The Glade 4.0

Still in theoretical phase, but what are your thoughts? Would you get behind something like this if it were a real product? I think I would.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I'm.. a bit skeptical?

I'm not sure something modular like that will be well-suited to the environmental stresses mobile devices must be designed to endure, for one.

For two, I wonder what kind of overhead will be required to modularize something like that as heavily as they're proposing; and whether we currently have a sufficient surfeit of power and speed at the mobile size to support that and be competitive enough to still be an attractive device.

Finally, people complain that Android is too fragmented... that seems like an intercompatibility nightmare.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Interesting. I don't think it would really be for me, but I'd support the idea.

The toughness could be helped by having a single thin case or sleeve that wraps around the rest of the components and secures in some fashion.

I think the modularity is a bit over-done. I'd prefer a single 'communications' module that would include things like wireless networks, bluetooth, nfc, in one, a 'performance' module that maybe housed a c/gpu + ram, a battery module and a camera module.

All that said, this is obviously just someone's concept and is nowhere near market. The idea can definitely be improved but I think it's got merit.

I have to admit, the whole thing feels like some guy trying to get everybody to demand their favorite phone manufacturers license a patent from him.

Patent trolling of the future -- have the crowd secure you a patent troll market?

I mean, if it works, and that's what's going on, good for him, I suppose. If that's what's going on, I'd personally feel kind of funny rooting for it, though.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

This would be horrendously difficult to do well. The integrity of those modular connections would be critical, and I'm skeptical it could be done well enough to make a reliable device at a price that would be considered acceptable.

That said, I'm all about innovation, and hope the designers imaginations are better than mine.

Once upon a time someone said the same thing about video chat across the world over a cellular connection.

Since it took 30 years and billions of dollars of research and development and things still aren't perfect, I'm thinking that was a correct statement.

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Consumer level development of video chat over a cellular network is probably no more than 6 or 7 years old. Either way, I never said the statement was wrong, just that, "it's hard to do" isn't always a good reason not to do something.

Unless you are the Government, profitability is the key to success.

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should...

Not interested. Handsets are likely only to get cheaper and develop features that won't be covered by a processing upgrade.

Also we can't get the manufacturers to stop suing each other long enough to pick an operating system let alone an industry standard architecture.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Be careful what you ask for....

Competition drives innovation (sometimes good, sometimes bad .. just ask Microsoft).