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Why Modular Smartphones Are Such a Nightmare To Develop
itwbennett writes: Last week Google postponed tests of its Project Ara until next year. Mikael Ricknäs has written about why developing such devices is particularly difficult. The biggest challenge, writes Ricknäs, 'is the underlying architecture, the structural frame and data backbone of the device, which makes it possible for all the modules to communicate with each other. It has to be so efficient that the overall performance doesn't take a hit and still be cheap and frugal with power consumption.' For more on Project Ara and its challenges, watch this Slashdot interview with the project's firmware lead Marti Bolivar.
Yea, you'll only have to replace the parts that actually broke. What a pain!
It is literally a circular network connected to one CPU and a bunch of dumb nodes.
Each node has a network ID. They can pass messages and only the nodes that are listening for it will get it.
High bandwidth data bus for it.
Why is that so complex?
Anything can be made to sound easy by describing the overall concept in a few sentences. Devices are built in the real world, not on a whiteboard, and here in real world, the devil is in the details.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Nobody who has done Android development is surprised to hear this.
I generally find the opposite, the ones crowing about fragmentation tend to be the ones who have no experience in development on Android (and indeed any non-iPhone platform) and handling perfectly pedestrian problems that we've been working with for all of programming history...
Different hardware and OS versions is standard standard, part of being a programmer...
It is literally a circular network connected to one CPU and a bunch of dumb nodes.
Each node has a network ID. They can pass messages and only the nodes that are listening for it will get it.
I'd put real money on betting you've never done anything near hardware development...
Sorry Ara team; but the whole concept is a fail.
I do lots of electronic product development, and this concept has so many problems
- Electromagnetic Compliance. Every time a new module is created, are you going to go through the expense & time of compliance testing.
- Where is consumer demand for such a device? Consumers are becoming dumber; they are flat out finding a power button, let alone selecting complex modules for a phone. This makes it a niche market device, thus low volume, thus expensive.
- Connectors in any design are one of the common fail points. In this design you have lots of them.
- There's a lot of effort just to reliably mechanically retain the modules.
- Having discrete modules makes layout inefficient, as you have to per-decide the size of a function.
- A lot of added complexity/power consumption, as each module needs a hardware/software interface layer common to all modules to abstract their native interface.
- plus all the other mentioned in the link
Now if Google has some spare cash lying around, I've got a lot great projects going on they could invest in!!!
46137
yeah I know, right!
Just make a high speed, low power, multi-point data bus.
Just use.... wait there isn't anything available that meets all of those requirements.
There are a lot of point to point high speed low power buses.
There a lot of low speed multi-point buses too.
High speed and low power means impedance matched differential pairs.
I want a modular device like this so bad.
I plan to buy five of them. Me, my wife, and each of my kids.
I'm hoping tablet and laptop versions soon follow so I can mix and match more modules over time. and I'll get multiples of them, too. it just makes sense to be able to repair them year after year, instead of buying another bloatware crap machine.
Even later I'm hoping I can use the modules for other projects. using the same standardized data bus for a huge variety of things. wearables, pet projects, maker movement stuff.
This is grownup LEGO.
AND a way to save money over time,
AND a way to escape the damned branding going on.
I'm not going to buy a phone until I can get something like this, and I don't really care if it's made by google or someone else.
There were 3 chips: baseband, RF, and PMIC. The baseband had 2 or 3 CPUs (earlier ones had an ARM 7 for I don't remember what, then they an ARM9 to run the phone and a more powerful ARM11/ARM13 to run BREW, then Android). The RF chip did the radio stuff, and the PMIC did all the power control (Power Management IC). Each baseband chip was optimized for a specific RF and PMIC chip. You could swap them out with what I understood was a lower level of efficiency. As I worked for Qualcomm I was never exposed to non-QC chips.
// Wish I'd stayed a couple more years
/// hell, wish I was still there, it was a great place to work. Although former co-workers say that changed 5-6 years ago.
//// retirement isn't what I thought it would be
The display, keypad, battery were generic, use whatever you want. QC didn't make displays, nor keypads, nor batteries.
They also had a single chip line (SC1x/SC2x if memory serves), they took 3 dies (baseband, RF, PMIC) and stacked the dies atop each other in a single package. The idea was to sell them for, I think, $6 each for low cost phones. Add a display, keypad, battery, and case and you've got a cell phone.
I retired when Snapdragon was showing up on my "upcoming stuff" memos.
/ this is greatly simplified at the chip level (e.g. the PMIC let the phone vibrate)
I'm hoping tablet and laptop versions soon follow so I can mix and match more modules over time. and I'll get multiples of them, too. it just makes sense to be able to repair them year after year, instead of buying another bloatware crap machine.
You should definitely check out the FairPhone 2.
Ease of repair has been one of the main argument for FairPhone 1 & 2.
For the second model, they are currently going to a a modular design to make it even more easy to fix, and to give the possibility to swap module in the future for added features.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I've been building and upgrading my own desktops since I was 14. I'm not touching a modular phone with a 10 foot pole.
Nobody who has done Android development is surprised to hear this.
I generally find the opposite, the ones crowing about fragmentation tend to be the ones who have no experience in development on Android (and indeed any non-iPhone platform) and handling perfectly pedestrian problems that we've been working with for all of programming history...
Different hardware and OS versions is standard standard, part of being a programmer...
This.
If you want to avoid version issues with Android, target the lower API levels. Sure you miss out all of the newer features, but you dont need those for a fart app. Android itself handles most (or all of, in most cases) of the backwards compatibility.
Besides this, we've seen the problems inherent in monocultures in IT. Remember I.E. 6... This is why aged web developers never complain about writing compatibility layers for Firefox, Chrome and Webkit browsers.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
In 50 years I've never seen a scrap of evidence that choice brings quality.
Between companies, choice = competition and commoditisation, and that brings cheap - the opposite of quality.
Within a single company choice brings confusion and lack of focus.
Quality comes from people dedicating themselves to that target, rather than profits. And to narrowing focus down to very few projects/products.
Android's choice brings poor quality, partly because of that fragmentation. The only advantage is low cost.