The most exciting technology in the history of mobile phones has been the modular phones. The modular phone's concept was first announced by Google as project Ara, back in April 1 2013. The idea was to create a smartphone from independent components, have a smartphone skeleton that had slots that you could swipe in any module, i.e you can swipe out the camera module for a music module. or upgrade from a 200 Tier Snapdragon processor to a 800 Tier just by swapping the old one out. However the idea died out just as quick as it had been born.

Why They Died

The problem with modular phones is that; though the ability to snap components on and off a phone sounds simple enough, the mechanical and technical complexity is immense.
All modules have to be standardized, and be able to communicate with one another without sucking up too much battery life (a phone's most in-demand resource). Money for research and development for these efforts would be costly to a manufacturer, and no company would want to be blamed for a third-party's module failure or incompatibility.

The manufacturers too never liked the idea that much since it would mean that you would only buy single components when upgrading rather than throwing off your whole Galaxy S8 for a Galaxy S9 or an iPhone 7 for an iPhone 8. This would in fact render Samsung and some several other mobile-tech companies useless as their work is usually design and assembly.


The first generation of the phones never made it to Kenya; however phoneblocks.com is spearheading a movement that will urge the phone producers, with enough resources to reconsider the modular phones projects. Until then we can only hope. Hope that, one day we'll have a phone that you can swipe in two cameras during photography or swipe in 4 speakers to enhance sound surround.