Not necessarily actually. Many mid-tier Qualcomm and Mediatek do support high quality cameras. Software is the main issue. Lots of budget phones advertise 64 MP cameras but why did people prefer the 13 MP camera on iPhones and Google Pixels? Years and years of software optimization. Currently, I see Framework as a hardware company. Very innovative products but I don’t think they’ve fleshed out their software support compared to their hardware team (BIOS delays). They’re working on that now based on their recent announcements but we’ll have to see and wait.
As for demand, we can only guess at this point. I’m sure that there will be people who’ll buy it but I think it’s a difficult business to stay in. Many giants have walked the path and failed (LG, Razer, HTC). Upgrades are tricky cause of the software support that goes in to make it great. A theoretical Framework Phone could have different battery sizes, displays, SOC, cameras, storage size, and ram. You can add new cameras to a phone but if they don’t have support behind them, they may not perform well.
Another thing to consider is what do you do with your old parts? On the Framework laptop, I don’t find that a big issue yet as you can always reuse your old mainboard as a standalone pc. (There have been past posts of people upgrading to the louder speakers and the matte screen but then the question is what do you do with them? A program where people can sell old parts on the Marketplace still isn’t out). Framework makes what I would describe as a healthy margin on their mainboard upgrades and a video from Linus Tech Tips does suggest that Framework is banking on people coming back to them years later for upgrades. For phone parts though, it is a trickier (maybe using a “SOC Mainboard” as a raspberry pi?). Community Marketplace could fix that but I suspect this remains a big challenge for Framework to handle. If there isn’t something like that, people may just slowly accumulate parts to build another phone which is kinda eh.
Lastly, pricing of upgrade parts would need to be carefully balanced.
My old phone’s main camera would still be a decent webcam.
Talking about integration: I don’t want my phone to be paper thin, I want to have a 3,5mm a µSD socket and a phone that does what one can expect with common sense.
I had hoped the Xperia 1 IV would do the job, but all I got was a 900$ slab with a buggy bluetooth stack, a phone app showing incoming calls with a delay of ~5 seconds and scaringly poor integrated software that is overheating on video calls up to the point that it does not charge anymore and the battery gets drained quickly. The camera is good, but does not make up for this. Is it possible that we’ve had the best time in terms of well designed mobile phones and are now facing some dystopical downfall?
My only criticism with your idea is that I don’t think every component should be a “module” similar to the Framework Laptop. On the laptop the ports are hot-swappable and able to be changed often, but the other components are internal and you need to undo screws to access them. I think that with the phone, there should also be components that cannot and should not be swapped unless the phone is off (such as the SoC, RAM, light/proximity sensors, and fingerprint reader). Not only would it be bad if your SoC came loose during everyday use, or someone could swap to a hacked fingerprint sensor to break into your device, but it would complicate the software to have these sorts of things be removable/replaceable without powering off the device.
Trying to sell or give away for free. If it not works, then recycle.
Better recycling some parts in 10 years as the whole phone after 5 years.
And yes, framework is has a “healthy” margin on mainboard upgrades, but not only that. Also on the whole laptop. The whole story stands and falls with the price, as always. That would be the same for smartphones.
In my opinion Framework is to expensiv to reach normal people. Especially the upgrades are so overpriced.
And for reusing your old frameworklaptop: I guess normal people do not reuse their old device (why would they need a second device?), so that’s basically same unrealistic like on a smartphone. Also you would have to buy a monitor for it, new RAM, SSD, W-Lan card or LAN Adapter and so on. Quite unrealistic and more a theoretical thing.
Can’t speak for everyone however, as I am upgrading to the Ryzen 7 7840u mainboard, I can just give my mainboard to a family member or hook it up to a tv. Ram and wifi card is staying inside, and I have a spare ssd for it. The point is this will differ for everyone but it doesn’t have to cost a lot to repurpose a mainboard as a pc and many people do know others that could use an upgrade. For a phone board however, my point was that you really do need everything (housing, SOC, etc) to be able to reuse it unless they came out with something to reuse it as a raspberry pi like device.
As for cost, this really depends on where you live. However, having worked in pc sales before in Canada, I can say that the Framework 13 is competitively priced for the premium ultrabook market. As for upgrade costs, the hidden factor is selling/reusing mainboard. I’ve known people who’ll upgrade their laptop and trash their old one/do nothing with it because a small thing about it is not functional (broken screen, hinges, or shell). But everything thing else about it is functional. There are many laptops where you can take out the motherboard and use it as a pc however, what Framework offers is A) Official support and advertisement of the feature and B) Products/info to actually do this (cooler master case, CAD files if you want to print it, etc).
Oh, i did not want to say with “module” that it have to be unscrewed. For me it could be screwed. I mean only the idea behind modules.
Why that matters: If your camera just is normally, then you would not be able to upgrade it, because the next camera looks different. So it wont fit in the case and motherboard.
The models are needed for same physical sizes. So the camera sits in the module, but it can be screwed. Then the module can be repalced with a better one. That’s the idea.
Your logic works only, when you have always a second person who buys your OLD computer.
When i buy a repairable but not upgradeable phone, then i will sell it maybe after 6 years or so. Maybe another guy will use it 3-5 Years, but after 10 years this phone will probably find not alot user. So it hold probably 10 years.
But if i can use it 10 years with “only” wasting some parts of it, i can sell it after 10 years (because i have upgraded my camera and SoC after 5 years. So its like a 5 year old device in that aspect), and then the same other guy could use it 3-5 Years. So at the End this phone would get used 15 years instead of 10 years by needing only some parts more.
Sure, it would be great if you could reuse the parts too, but even if not, it would be better, if you not ugprade every generation or so (but that’s not the device fault).
And the goal would be, that there would be a standart which you could reuse your parts in other devices (also in other brands). Like you can do in a desktop-computer. Right know it would be not be the case, but there has to be a point, where someone has to start doing it.
There will not come the point where all brands will to that at one time.
But putting everything else aside (design, finances), I would want Framework to invest/improve many of their current processes before diving into a new category of products. Things like expanding to more countries, more consistent BIOS updates, cheaper shipping for products (especially for EU countries). They’re also expanding into the business segment which is good. Only when the company is truly self-sufficient do I really think it should be done.
Yeah, i agree. But they already asked, what “we should do next?”. So i guess they are already thinking about the next thing.
I also think better support one thing, than make new things.
I mean the Framework is about upgrading. So you can not just throw one laptop on the market and then bring never a new one. All other brands bring up new devices every year which are (ideally) better, than the one before (and i mean not because of the cpu, i mean because of better display, better camera and so on).
So framework should better support the laptops by offering more upgrades and offering new laptops with better parts (but not only the CPU as till now).
In that case i totally agree with you. They should spend their ressources into a bigger ecosystem for this laptop rather than making sth else than laptops.
Not much work for the engineers there. I don’t know how how much engineering work is needed for new iterations, but I guess they need to explore more product segments to keep the engineers busy.
I beg to differ. Improving power draw and behaviour of expansion cards, coming out with new expansion cards, improving durability the chassis, coming out with new parts (people have been asking for touch screens, different screens, keyboards, a force touchpad, 2 in 1s). Also, the AMD mainboard seems to have given the Framework team troubles which they are quickly working to iron out. While they do gain experience, each platform is new and you never know what issues can crop up.
Edit: Also forgot about those proof of concepts that they mentioned. Battery case for existing battery to convert it into a battery bank, dock for 16 inch GPU module, a battery expansion bay for the Framework 16.