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Modu Unveils Modular, Transformer-style Phone
An anonymous reader writes "A company called Modu has come up with an innovative take on a mobile phone. Instead of giving you the finished product, you get a base unit and a choice of 'sleeves', which you can plug the base unit into and turn it into a variety of devices. "If, for example, you're going out clubbing, you can pop it into a fashion sleeve with a fancy design. If you're on a business trip and you need a phone with a Qwerty keypad and large screen, you just have to pop it into a 'jacket' with those features." There's also the option to plug it into a satellite navigation device or even a car stereo. While it seems like an interesting system, I wonder whether modular devices are better than buying standalone products or all-in-one products?"
Actually, it appears to be a very basic phone unit, with the transmitter, antenna, etc, built in. Think of it like a cell phone PC Card that can plug into a variety of host devices.
Only real difference is it seems to have a base functionality without the host.
The two differences seem to be
1) The base device can supposedly function "stand-alone"; however, it looks like it must be a pain to use in that way. Not sure the advantage of using it stand-alone...
2) The base device brings more of the "common" functionality with it from jacket to jacket, so there's no need to buy that piece of the system over and over again.
There's an intuitive feel that (2) creates an economic advantage, and I guess for someone who would otherwise buy multiple mobile devices there might be (depending on the actual pricing, factoring in bundling -- which seems to defeat the point, but whatever). Is it cost-advantageous if I only use it with one jacket? Two? Five? How many cell-based devices do I have to "need" before this becomes economically useful to me?
That's my question, then: how much need does any given person have for a bunch of devices to which he or she can add cell phone capabilities? The car radio looking thing and the nav device might be interesting if they integrate the cell service in an interesting way, but couldn't you do the same thing wtih an inexpensive data cable to the phone (and maybe a car mounting kit, which you can easily get today)? The only particular advantage to building the devices this way (IMO) would be to leverage an already-existing deployment of Modu base units, and clearly there's not one.
As for the hand-held sleeves, like one with a larger screen and QWERTY keyboard... maybe useful, but are there trade-offs (like is the combined device bulky or otherwise clumsy when compared to a stand-alone unit)?
Then again, the fact that they lead with the example of a "stylish" cover you'd use to go clubbing probably indicates that I'm not the target audience, since I find that indescribaly stupid.