Pieces of a Smartphone
Having the possibility of enhancing your phone by easily swapping components seems at first like a powerful idea that’s been floating around for years, that is *only* awaiting for a good commercial realization. The concept is that people buy a phone, and then make some part of it better by taking out a piece and replacing it with a new piece, making the phone pretty much worth as a sum of its parts. Among many things that 2016 has given us or taken away, is the answer to the question “Are modular phones the future?” — and the answer by all accounts seems to be a firm and resolute “NO”.
Functional add-on hardware for phones did not appear with smartphones. Old Ericsson T18 and similar phones had a full QWERTY keyboard add-on (“Chatboard”) to be used for texting instead of regular numeric keys. That was all the way back when people thought no one can type fast on numeric keypad — which turned out to be quite wrong — and same logic was followed when we had to give up keypad for large touchscreen. When cameras first started appearing on phones, they were also coming in the form of attachable module capable of taking 0.3 megapixels photos, with camera being almost as large as half of the phone itself. Siemens S55 could have had one attached, as well as Ericsson T68, one of the first phones with colour screen. They didn’t sell all that great, and close to their end of life add-ons were bundled together with phones.
Coming to modern times, in the past couple of years LG appeared to be onto something with their G series of flagship phones. They never quite reached the Galaxy S heights but still had a steadily growing number of fans. In 2016 LG wanted to play something other than a usual spec war, and ended up betting on a modular design with the flagship G5. They planned not to sell just the phone, but also the prospect of making it better by adding modules to it, and then to create a market for modules. Swapping modules was done by taking the phone apart, removing the battery and attaching it to a module, before putting it all back together. Which was about as user friendly as it sounds.
Also in 2016, a couple of months later, Lenovo had a similar approach though with a much better implementation. They realized that taking the phone apart is interesting for engineers, but to sell in large numbers you need to win over the general public who may not find that approach fun. Thus Moto Z was born; a far more elegant phone, offering an impressively thin body for which modules could be added as easily as is changing the back cover. Customers get a phone thinner than an iPhone, with pretty decent hardware for the price, which can easily be improved by attaching a new back cover that can convert into something like a great camera, a powerful speaker, and even a portable projector. As it turns out, only “module” that could be recommended to owners of Moto Z was the back cover, adding a personal touch to the device. Even though Moto Z solved the awkwardness of exchanging modules, still none of them were really recommendable as anything other as a curiosity that you check out once but never actually use.
And finally there’s Google’s Project Ara. Originally extremely ambitious project to make a smartphone where every component can be swapped like a Lego block, which was later toned down a bit so that at least some, like processor, stay fixed. In 2016 the project was suspended, even though only months before there were plans to deliver it to developers during Fall. Even though it was never commercialized, it has been known to public for a couple of years and is likely the most famous attempt at a modular smartphone.
To summarize, three quite important players in the mobile market had an attempt at modular phone in 2016 and none have gotten close to having a successful product. One featured convoluted way of swapping modules so it could be said that was to blame. Another solved that by making modules similar to back covers. And there was Project Ara, promising to have all components swappable, but which never actually got close to launching a product. What this is showing is that modular components on phones don’t have a “just waiting for a good implementation” problem, but that there’s something fundamentally flawed with the idea itself.
It could be said the explanation is simply that people don’t want to buy a $600 phone so that they next have to buy a $100 add-on to get a feature they really need. Consequently, it could also be said that integrated will always deliver a better experience than modular when device volume is the limiting factor. But there’s more to it. The key to understanding what’s wrong with the idea is going back and remembering what makes smartphones an integral part of everyday life. They help make everything go smoothly. We don’t need to remember to carry a camera with charged batteries all day to get a few good photos, because we have our smartphones. We don’t need to remember where our past photos are stored, because phones and cloud backup make sure they are wherever we need them. We don’t need to write reminders down on small post-it notes because phones can hold as many as we like, and bring them up just in time. We don’t need to print out maps and carry around, because phones also do all of that for us. Smartphones remove the friction from our lives. There’s this one device that does it all, either through hardware or software, and we know everything will be just fine if we simply have it with us. Modern computing devices must always be available.
Having modules for smartphones changes that. We first need to make sure that we’ve bought just the right module, then to have it with us in case we need it, and then to have it mounted at just the right time. All of which is friction. Having to pick the right module is implying that product we bought does not meet our needs out of the box. Swapping modules around does not add a personal touch, like covers for example do. Even needing to think about choosing whether we want a better battery, a better camera, or a better speaker is friction. Of course any person could do that, but it’s so much easier if we don’t have to.
Exceptions that are not really exceptions are covers, cases and battery packs. Those are not swappable modules since once put on there’s rarely a chance you’ll need to remove them, even for months or more. Exchanging covers is done for fashion purposes, but is not done to solve a functional issue. Selfie sticks are add-ons with polarising opinions on them, but usually there can’t be something else on the phone in place of selfie stick.
Dongles required to connect two devices mean at least one of them is creating friction where there shouldn’t be one, however key difference is that dongles are supposed to be temporary solution until a couple of technologies get in sync, and unnecessary in the longer term. Modules are not a stepping stone until a permanent solution appears, they are meant as the solution.
We haven’t seen a true heavyweight like Samsung or Apple attempt to make a modular phone, but their silence on the matter tells us what they think about the idea. If they made one, they’d be able to sell some at least because of their name, sure, but there’s a reason why they are not trying. 2016 confirmed that in integrated vs modular approach to smartphone hardware there’s only one clear winner. However the lesson here isn’t that integrated wins no matter what; it’s that options are nice but lack of friction is nicer.
