A bespoke interconnect you say? I can see that working well.
What's wrong with making it usb-c and therefore more appealing to the mass market and more likely to gain traction and adoption, see Motorola mods for what not to do.
Android creator Andy Rubin has been running in stealth mode with his forthcoming smartphone startup Essential, but has now released a teaser picture of his new handset. Next week the startup will unveil its first comms device, and judging from the silhouette image, it's going to look very odd indeed. The handset follows the …
The only issue (albeit a big issue) with Moto's Mods are that they are proprietary to Moto. Specifically, the physical connector is proprietary, built atop a standard called GreyBus.
USB C isn't as elegant a solution for adding a battery pack, keyboard, IR camera, 3D scanner etc as a magnetic connector on the rear panel of the phone is.
Bluetooth is suitable only for very low bandwidth devices. It is next to useless with cameras, external storage or tethering beyond 2G EDGE.
Setting up adhoc wifi between devices is not as simple as pairing Bluetooth devices, and you'll also lose your network wifi access. If you are proposing connecting devices via wireless access point then you're confined to your home wireless.
USB-C only specifies the connector. You could still be capped at USB 2.0 speed without alt mode, power delivery etc.
The phone manufacturers should just team up and start to standardize to Thunderbolt 3 and come up with standardized (magnetic? mechanical?) mounting for peripherals akin to VESA mount.
Unlikely to happen for many reasons. Apple probably won't play ball and what's there for the big manufacturers unless they were to profit from all this in short term? The market would be instantly flooded with cheap 3rd party devices - who would buy e.g. the Samsung/LG peripheral when the cheap no-name knockoff will suffice?
GreyBus is a standard that allows Android phones to treat peripheral resources as internal components, akin to how Thunderbolt allows peripheral components to be seen as being on the computer's PCIe bus.
USB Type C is a physical connector that supports various protocols. Thunderbolt is a protocol that has used USB A (Sony), Display Port (Apple and others) and USB C connectors (ditto) over the years.
> Bluetooth is suitable only for very low bandwidth devices. It is next to useless with cameras, external storage or tethering beyond 2G EDGE.
Total BS. Bluetooth goes up to 25Mbps. I regularly bluetooth gteather a 4G iphone to a MacBook for transferring files and working on servers. No problem at all and much faster than most public wi-fi. I even have video calls - not a glitch.
It could be a physical reminder to Iphone users that a phone must be held in a certain way in order to avoid antenna issues :-)
It could be a solar black matter self powered infinite charger.
It could be a holographic projector so that we could also see the other party of calls being made by obnoxiuos people in public places.
It could be a self encrypting satelitte coms device that the NSA would really love to be in the hands of the population.
It could be a self cloaking device that refuses Google/facebook/Microsoft telemetrics.
It could be a anti-rounded corner implementation to avoid patent problems.
The mind boggles....
Either a much larger lens than other phones have, or it is round for capturing 360* all at once? Either way, the market has spoken loud and clear for at least 15 years that people don't want stuff sticking out of their phones. People complain about 1mm camera lens bumps, few will tolerate that ugly nub - other than maybe as a gimmick for compulsive selfie takers who might like a better lens and/or 360* FOV.
The 'phone designed for custom add ons' trick has been tried several times before, and always failed. I see no reason why this should succeed. Especially since this will either be running a proprietary OS and fail for that reason, or will run Android + "secret sauce" which is a market where people generally reject proprietary extensions, be they hardware or software.
Weird, as I used to have an iPhone, and every Android device I have owned since is vastly superior, specifically a LG G4, now a Pixel.
Perhaps you bought crap Android phones? or live in their weird world where iTards are more than happy to try and compare a £100 Android phone with a £800 iPhone, and then assume every other Android phone is just like that £100 one...
"I had a car that wasn't a BMW once (an Austin Allegro), that therefore means all cars that aren't BMW are automatically as bad as the Allegro"...
You meant Android is backdoored by Google, right? Anyway Google would like to see 360° around you. Its "AI" could then easily identify every people and every brand in the image - and build a better consumer profile of you.
Maybe this guy needs to enlarge is French bakery, and will soon sell the blueprints to Google again.
Yep, you're right. It's already been posted under the original Twitter image. Just have click on Reg's image. It's almost certainly a 360.
Is that all he's got? I'd be expecting: The phone you will never see in the dreaded news articles
"Phone exploit"
"Kremlin has your dirty pictures"
"NSA can control your fitness app"
"All your iris/retina/fingerprint are belong to us"
"etc."
Guess the only question is whether that ridiculous thing is always there, or that is one of those magnetic add ons. One would hope/assume the latter.
I expect lots of hype about how this is the "next big thing" in phones, and how Apple and Samsung are now hopelessly behind and must play catch up, just like the last couple times modular phones were introduced and failed miserably!
Finally a phone with built-in sonar. Should be big in the young couples or teenage girls market.
Think about new markets, where cheaper tech creates new uses! Like constipated people, giving themselves an ultrasound scan to detect when relief will be delivered.
He used to be too far ahead of the curve. WebTV, acquired by Microsoft and destroyed. Danger Inc, acquired by Microsoft and destroyed. Android Inc, acquired by Google and found a little success.
He's got plenty of money now. Must be nice to get to work on whatever you want.