This is a nice idea!

http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/11/p...oks/#continued

This. I've been saying this should be a thing for years. If I was in a position to throw large sums of money around regularly, I would be throwing a lot of it in their direction.

Its only a nice idea; there is zero technical details from what I see hence the possibility of this working out is close to nil IMO... Its ridiculously over-simplifying things to show, for example, a user being able to change his processor connected to the base with just 2 pins...

To do something modular would require much work so I don't see big companies being seriously interested in their "plea" campaign...

It doesn't seem possible something like this will be able to pass the FCC for use in the USA. They would want you to test out all possible combinations of such a phone to verify it passes their requirements. They even require the official wireless charging module for a phone to be tested with the phone before it can be approved.

User updatability might bight be possible for a huge bulky engineering prototype but it is probably not feasible for anything commercial. Modu had a modular cellphone which was more akin to the Jolla other half concept. They went out of business years ago.

That's a shame since a modular PC is such an obvious and common concept. I assume there were many naysayers then as well. "A modular computer? That will never catch on!"

But yes, modularity comes at a price. The price is usually the size. You can't build something with replacable components as small as its monolithic cousin. That may not be so crucial in case of a PC but it would be a showstopper for something you carry in your pocket, at least for Joe Public. Pity.

Very valid points, and I suppose I should clarify that my hypothetical money flinging would have been preceded by more in-depth research and making sure they had some relatively good idea of how to make it happen, etc. And I completely agree that their presentation is oversimplified.

Still, the more hardware manufacturing improves the more it becomes possible to have reasonably good hardware in small sizes. Granted, lately the fad has been to use that extra smallness to make pancake/crepe phones which are at least in my book annoyingly wide and annoyingly flat, but I suspect that trend will only go so far.

While interesting to watch, one can see that the idea was created by a designer, not an (electronics) engineer. The way it is presented it is borderline impossible to make, certainly not in any acceptable size for a mobile device.

Okay, after watching the actual youtube video (I really should've done that before commenting), I'd say they really need to rethink the actual way of doing it. Before this post I just glanced at the video preview frame and thought that was a conceptual abstract depiction of the idea, not how they literally thought it would work.

The kind of thing I would support is some standardized motherboard-to-component connector set, like in desktops and (to a lesser extent) laptops: If you have a desktop motherboard, you can virtually always stick almost anything into it because it has PCI slots for various expansion cards, the RAM chips have standardized interfaces so you can upgrade them (at least for a while), various disks are added through SATA or PATA plugs, etc. And while CPUs are a bit more limited in this regard, typically there are several different processes that can be plugged in to a given motherboard's CPU slot.

That's what I envisioned, small pieces of hardware, on the scale of microSD cards and microSIM cards and the like, plugging into dedicated slots in phone motherboards. And, if this PhoneBloks thing were to take off, that approach is what I hope they would take, though having looked at the video itself, I'm not optimistic.

Check out the EOMA project.

BTW, looks like they already have some real hardware prototypes of the Plasma Active tablet board using the EOMA card since yesterday.

the video just came out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAw7vW7H0c