stiff materials without them being brittle.
The display doesn’t have to be bendable, although that may be possible at some point with OLEDs. It’s also possible to link the separate components with flexible flat cables similar to the ones used in many other embedded devices when they need to be stacked on each other. Place these in a reasonably stiff but still shock absorbent plastic case and you have a fairly ruggedized package. In theory, anyway. I’m sure the Google engineers probably have already thought of that. Electrical tolerances may be too tight to allow that kind of construction.
You just have to have a tight retaining band around the outside perimeter (just like the rim on a wooden wagon wheel). It wouldn’t add any thickness and no more than 1-2mm to length and width.
My uncle worked on something similar in LG r&d, four years ago(!)
He pointed out that the problem is geometry. Modules have different sizes and that means the user will have to deal with a combinatorial explosion in figuring out which parts can be used while retaining a rectangulary shaped phone.
Google is “fixing” this issue by standardizing on three slot sizes with two-four bays for each. Oh wait, that’s not really fixing it.
In the end, this is not something users will want to deal with.
Edited 2015-08-20 10:45 UTC
The real problem is people with no practical manufacturing experience. They simply don’t see the blindingly obvious solution of a minimalist supporting case and a few screws.
A major reason why the Germans and Swiss are such good manufacturers is because many (if not most) of their engineers started out on the factory floor as trade apprentices before going to university. There is no better training than solving complex real world.
Ok why not just use screws?
Oh yeah everyone wants to be cool like apple.
Glass backs, signal killing metal, glass backs, no removables, no keyboards. Where did the actual engineering disappear?
Phone must look cool as people also want to look cool. Same reason people don’t want to go back to dumbphones, they wear Rolex or Omega, buy Chanel perfumes and take Prada brand bag. In these days you have to look good, not like some filthy nerd who didn’t wash for 2 weeks and wears stained clothes, which was bough 5 years ago.
Good luck typing Korean or other non-Latin alphabet languages with physical keyboard. I prefer to use touch, context sensitive keyboard and character drawing, not click buttons too many times and then cycle through dictionary.
Maybe there could be an… in between ?
Google made a joke, the phone does NOT fall apart.
https://twitter.com/ProjectAra/status/634441734001299456