Thursday 31 October 2013

Phonebloks: Conceptually complete - yet still not enough

If you haven't seen it already - here's a really interesting crowdsourcing concept, based around a simple insight.

Phonebloks tries to tackle the problem of mobile phone wastage by allowing the user to purchase the individual elements of the phone and replace them when they break or become outdated. Therefore, instead of having a fixed specification, you can tailor-make your own phone using ‘bloks’ – individual modules such as cameras, processors and batteries – to suit your needs. 


Say, for example, you wanted to upgrade the phone processor, you could just remove the blok and replace it with another blok. Perhaps you wanted a higher resolution screen? Then this could also be replaced as a blok. 
     The camera could include a basic 5-megapixel blok, a mid-range 10-megapixel blok with a better lens and maybe a professional-grade 20-megapixel blok with an optical zoom lens for the keen amateur photographer.

There isn't an option for recycling from Phone Bloks as yet, but as a key ethical selling point, this is sure to be introduced. 

Anyway, here's the official video to explain it a bit better:


Obviously this is a brilliant concept, with an insight behind that is spectacular. With Motorola's support, there may well be less concept and more reality, but it's still not for me. Part of my love for a new piece of technology is the brand new piece of hardware - something aesthetically different. I would always be keen to switch bloks and update.

This will certainly work for some, and rightly so, but I'll still follow the materialistic, environmentally unfriendly route... Sorry!

What do you think of the concept? Could it work? Would you buy one?

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