It's a beautiful dream. You're heading to a gig tonight, so you nip out and buy a camera with a powerful zoom, and hot-swap it onto your phone. The next day, you're editing a video, so you plug in a bit of extra RAM. Two months later, it's upgrade time, but instead of getting a whole new phone, you just switch your old battery for a superpowered one. Nice.
Everything about modular phones makes sense - to the consumer, at least. It's cheaper, it's easier, it's better for the environment. It works better with the pace of hardware development, too: instead of a whole new phone that makes yours obsolescent every six months, we could have a cool new component every few weeks.
So why aren't we all using modular phones?
The first piece of the modular puzzle
The granddad of today's modular phones was a tiny handset launched in 2008 at Mobile World Congress; not by a Samsung or an HTC, but a little-known Israeli startup called Modu Mobile.
Modu's record-breaking mobile had basic functionality which could be added to by slipping it into one of the company's proprietary exoskeletons, known as a 'jacket.' The jackets were specialised depending on what kind of phone you wanted - a keyboard, perhaps, or a sporty chassis, a camera or an MP3 player (it was 2008, remember).
The phone did reach the market in 2009, but despite a trailblazing concept and the expertise of founder Dov Moran - inventor of the USB memory stick - Modu shut down in 2011.
Moran's efforts weren't wasted, though: Google bought Modu's patents for $4.9m, and its then-subsidiary Motorola Mobility turned them into a little thing called Project Ara.
Ara we doing this thing or not?
Project Ara is probably the best-known modular phone scheme, and had some very excited fans before it was abruptly cancelled in September.
Like Modu, Ara phones centred around a fixed structure (an 'endo,' short for endoskeleton) made by Google, and third-party modules of standard sizes could then be slotted in to make a phone.
For the tech equivalent of an E-fit, Ara handsets looked surprisingly good. However, despite more than three years' worth of development, the team couldn't seem to make it work.
Ara's cancellation was met with widespread disappointment, and Google's explanation of "streamlining its hardware efforts" didn't do much to sweeten the pill.
Rest in pieces
Ara and Modu are not the only names in the modular graveyard. ZTE showed off a prototype called Eco-Mobius at CES in 2014, but it never made it to market and they wouldn't comment for this article, rather suggesting it's dead and buried.
Later the same year came Vsenn, considered a major Ara competitor - until it too was cancelled in June 2015 due to "financial pressure."
This was a month after budget modular handset Fonkraft was yanked from Indiegogo for "not meeting trust and safety standards." Yikes.
But what about this year's LG G5? That's modular, right? Well, kind of. The bottom section can be swapped, but only for a very limited range of alternatives, and the rest of the phone is fixed.
LG explains to TechRadar, "By allowing the LG G5 to physically connect with other modules such as LG CAM Plus and LG Hi-Fi Plus, the Modular Type can transform the handset into a premium camera or audio device.
"We know that not every user demands high-fidelity audio or precision camera controls; but for those who are passionate about their music or taking photographs, the option to enhance the phone to suit their needs is there."
That all sounds good, especially as a sort of market test for full modularity - but has it paid off?
"While we're confident in the technology, there needs to be a robust audience for it," explains LG. "Some technologies are ahead of their time and it can take time to attract a significant user base. Whether modular smartphones are the next big thing is still up in the air, so we'll continue to listen to our customers and monitor usage trends for the time being."
That monitoring doesn't appear to be going well, sadly.
It looks like LG has dropped the modular approach for its next phone, after firing one of its execs for poor sales - the G5 might be joining the graveyard after all.
The missing link
The consumer benefits of a Lego-style phone are obvious. Dave Hakkens, founder of Phonebloks - the modular smartphone movement that influenced Project Ara's design - notes: "You can upgrade, repair and customise it. It will last longer and you can adapt it to your needs."
Pretty compelling, so why aren't consumers biting?
"I'd say phones like the LG G5 aren't really selling because it's not really modular, more of a first step to break the phone apart and customise it. But it won't last much longer, yet. It'll take some time before the perfect modular phone is developed."
Dov Moran, founder of Modu, agrees that current phones haven't nailed it. "On the technical side the issue of easy connection and disconnection of the modules is not resolved yet." (Google were originally using electropermanent magnets for this, but changed the design after jokingly saying they "failed the drop test.") It's a serious point, though: when you've put your phone together piece-by-piece, you need the whole to be strong enough to withstand drops and back pockets. Yes, it's easier to repair a modular phone, but is it also easier to break one?
Moran continues, "Phone lifespans are relatively short, and inexpensive. When we talk about replacing modules, the price goes down so fast on ingredients like the screen, memory, camera, that what is the high end of today would become the low end of tomorrow. The hassle of buying modules - which one, shipment etc - is large compared to 'give me a new phone' where all the ingredients are upgraded."
Modular phones are touted as being better for the environment, but Moran points out that they could actually lead to more waste: "When you upgrade your phone, you do not throw away the old one. You keep it as a backup or give it to someone else. While you upgrade a module, you have nothing to do with the low-end part."
It's likely a secondary market would spring up, but given how fast entire phones depreciate, how much could you realistically expect to get for last year's camera module on eBay?
Roadblocks
To fulfil the promise of modular phones, we'd need to carry a plethora of easily-lost bits around with us - as Moran puts it, "A minimal configuration when I am doing sports and a large one when I use it as a phablet in a meeting requires having all the parts handy, and it dilutes the theoretically nice (but not so practical) concept."
Hakkens agrees. "For the current phone manufacturers, there's not much of a benefit. However, there would be for other companies like camera, speaker or battery manufacturers that currently can't contribute to the mobile phone market: they could with a modular phone."
In other words, if a manufacturer can make a popular enough base phone, we could end up with an App Store-style selection of components to choose from.
That sounds like a good thing, but consider all the junk apps on iOS and Android: do we really want the hardware equivalent of that? Is it worth it, when most of us just download the same 20 apps as everyone else anyway?
Building the future
There's still hope for the modular dream. Despite having fatefully relinquished Project Ara to Google, Motorola haven't given up on the piecemeal phone, launching the modular-ish Moto Z earlier this year. Not everything on the Moto Z (and its variants Force and Play) can be swapped, but there's a good range of magnetised accessories including a wireless charging battery pack, speakers, a projector and even a 10x optical zoom.
Meanwhile, ethical, repairable smartphone Fairphone 2 has been well-received and is available for preorder now, while the similar Puzzlephone has been postponed to 2017 due to delayed EU funding, but is apparently still happening.
For now, though, it looks like modular accessories are as mainstream as we're going to get: things like Mophie's battery cases, and Olloclip's clip-on lenses.
The best example is probably Otterbox's uniVERSE, a modular iPhone case that allows you to swap in modules including extra storage, power, and even a credit card reader, but it's a long way from a whole phone.
iven all the projects that have fallen by the wayside, can we still look forward to a modular future? Dave Hakkens says yes: "I would imagine all tech to be modular [in the future], especially considering the Internet of Things where all our devices are connected to the internet and become little computers. What if a tiny processor component of your fridge or washing machine breaks? Do you throw everything away? I'd say swap in a new block!"
Dov Moran sees an even more radical pathway for modular tech: modular humans. "I do believe that at some time a [modular smartphone] solution will evolve, but it is competing with the other solution of having parts of the phone installed in our bodies while connecting with external peripherals. I know it sounds like sci-fi but this will happen. I am not sure this is so far away."
You heard it here first, folks.
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