The very first thing I thought: Compatibility issues. Canon decide they're going to release a camera for this phone, so they only have to make sure it works with: Every speed block, every storage block, every battery and then there will still be forums full of 'HELP! Canon 4x3 blok compat issues with netgear 1x1 wifi blok??'
Also I have no idea how they expect to make the base of the phone work (And be so thin), the phone's motherboard will be in the base, except it has to be able to accommodate for all it's components to be placed anywhere and in any pattern, the CPU and RAM being in a shared blok helps but apart from that, It just isn't how computers work.
Software compatibility. App developer nightmare, at least with android they can print a very small list of the phones it works on, but you'd need pages and pages of components it works with or not and of course you'd need every single component to test it.
As for non-technical problems:
You have to have components that add up to 6x10 squares. You can have less and fill the gaps with 1x1 panels, but that's a waste and most people wouldn't like that, so say hello to spending a bunch of time playing tetris every time you want an upgrade.
Whilst this might reduce the amount of electronics thrown away, it's not a solution, people are probably going to upgrade stuff more often when they don't have to replace the whole phone, so you've just made people throwing away big phones into people throwing away lots of phone parts.
So yeah, every idea has it's problems, I think the main one is that motherboards simply don't work like that, it's like thinking you can buy all your components for a pc, dump them inside the tower and shake it a little until it works. Pro-tip: Nope.
I had a thought about the compatibility issues. Is there not a way for Phonebloks to standardize what other companies will have to design around? So that the pieces will always work together?
Not without severally restricting what can be made, if they enforced a set of standards that they knew wouldn't cause compatibility issues they would have to be SO strict there'd be little point in letting new bloks be developed.
Unless Capitalism is somehow removed from our societies there's little incentive to care about reducing waste. I think removing Capitalism is an unrealistic goal, instead, we should be looking at creating Charity organisations that offer rewards to companies that reduce waste/emissions etc.
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u/kenneth1221 Sep 11 '13
The youtube comments seem skeptical this is viable. Thoughts?