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LG Is Abandoning the Modular Smartphone Idea (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: LG's modular phone accessory strategy that served as the primary differentiator for last year's G5 smartphone appears to be no more. The Wall Street Journal reports that the South Korean company is pivoting away from the plug-in "Friends" modules for the upcoming G6 device after lackluster sales for the G5. Per The Wall Street Journal, an LG spokesperson commented that consumers aren't interested in modular phones. The company instead is planning to focus on functionality and design aspects for the upcoming G6, which Chief Technologist Skott Ahn says will be released "in the very near future." According to the WSJ, the LG G6 will arrive "in the very near future," which suggests the phone will launch at Mobile World Congress next month.
And zero people were surprised by this. Only a tiny minirity nerds were ever wanking their micropeens over modular phones. Even Google finally woke up to the idea being stupid and not commercially viable.
This is anecdotal, but I've never used an LG product that worked well. From their washing machines to their phones, there was always something wonky.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It puzzles me that so many expensive premium phones expoxy in the battery so that while the elaborate design, glass, aluminum, and top spec cpu/ram would last 5 years easily, the phone is near useless at 2 years.
Even more baffling is some of the modular phones STILL have an expoxied battery... wtf. Like some music amp module is more useful than a fresh charged battery.
Who would've thought? A bad idea that doesn't sell and they drop it. The first rational decision in years at LG.
Hate to say it, but a bad idea in search of a problem...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Another fad item hyped to galactic proportions... and the reality is such a letdown...
I was really excited when i heard about the modular G5 - particularly the B&0 play module with the 32bit Sabre ES9028C2M DAC
I have a large hires audio collection >2tb and it seemed perfect. I cycle a lot and don't like external DACS ( jitter and clunky cables )
I live in Brisbane Australia. There are literally 10-15 phone shops on our city mall.
I. Went. To. Every Single. One. and it was the same. Every. God. Damn. Time.
They would have the phone in the corner. Not one staff member knew it was modular. No one had ever heard of the B&O DAC or the difference between a 16 and 24 bit DAC or even what a DAC was and why i would want one. Why was i listening to flac ? Why wouldnt I want streaming Mp3 and our ludicrous Data Bundle ?
Facepalm.jpg - I lost a lot of hope in humanity that day.
If your hope in humanity was pinned on underpaid mall shop staffers knowing about DAC I think you had it coming :)
I'm curious though, do you really hear/appreciate the sound quality while you're cycling? I can maybe understand it in an environment where you can concentrate on the music, but on a bike...?
and their low end is serviceable. My coworker has been using an $600 LG for going on 5 years now. I've had one of their $150 phones for going on 2 years now and it's tolerable. It could get better signal, but then again it's a non-Band 12 T-Mobile phone. Not enough short range spectrum.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Of course, the big question is: will they be smart enough to keep the user-replaceable battery?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
The idea behind the G5 modularity is a good one but their implementation sucked.
- It is a metal phone that looks plastic. What's the big idea? For phones, plastic is superior in almost all areas except look. LG got is backwards here.
- Their flagship camera grip module is a failure. You couldn't even turn on the camera using the physical button, and the extra battery was so poorly managed that it is no better than a generic external battery pack.
- Poor build quality, poor software, and LG doesn't have an especially good track records when it comes to reliability.
- Not very developer-friendly (locked bootloader, root, etc...). Few people actually care about that but those who are interested in modular phones are more likely to be in this group.
Get Fairphone (https://www.fairphone.com)
Summary up front: off-topic, but -- I'd had strongly unsatisfactory experiences with LG G3 (D855) in terms of hardware reliability, accordingly I decided not to ever consider LG phones again.
There were three significant malfunctions during the 1.5 years of the G3's life; two of them were supposedly use-related by practically indicative of bad design (never happened to the same user, me, with a different phone in over a decade); the third and final one was the main board dying.
Since the first two failures occurred during travel out of the country where there was warranty, I had to go for the repair to a local repair shop; subsequently LG refused to honor their warranty on the motherboard, which means the phone was beyond economic repair after only 18 months of use.
The physical attachment and interface of the Moto series is cool. But the "mods" are all wrong.
The only reason to be able to detach a module is because you don't want to have to lug it around, so you can detach it. This implies that when you attach to a module, you're explicitly in "I understand that it's bulky and I'm not lugging it around" mode at that moment.
Yet all the modules are severely compromised because they are still trying to be portable.
Half-assed mobile speakers in the Moto series. A half-assed digital camera.
Just take those two examples:
Instead of mobile speakers, how about a $199 stereo speaker system for a tabletop. Instead of having to fuck around with bluetooth and compromised battery life, the speakers are stationary, a home furnishing. You come and just drop your phone *on* it. Magnets hold it in place. It charges. And the screen comes on to the music player app and plays big, loud, full-sound music. Gotta run? Just yank the phone, now charged, off of it again. Make a boombox the same way—or something big enough (not those speakers) to actually make some sound and take to a beach party. Those things I'd be interested in. Tiny-ass speakers? Why am I going to lug around an extra thing for sound that's still basically one person big?
Same thing with the camera. A 12 megapixel 1 2/3" sensor. THAT'S A CAMERA PHONE ALL OVER AGAIN. I love the idea of a proper shutter button and a flash, but if your built-in camera is already not good enough, why slap an extra, bulky module on the back that... gives you another camera phone sensor? WTF? If you're willing to carry a camera, you're willing to carry a camera. So build one that's a centimeter thicker and has a full 1" sensor in it, and another one that is three centimeters thicker and looks like a DSLR camera body and can mount Micro Four Thirds lenses. It's just got a gap on the back where you can stick your phone, snap, with a magnet. Do so an the phone automatically goes into camera mode. You can mount pro lenses, and when you shoot, it stores on your camera SD card and you have all the photos available to cloud, apps, etc. without having to download from a proper camera or futz around with "camera wifi" that never works. As a shooter, I'd be interested in *both* of those camera modules. But not a bulky camera module that is just a camera phone all over again, so that you double the thickness and weight for (drum roll) the same crap cameraphone sensor that you have without the module.
I don't think it's a tech fail, and I do think that there is a market for modularity, but it's not in this "half as portable, but still half-functional" module crap. The value is a convenience value, i.e. a better, more capable version of Apple's original iPhone docking port that is magnetic, more capable, communicates with the phone sufficiently to enable tap-free adaptation to new modules, and that has a full-surface (rather than end-port) interface to enhance the physical security of the attachment when made. That's still modular, and it uses the phone as the brain of things to make life easier. I'd pay for that.
But I won't pay for extra for a phone just so that I can use "modules" when the modules are expensive, highly compromised, bulky things that I don't want. I have to want the modules to want a modular phone. A tiny speaker, a crap camera, etc. are not modules that I want, and extended batteries are already out there.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The big issues are threefold:
Modular hardware either needs to be cheap, or non-proprietary. Neither is true of the Android modular phone concepts since Google pulled out.
The modules would need to be in standardized formfactors to benefit the consumer. Standardized formfactors also standardizes large portions of the device real estate. See pre-netbook/cloud laptops and their general layouts due to Peripheral Ports+PCMCIA/Expresscard+Optical Drive+Floppy (for the early ones!) Very few were able to differentiate on peripheral layout, very few used non-standard quantities of available peripherals, and very little differentiation was to be had between designs, beyond perhaps what brand of hardware was used internally.
Size: Reliable modular components are going to be too big for the current generation of phones. In order to prove reliable the phones are going to have to gain weight. There is no easy way around this, and after all those years of hyping smaller thinner faster better, it will be difficult to backpedal on that to give consumers those options.
As a final item: It doesn't make sense for companies who've become addicted to the 1-3 year upgrade cycle for their profitability.
The new replacement for the Compute Stick could have been an attractive idea for a 'modular' form factor, if they would make it run on very low power. Just have your screen, basic controls, cellular radio, and a battery, and then slap the new Compute Card over it. Instead of having to buy a whole new phone, you just drop in an upgraded Compute Card.
Oh well. Someone might take this idea and run with it.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I had the EXACT same experience - the G4 has a defect that causes it to stop working, usually after 12 months. Very few G4s will make it to the full 2 years on most cell contracts. LG will even tell you they know about it if you call their service line.
Do not buy LG, they do not back their products.
Thank you for your anecdotal evidence.
Exact same thing here. Soon after purchase I noticed that the phone was slow: 15 to 45s to switch apps ! After a year it was unusable, burning hot, kept rebooting for no reason, couldn't read the SD card anymore, etc. Fried mobo.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The current, last-generation Fairphones are not only fully modular, but all the bits can be dismounted with a single normal screwdriver, and each part can be replaced separately in case of failure (and of course, the battery too).
My understanding is Fairphone, who started from a more compact model (which I own), evolved this way profiting from the trend to enlarge devices (bigger screens) : this allowed them to design element interfaces that otherwise wouldn't have fit in smaller models.
And IMHO that was a very wise move : they basically brought the design back to Europe (from China) way before being, er... tweeted to do so...
My only issue with this model is its cost (some 500€, twice the previous model).
As the thing is very recent there are not many alternate elements for now (I hear about better cameras, saw a breadboard for a large USB slot allowing the use of these hardware-key-dongles...)
But it definitely is a Lego-like phone (inside!), comes optionally rooted and optionally with Sailfish OS instead of Android, two SIM slots... almost a dream come true for me...
And my experience with the earlier Fairphone1 is excellent.
Herve S.
A keyboard. Change out the back, add a little extra battery juice, and give me back a sliding keyboard in the mode of the Motorola D4. Then, old farts could finally type again whilst in the field.
A) which is why i didn't buy the G5 (I have a G4) I didn't think it would last more than 1 or 2 market cycles
B) modular design is a long term commitment by all parties
C) which is why I believe that as long as folks make Smart TV they are doing consumers a huge disfavor... People can keep "screens" for 5, 10, 15+ years or more.. and the "smart" features will hit "the wall" before then. So I'm sure the TV companies will be happy if we replace or screens sooner, than later.
BUT that is why consumers must demand modules for our TVs. Of course we can always connect out-board CPUs via HDMI ports, but every component should modular. We should be able to replace CPUs, add new tuners, add new ports, etc.
http://www.hawknest.com/
What about to make a new QWERTY phone after 7+ years. No BlackBerry - it needs to have a keyboard on its longer side, have landscape display and have physical arrow keys. More extra keys for shifts+symbols are a plus.
That is completely false, LG will repair boot-looped G4s even after they are out of warranty. They even pay for shipping.
It seems like ALL these projects are killed off before they're ever even really released to the market. Or hey, we released a phone and we have two basic modules (extended battery and IR remote) with more to come, someday...okay....never.
But darn it, I am TIRED of thin phones with small batteries. Give me a module phone system where I can stick a battery module that will last 2+ days of use rather than a few hours. Give me a module that lets me output 5.1 surround sound. Module for RAID5 SD card storage. Module for printing.
Truthfully, what we really need is an interconnect specification. For example, said spec could allow DSLR manufacturers to simply make the lens and sensor body. Storage, screen, and all that would connect via the interconnect specification.
Essentially, we'd reach the point where we have Personal Processing Devices. You no longer have desktops or laptops. You have your PPD, connect to a dock and have keyboard, screen, additional storage. Add a wireless module. We'll get there...eventually. But just like smartphones and electric cars, it's going to take an innovator to put it together correctly to make it take off.
Only a tiny minirity nerds were ever wanking their micropeens over modular phones.
Meanwhile, Fairphone 2 is still selling well.
The key point is that, through their "environmental-friendly" policy, they have managed to find a way to make modules also appealing to a larger audience
(modules means easier to repair a phone by swapping a broken component instead of throwing it away whole)
and not only to the 3 geeks that are salivating about the idea of creating their own custom module to tap into the available internal USB pogopins.
Thus they have found a way to make modularity commercially viable and even trendy (by being eco-friendly).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They're snapping out their modular products and replacing them with others
32 bit 384KHz is bunk though, you can really convert your flacs to 16bit/48 KHz safely and get the maximum quality for humans, also DACs reconstruct sine-like waves from even few data points, not a staircase shaped wave like snake oil salesmen want you to believe, that's why the Shannon-Nyquist theorem from 1949 that's the basis for everything digital signal still holds, it's like selling you a 64K resolution TV when an 8K is enough unless you have non human vision.