Phoneblocks, FairPhone, Ara Project

[jaclaz]

DISCLAIMER:

I am in no way connected with any of the mentioned firms/associations, I do not own any device, never seen or touched one "life", I ma not a developer nor I have one of the development kits. 

 

Phoneblocks is mainly an "idea" or "philosophy".

Fairphone is a smal (Dutch) firm that akready produces "repairable" phones.

Ara is a project, Google originated/supported, that will start proiduction in (maybe 2015).

 

The "philosophy" is great  :

https://phonebloks.com/en

 

The Fairphone is reality :

https://www.fairphone.com/

 

The Ara project is in development:

http://www.projectara.com/

 

I find interesting this document (relative to the first lot of the Fairphones) that is a good insight of the costs involved in making a device of this kind:

https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Fairphone_Cost_Breakdown_and_Key_Sept2013.pdf

 

 

 

For my personal tastes, the good Fairphones guys/gals put a bit too much the accent on "ethics" of mining:

https://www.fairphone.com/2014/04/16/conflict-free-mineral-legislation-in-the-us-and-eu/

than on the actual core issues, like the OS and firmware being completely free or not and/or about the availability of spares (from other sources), and, as always I may be wrong, but the whole stuff *seems* a bit too buggy for something that has been already produced in 25,000 specimens with a next batch of anoither 35,000 son to be manufactured:

https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201311206-Software-update-v1-3-log-May-2014

if it is "stable", then it is "stable", if it is "experimental", then it is "experimental" I would expect if not nightly builds, weekly ones:

https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201311206-Software-update-v1-3-log-May-2014

and the explanation given (coming from a hi-tech company, in the communications field) sounds so much wrong :

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=52338067

 

but I love  (as an example) the concept of unless you ask for it you won't have a charger, as *any* USB charger will do

https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201065667-Why-don-t-you-automatically-include-a-charger-with-the-Fairphone-Which-charger-can-I-use-

 

The general idea is however IMHO very nice, and I hope 

(like it has been seen for the "home built laptop") : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/170962-this-might-be-the-future-open-hardware-laptop/

that it will start to be adopted by (and extended to) other devices.

 

jaclaz

 

 

[Tripredacus]

It took PCs some years to get over having proprietary parts and now just about everything is interchangeable. Phones, Notebooks and Tablets should eventually end up in the same boat, but will likely (like their PC counterparts) cause some large names to fall from the top.