The idea is pretty good, however the flaw is that his main point is reduction of electronic waste, I can't see how having cheaper disposable components would reduce waste any. People will just upgrade more often as the cost is lower to do so. He should try a different marketing angle, one based on cost and simplicity.
 
Not gonna happen. Big corporations will lose major source of profit if it will be that easy to fix your phone since now you'll be replacing malfunctioning module instead of buying the whole phone for $200 with 2 years contract.

Also, did they misspell "phoneblocks" on purpose? And, finally, check out www.phonebloks.com... :D
 
It's really neat, actually. I don't know how well it would actually get implemented, but still a cool idea.

Will it happen? Probably not. Planned obsoletion and all that. Corporations need a way to continually charge people for marginally better products.

edit; their youtube video states that the website is down. Probably due to a high amount of traffic.

Their thunderclap page is here: https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/2931-phonebloks
 
I posted that already :(
But nevertheless, I find the idea completely amazing, but as Psycho said, the phone companies make way too much money getting $500+ from millions of people as soon as some stupid-ass new phone comes out with barely anything improved from its predecessor
 
I posted that already :(
But nevertheless, I find the idea completely amazing, but as Psycho said, the phone companies make way too much money getting $500+ from millions of people as soon as some stupid-ass new phone comes out with barely anything improved from its predecessor
cough apple cough

Nothing_much and I were just talking about how awesome it would be if ubuntu or canonical teamed up with them & developed an open source OS for it.
Yeah, the companies will fight against it. But I think there's hope, since it looks like the upgrades / extensions can be made by anyone.
 
If this idea came to be I would definitely give it a shot. But as Maddo said there is the problem with more waste from it if people will be able to change pieces that easily. I hope it's released eventually so we can see how it works out.