Phonebloks

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by Moms_CreditCard, Sep 14, 2013.

?

Would you buy this?

Yes 10 vote(s) 71.4%
No 3 vote(s) 21.4%
I don't know 0 vote(s) 0.0%
Maybe 1 vote(s) 7.1%
  1. BilboBaggins23, TomvanWijnen and 607 like this.
  2. I would buy it, but it would never happen. There is too much money to be made through obsolescence.
    jkjkjk182 and ISMOOCH like this.
  3. It is very upgradeable.. 00:58
  4. THANK YOU! I just argued for an hour with Jeremy about this exact same thing! Fantastic idea... but big corporations will choose money over customer happiness any day.
    jkjkjk182 and apamment like this.
  5. Same as my last reply...
  6. Yes, but what I am saying is, there's far more money in making phones that you throw away every two years than one you can upgrade. The whole idea of getting big business to play together will only work if they can make more money than they do by themselves, I think this would make them far less money.

    It's a cool idea though, and would be great for the environment - but I just don't see it happening.
    jkjkjk182 and ISMOOCH like this.
  7. Thats the issue, making it easy/cheap to upgrade means less money for major corporations. Sure they can make small dollars on the smaller transactions. But, reselling refurbished phones, and people buying WHOLE NEW phones when a screen breaks or the newest model comes out, shows way more profit than just keeping up do date modules out on the market.

    For this to essentially work, one big company will have to take the leap of faith... Probably Google, and if... only IF, it shows MAJOR profit and share stealing in the market, will the other companies make the move. Making it easily up gradable, is the reason it WONT work, not a reason it will.

    The issue is not to sell this to consumers, its a great idea... the problem is getting the big wigs up there ^^ to agree to it. Which they wont, because it will mean less money for them.
  8. ... We will just have to wait a see ...
  9. Same as my last reply...
  10. While traditionally with things, I agree with ismooch and apamment. I was thinking in a new way. Think of something like TF2. One would think that by selling the game for a set price, they would make way more than making it free. Instead they made it free and sold a bunch of "mini's" to go with the product and have made tons more than they were by just selling the game alone.

    My argument to ismooch was more along the lines of, if approached correctly, they could get the big wigs to see a picture that hasn't been accomplished before in technology hardware. Apply the Free-To-Play model to it in a sense. Think of new technology ideas that haven't been invented for phones yet that can be sold now as an "addon". Instead of buying a phone one time, I could see a large part of the population going out to buy and try the newest "block" addition just to say they had it first and in turn spending WAY more for the phone addons than they would have in a new phone in 2-3 years.
    apamment likes this.
  11. That's an interesting idea, and if my bank account is something to go by, free to play games usually end up costing me more than subscription ones.

    PCs are generally like this. Off the shelf parts cobbled together to make a whole, while it was a win for consumers, it didn't really work out for IBM.

    I could see it maybe happening if smaller more specialized companies got together and agreed on a spec, then produced the part they were good at - like kodak made cameras, kingston made memory, Nvidia made graphics chips etc.
    ISMOOCH likes this.
  12. Yup. Exactly my thoughts.
  13. That could work with the phonebloks as shown on the video: 1:34
  14. I would very much like to see this phone come out, I would buy it if it were at the right price, but yes it would mean less profit for companies however I am just hoping one sees potential in it :p ~FDNY21
  15. of course this is still out of date compared to the 6th sense
  16. Wow This is cool :). I like the idea of Customizing it. Well, No one knows the future!
    dylan_frenette, 607 and FDNY21 like this.
  17. Would it be cool? Yes. But I can't see it as successful. It is actually too restrictive in my opinion. The dimensions of the parts only allow you to create certain combinations.
    What if I want to maximize my phone's capabilities in EVERY category? I would run out of room before I got halfway done.
    Not all parts are compatible. It would require individual part makers to check other parts for compatibility problems. Likely, it would end with certain parts only allowed in combinations. Just like oldish AMD/Intel processors don't work with DDR3 ram, these blocks would run into that problem too.
    It would be way too expensive. The motivation behind this seems to be the environment. While that motivation is nice and all, its ridiculous. People already have the choice to recycle phones. You can sell them in broken condition on ebay, and someone will salvage the good parts from it to fix other phones. But onto why it would be too expensive. Currently, I can go out and upgrade my Verizon line/add a new line with a brand new, just released, phone for $300 tops, just for the phone. Now, being a PC nerd who knows PC hardware pretty well, electronics parts are not cheap. A Galaxy S4 costs $237 in manufacturing cost to build. 300-237=63 immediate profit, assuming it all goes to Samsung (which it doesn't). If you were to break that down into profit per company who contributed to the phone, the profit is very little. There has to be some compensation from Verizon to Samsung for it to be worth it to them to continue making the phones, especially as Verizon cuts their prices. So, I find it extremely unlikely that these blocks would be anywhere near as affordable as buying an already made phone. If this makes little sense, I apologize. I couldn't figure out a way to word it better :/
    Its shape is that of an old TV remote. Looks sell. Cases can only do so much, and they can't nearly replicate the quality of a phone build such as the HTC One.
    Screen size is limited, as is phone size. While they may be able to achieve and average, there will be those other 32% of customers who would much rather have something else.
    What OS would it be able to run? While hardware wise it can accommodate the different types of phone users, OS wise it may not be able to. A "simple" phone hardware wise is no use when you have troubles using the OS. A "performance" phone is useless when the OS is bottlenecking what you can do.
    Lets be honest. If this became incredibly popular, Apple would swoop in and say "Nope" by creating a very similar product and suing the hell out of every other company in the world who even said the word "block."

    Edit: If anyone wants to help make my "points" more simple, please go ahead. I read things a lot differently than most, and I tend to write things in ways that the most sense to myself.
    607 likes this.
  18. They could just make different size bases... you could add more with that.
    jkjkjk182 likes this.
  19. Certain parts would have to be made specifically for each size. At that point, there could be too much money pouring into the creation of that blocks compared to the profit they would create.
    Also, if the phone is too large, you might be forced to buy certain parts if you don't want to have awkward empty spaces.
    607 and FDNY21 like this.
  20. This idea is very good and It would be a very popular phone I think, but jk is right and the blocks for certain sizes would get different interest, and obviously those with less interest wouldnt be made but there is just too much variety, so we will probably never see this hit stores ~FDNY21