Is this the new Kony 2012/Ouya?

"Leoz96, It's a Car!" (Leoz96) 09/12/2013 at 00:35 • Filed to: None

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GhostZ > Leoz96, It's a Car! 09/12/2013 at 00:39

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I want to see a working prototype, material data, and specs.

Because I am highly skeptical of this things ability to use universal plugs/circuit board and still be able to process or do anything a normal phone can at what a consumer would even call 'adequate' or be worth a reasonable (under $1000) cumulative price.

EDIT: Also, how is the phone any more customizable than a rooted new phone? All of the parts are suddenly controlled by whomever owns the technology for their standardized board.

For example "the block that affects the speed" seems to demonstrate some serious ignorance about what goes into a phone speed. Processing power? Data management? Instantaneous battery output? Clock rate? Pre-loading? Flash Memory? Disk Memory? You can change all of these and affect the "speed".

And without being able to check their website (it's currently down since the video was posted, cheeky bastards, due to the server requests) I see something heavily promised but rather poorly thought out.

Leoz96, It's a Car! > GhostZ 09/12/2013 at 00:43

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That's one of my bigger concerns as well. Also, isn't letting the Users do their phone's layout a terrible idea? Doesn't that take like loads of time to design on normal phones? That's like letting people create the phone equivalent of a Ford Pinto.

GhostZ > Leoz96, It's a Car! 09/12/2013 at 00:47

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Packaging is a huge issue on normal phones. That's why Motorola got rid of removable batteries and memory, so they could make their phones ridiculously thin.

Not to mention that in order for something to work like this, it needs drivers. One for every little pin. That's a ton of software that can seriously cause huge conflicts between systems.

I smell someone with a funny but impractical idea trying to scam some people out of some startup investments before he parachutes out when the business goes under.

Burrito de EJ25 > Leoz96, It's a Car! 09/12/2013 at 01:14

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I want this to exist so that I can see someone drop one and witness it explode into a bunch of tiny squares scattered around a sidewalk, into a drain.

Also, this is never going to happen.

Leoz96, It's a Car! > GhostZ 09/12/2013 at 01:18

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I also thought about the problems with drivers, I mean, they are already a pretty complicated thing on PCs, now try to imagine that on your phone, having to install every single diferent driver for every little block. You can obviously tell the people who do this really don't know what they are talking about, they just had a pretty idea and are waiting for people to give them a bazillion dollars.

bhardoin > Leoz96, It's a Car! 09/12/2013 at 01:20

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Interesting idea. But, infeasible because:

A) You'll just replace all those blocks anyway, not helping the electronic waste problem.

B) Carriers won't subsidize them.

C) OS fragmentation.

D) Cell phones are way more optimized than that today, especially to keep size down. Its like how laptops are un-upgradable and desktops are where all this modularity happens. But even on a desktop, you still have your entire chipset (except graphics cards and extra stuff like that) on a massive motherboard. So I don't see how this would work for phones.

PS9 > GhostZ 09/12/2013 at 01:20

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Also, how is the phone any more customizable than a rooted new phone?

Because no amount of rooting can give you more cores/a faster SoC/a better screen?

Not to mention that in order for something to work like this, it needs drivers. One for every little pin. That's a ton of software that can seriously cause huge conflicts between systems.

This is completely incorrect.

Drivers are written for devices , not pins. The amount of pins are not relevant to the number of devices in a computer system.

Devices are components in a computer system that function as a resource for potential input or output. A touchscreen, a camera, an SD card or other USB peripheral are all considered types of devices

Before anything can be done with a device, we need an intermediate program capable of controlling and communicating with the device. This is what we call a 'driver'.

Every smartphone on earth has a suite of drivers written to control and communicate with the suite of devices smartphones have on board. A smartphone is not upgradeable like a PC, but from a software perspective, this is irrelevant; It still has an OS, it still has a number of devices, which means it still must use drivers.

GhostZ > PS9 09/12/2013 at 01:51

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Would you mind clarifying to me how one would manage this type of system?

I was thinking they would work like USB pins, with drivers that would be able to detect the type and location of device you've added to the phone. It may not have come off very clearly in my original post, but that's the idea that I was trying to convey.

The problem is, how do you make a machine that "outsources" processing through what is essentially a USB port? Are there speed/efficiency losses? Would those losses make this phone prohibitively underperforming? I just can't see the added 'customization' of better cores could still allow them to keep up with modern smartphone technology.

I figure for the price of this thing, I could buy any high-spec smartphone and root it and play around with its innards. I know you can't change the hardware through rooting, but look at the 'blocks' he's got on his prototype. They're all currently existing devices, and he's missing quite a few new ones, that can be found on most phones. In terms of customization, this can't be better than just buying a package that is all integrated, and using software to manage it.

One advantage I do see is the ability to upgrade individual components as new technology comes out , but I think that would not only be more costly in the long run, but it puts your heavily-customized individual at the mercy of a single corporation to decide when and where and how these upgrades are going to be released.

sebdel > Leoz96, It's a Car! 09/12/2013 at 09:36

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Think of the posibilities, you can steal someones bluetooth and replace it with a lego block, they'll never know!

I'm sure something like this can be done, but It wouldn't look like that, it would be a lot of microSD sized modules into aordinary looking smartphone with lots or microsd slots. It would be terrible, microSD cards are just not designed to be handle by humans.

sebdel > Burrito de EJ25 09/12/2013 at 09:38

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An if they have a better camera than you, you can just take it and run