On Sat, 05 Oct 2013 17:04:24 +0200, Pascal Gosselin
<pas...@aeroteknic.com> wrote:
[...]
If technically feasible, this project I believe stands the best chance
of obtaining funding as the concept has wide appeal.
Interesting long-term vision: maybe.
Short-term replacement for GTA04: no.
I posted this on the OpenPhoenux list recently:
There are numerous threads on Reddit that explain very well why this is
not feasible [1,2,many]
The (imho) most important ones in short:
* Mechanical modularity increases size and cost, makes it harder to create
a beautiful phone, and is not in the manufacturer's commercial interests.
Therefore, it would be hard to find companies/customers to build/buy this.
* Many current components are highly integrated - SoCs, sensor ICs,
Display/Touchscreen, etc. Making these modular would require development
of many new components (and would increase size, cost, power consumption).
* The concept assumes that all components use a common communication
backplane. This is not feasible, as a variety of voltages and
communication protocols are in use in a typical phone (I2C, SPI, UART,
USB, various display protocols, etc.). Many components need very short
connections to the CPU/GPU/whatever without crossing other PCB traces. It
is not realistic to make this work with a generic communication backplane.
Proper heat dissipation for CPU/GPU is another problem.
In summary, while it is certainly feasible to build a modular phone (look
at David Mellis' DIY cellphone [3]), doing so for current hardware would
involve major engineering effort (== design and manufacture dozens of new
chips) and would result in less stable, more expensive, and less beautiful
phones requiring more power.
Raphael
[1]
http://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/1m6y1q/that_phonebloks_things_annoyed_me_so_here_are_17/
[2]
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m4pmy/eli5_why_is_phonebloks_a_bad_idea/
[many] http://www.reddit.com/r/all/search?q=phonebloks&restrict_sr=on
[3] http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=2182
--
Dipl.-Medieninf. Raphael Wimmer
Wiss. Mitarbeiter / Research Assistant
Doktorand / PhD student
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München E-Mail: raphael.wim...@ifi.lmu.de
LFE Medieninformatik Skype: real_raphman
Amalienstr. 17 / Raum 206 WWW:
http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de
80333 München Tel: +49 (89) 2180-4659
Germany Fax: +49 (89) 2180-99-4659
_______________________________________________
Openmoko community mailing list
community@lists.openmoko.org
http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
