A phone worth keeping – Phonebloks

So you’ve saved up your pocket money for that newest phone that you’ve seen on the internet, pretty expensive but you think it’s definitely worth it. After months of torture and little expenditure at the café, you now have in your hands just the right sum of money for it. You go the market, take it off a shelf, bring it back home and there it is; The All-New, Best, Apple-Mango-Blueberry, carrying every feature that you’ve ever dreamt of. You wake up the next day, turn on the television and what do you see? An update to the phone that you bought, with ‘added features’, of course.Down the drain goes your dream of owning the best phone in the market, along with 70 thousands rupees.

Imagine owning a phone that never goes out of fashion, a phone that is always up-to-date and doesn’t require an arm and a leg to ‘add’ features to. Imagine that whenever a part of your phone breaks down or has an upgrade in the market, all you do is take that part off and exchange it with the new one. That simple? Say hello to PhoneBloks.

Dave Hakkens, a fresh engineering graduate from Netherlands, has come up with this particular idea. The idea revolves around the fusion of several different ‘bloks’ that come together to formulate a complete, immaculate mobile phone. As simple as putting together Lego or Building Blocks, imagine picking up a 1.3 MP camera ‘blok’ and fitting it into your phone and when that gets outdated, taking that out and putting in a 10 MP ‘blok’, it really would be that simple. Similarly, the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and display would have different modules or ‘bloks’, as they’re very cutely called.

The main advantage of this phone is that it is designed to last long. This implies that there won’t be a need of throwing away a phone when it gets out of order, for a new phone, all you need to do is sell your old ‘bloks’ for a new one. Not only can this save a whole lot of money, it can also help you keep the best phone in your pocket, FOREVER! (By keeping the phone updated, of course).

Another great advantage of Phonebloksis that it allows the user to customize it in any desired way. For instance a person interested in photography can remove the blocks of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and can place a big block of high MP camera instead. Similarly, a person interested in listening to music can replace his extra blockswith a block containing bigger speakers. Also, a person who doesn’t need Wi-Fi or Bluetooth but needs more battery time can replace them with a bigger battery.

Bloks will be available in stores, the same way we can get an app for the App Store. Similarly, different companies will have their Blok stores from where we would be able to purchase our bloks.

The concept has already earned its due praise and support from the masses on the internet. Usually, companies tend to design their phones secretly but not in this case. Motorola is working openly with this ‘open’, public platform project and allows people to chip-in in any way they can.

Originally a concept, phonebloking is soon going to turn into a wonderful reality. With dozens of experts operating tirelessly, we can surely look forwards to the limit of perfection in the mobility and advancement of cell-phone technology.Not only can this help us be easy on our own wallets, it can also help the environment deal with lesser e-waste and hence witness gadget-retention for a much longer period of time. A greener, phonebloking era is just around the corner.