ZTE’s modular smartphone could have you part swapping in two years
One great thing about computers is that you can upgrade their individual parts over time to keep performance up without having to put down the money for a brand new one so often. If you notice it is starting to run a little slow you can add some more RAM, or if a new game comes out just upgrade your graphics card. Now what if you had that same freedom when it came to your smartphone? Instead of buying an entire new phone you could just swap out that parts (modules) you needed to replace or wanted to upgrade. Not only would it save consumers a lot of money but it would also help curb the enormous amount of electronic waste going into our landfills every year. Reps for the company have said they plan to bring this concept to the market within the next two years. In my opinion a pretty lofty goal. Known as the Eco-Mobius, lets talk about the potential benefits of having a modular smartphone that any user can swap parts on.
The four separate modules that you will be able to swap out are the LCD, camera, core, and battery. The core consists of the processor, RAM, and ROM. So for one example let’s say you dropped your phone and broke the screen. Instead of either buying a new phone or paying to replace the part and have a specialist install it, you would simply buy the part and install it yourself in a few minutes or even seconds. That’s a pretty big boon right there. Perhaps you are a user who is online all day long keeping up on emails, talking to customers, accessing a VPN, or any other number of battery draining tasks. You could just pop on the biggest battery they sell and not have to ever worry about not making it through a day. If you are a photographer or even an enthusiast you could have the best camera module, or even carry a few different ones with you if you knew you were going out to take pictures. Would be pretty cool to have a fisheye module, maybe a macro, or a sensor like Nokia has been putting in some of the new Windows phones that take phenomenal pictures as far as phones go. No matter what your usage case scenario you could always be on the cutting edge of technology just by upgrading the new components that are important to you as they come out. The bigger this idea gets, the more manufacturers there will be making modules, making the modules themselves go down in price. And while this may be the first you have heard of a modular phone, Motorola was actually the first to start publicly working on what they call Project Ara pictured below.
Even though both of them are still a few years away from being available to buy, are you as excited at the mere prospect of it as I am? I imagine it to be an engineers nightmare, but that’s why they make so much money. If only the money I was throwing at my computer screen right now would speed up the process. Something tells me more than just these two companies that have shown off their prototypes are working on a similar device right now. Time will tell.
Ben Johnson
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