Modular smartphones: far from reality?
Have you ever imagined how the smartphone world would look like if modular phones actually came into existence? What if we could use our smartphone for a very long time without worrying about it getting outdated? What if we could fully customise our smartphones based on our choices and needs? Well, that could have been a possibility, but it didn’t quite work out.
Project Ara
Project Ara was a modular smartphone development project undertaken by Google. Google had this vision of modular smartphone which could be fully customised by the end users since quite a long time. The company did take dedicated steps in this direction by getting hold of necessary patents and acquiring Motorola Mobility in 2012. The project started under the Advanced Technology and Projects team (ATAP), which was a part of Motorola. In fact, Google retained the ATAP group when it sold Motorola to Lenovo two years later in 2014.
It is evident that Google had invested consistently in this project over the years. The initial design of Ara smartphones was supposed to have a main frame, which would act as central core to connect different components of a smartphone. These components were to be designed in the form of modules, which could be swapped in and out, whenever desired. Basically, one could swap a battery module to increase the battery capacity, change a camera module to have better image quality, replace a CPU module to make the phone faster and so on.
The primary intentions of Project Ara were:
- Reduce electronic waste generated by smartphones: Since modules could be swapped by the customers easily, it was expected the lifecycle of smartphones would increase significantly. People would no longer be required to discard their old phone for a new one, hence effectively reducing the electronic waste.
- Provide customisable smartphones to the customers: “One size fits all” is definitely not true for smartphones. Different customers have different needs and they could customise their phones by choosing modules based on their preferences.
- Make smartphones more accessible: The Ara phones were expected to be pocket friendly, with a frame costing around 15 USD. The modules would cost based on their functionality. Thus, the Ara phones were intended to break the barrier for those switching from feature phones.
What happened to Project Ara?
The idea that Project Ara brought seemed promising and could have changed the smartphone world deeply. Despite constant efforts to make the Ara smartphones viable, Project Ara didn’t see the light of the day. Google confirmed in September 2016 that the project had been shelved. So, one might wonder — what went wrong?
Technical limitations
The primary reason why Ara didn’t actually work out was the fact that technology wasn’t advanced enough to make a perfectly viable commercial modular smartphone. The team at ATAP group did manage to build a fairly decent early prototype, but it was far from a smartphone that could be rolled out to public.
Change of plans
The initial plan of providing a frame and components/modules shifted (because of lack of tight integration) to delivering a starter phone that would ship with basic features. Additional modules could then be attached to this phone for added functionality. But, this would make the phone significantly heavy, and most people wouldn’t like that.
The matter of costs
Project Ara’s Module Developer Kits were announced for third party developers so that they could create custom modules that could be added to the starter phone. The ATAP team even promised a commercial release of a basic Ara phone in 2015. However, the price point that they had claimed was almost impossible to achieve. Even the starter phone had seemingly high bill of materials.
Issues with leadership
Dan Makoski, one of the founders of Ara had already left, as his contract had ended, and Paul Eremenko had taken over. Eremenko fought really hard to make Ara commercially available before his tenure was over. However, in June 2015, Eremenko left and the future of Project Ara was highly uncertain. The pilot launch of Ara was cancelled, and Regina Dugan took charge. Under the new leadership, Ara had pivoted to a high-end phone and lost its initial intention of serving a variety of price segments. The plan was to make Ara available to developers in late 2016, and a public release in 2017. But then, before Ara’s major reveal which was planned for Google I/O 2016, Dugan suddenly left. With this leadership vacuum, Google revealed that Project Ara had been suspended indefinitely.
Other attempts at modular smartphones
LG G5 can be considered a semi-modular smartphone. The G5 featured a removable battery (when brands were moving away from this concept) and a modular accessory system. However, there were limited use cases to this and hot-swapping was not possible.
Motorola announced the Moto Z series of smartphones which were compatible with dedicated external accessories called “Moto Mods”. Users could snap a mini-projector, a 360 camera, a stereo speaker to the phone. Also, there were a very few third party mods were also available for Moto Z family.
Why did modular smartphones (even semi-modular ones) fail?
There’s no denying that the concept of modularity in smartphones seems interesting, but it has by far failed in terms of commercial viability. Attempts at providing some kind of modularity in smartphones by different companies didn’t actually pan out well, and the trend didn’t last long. Here’s why:
There are better options for expandability
When we talk about modular smartphones helping the users expand the functionality and feature set depending on their need and situation, it is fair to say that there are a lot of better options available. If you want loud sound, there are bluetooth speakers that connect instantly. If you want more battery backup, power banks help you just do that. If you want better cameras — well there are multiple cameras in phones today and they’re really good. The point is, there are several external accessories that can help you get the job done easily. Plus, they don’t add to the weight of your phone and can be used with multiple other devices as well.
Long life of smartphones is still questionable
One might argue that modular smartphones would provide a longer life for smartphones, meaning you could use your phone for years without having to buy a new one. Well, smartphones are compact devices and need to be tightly integrated. Even if modular smartphones were a reality, they definitely won’t allow core components like motherboard, RAM, antennas, etc. to be switched. If these parts were damaged, you would still have to get a new phone. Also, providing phones with longer life would simply go against the business of the companies.
Most people don’t care about customisability
Though there are people who really love customising their phone the way they want, the truth is that a vast majority of people do not care about customisability. People like to have what others have. And customers expect all core functions to be right in their phones. No one wants to go through the process of selecting what display, camera, and other hardware features their phone should have. People simply choose a package that is suitable for them.
Modularity in phones actually increases the cost
No one would buy modular phones if they are expensive. Phones need to be compact (and there’s kind of an extent to which they can be thick), and hence need highly specialised internal components that are small enough. Modularity increases the overall phone size and adds an extra layer of connectors between modules which results in high cost.
So, is there a future for modular smartphones?
It’s hard to say. With the current state of smartphone market, the consumers, their demands and the technology — it doesn’t seem like modular smartphones are going to come back anytime soon, at least the way we imagine. But then, we never know what might come up next.
