Gadgetory

hello everybody and welcome to the Friday debate podcast by android authority discussing topics and android every week this week we have our first ever episode so if you are one of our first listeners on this podcast thank you so much for listening and I want to extend a quick thanks to our guests here I am of course Joshua Vergara from android authority what's going on everybody and i am your host every single week as we take a topic that we otherwise have on the android authority calm website for the friday debate and we talk its ears off or as i said in our description for our pilot episode if you have hopefully enjoyed it we beat the proverbial dead horse on this topic but nonetheless welcome to all of you who are here and before we even get started I want to go down the line and introduce our great gifts for this week I'm going to go ahead and name off the three people we have on the panel this week we'll start off with our lead editor andrew grush hey everyone the name is andrew grush or for those here at team eh eh i'm actually better known as krushi some of you may already be familiar with my riding on android authority i was also on last week's pilot for those who watched it for those new to the show I'm the u.s. senior editor like Josh mentioned basically that means I do a combination of writing editing and I help with the day-to-day management of the website I've been with android authority for about two and a half years now and this is absolutely the best job I've ever had in my life nice and i like i also put in the description from the pilot episode from CES 2015 grush is also the architect of the friday debate topic that you may be reading on our website so the topics that are occurring not only the website but in the friday debate podcast itself are going to be the work of brush and on some level me but also the rest of our team looking for a great topic to bring to you guys let's go ahead and move on over to another writer from our team Jonathan Feist well hello thank you how's everybody doing again Jonathan Feist and one of the writers with a team here corsa we cover all the news coverage I've got the evening shift so you'll see me you know first thing in the morning if in that UK or Asia and you know middle of the night if here in the United States now one of my favorite things around here is every thursday i do an android customization post not just a little bit of you know tidbits tips and tricks on how to customize your device and you know so far we've been avoiding the root topics but roots coming up soon stay tuned very nice and also jonathan has a what's the term I'm looking for here i am not a pet name but we have a nice little name that we have for him last name Feist so we call them feisty also so and now and then of course we have one of our youtubers our appt guy on over here Joseph Hindi hey everybody I'm Joe Hindy the the android authority app guy I am also the apps editor / android authority i do all the app lists and app reviews and video game reviews um like grow she said man this is the best job ever because i literally get paid to play video games and i know a lot of people are envious about that and a fun little fun fact here with this i will have co-hosted or been a guest on every single android authority weekly show and I remain the only youtuber to do that so no super happy to be here oh nice as well it's really great to have you guys on here by the way I was about to say having John here is going to be really awesome we're gonna have probably this particular group on most weeks but we will have some roving guests in and out well as time goes on but nonetheless we are here on our first episode and I'm really happy to have Joe here cuz he and i actually have done a lot of YouTube videos together where typically want to have to do the editing for I have to have that bleep button ready from time to time but nonetheless we are of course here at the Friday debate and let's go ahead and jump into our topic let's not even waste any time here is what grush had for this week's Friday debate topic that you will be able to read today on Friday of course and it has to do with project ara with aura the project are that is expected to arrive in Puerto Rico in a pilot program later this year ara is finally almost ready for prime time or is it do we think that modular phones can find success in the market I think that's where most of our discussion is going to come from but if it isn't ready for the market to find success what will hold it back alright so what we're looking at here is basically a phone that you can put together on the fly and you can take out parts you can put parts back into it and it's a different take on what a smart phone can be very very uh very similar to what a computer can be but it's starting off in Puerto Rico and I know Andrew already said that he had a couple of pieces of information about why Puerto Rico was that place sure okay so uh really puerto rico might seem odd choice at first but the biggest thing is it's a u.s. territory so that means it's the perfect test market because you know it's still under the FCC got you know regulations and stuff and so that means that they can kind of prepare it for the US market in a limited setting and beyond that actually Puerto Rico was a mobile-first nation meaning that the majority of people are using smartphones to get onto the internet and so that makes it you know a prime target and you know it's because of the way Puerto Rico set up they're actually going to be delivering parts instead of having up online channel initially they're going to deliver it through food trucks actually they're gonna have a set of food trucks they can go around and let people try out the products hands on and then buy products and heck they're going to have 3d printers in the back so they can be able to customize it on the fly and Puerto Rico just really works out well for that not to mention Puerto Rico has really good relationships as far as with shipping across the world so modular developers from all over are gonna be able to easily get parts there and so that's kind of the reason why they chose Puerto Rico it might sound like an odd choice but it makes sense No okay well food trucks nice is it Wow are you gonna be able get food with them or is it literally know that well obviously they're not really food trucks but you know the you know the style of food trucks that you have in that you know those countries where they come you know it's gonna be one of those basically except for its gonna be technology mmm okay well yeah Puerto Rico does make quite a bit of sense but let's go ahead and get into our actual discussion modular phones and specifically a project ara let's start off with Joe over there let's see what you have to say about modular phones and what it might mean for the smartphone industry um when I think of like modular phones I think of like desktop PCs like what desktop PCs are to computing is essentially what i think project are would be to smartphones where like people you know it's like I don't think is going to be super popular I think it might hit the mainstream I don't think it's going to have the kind of growth that we see with things like you know oh I'm sorry I'm blanking here it's a midnight where I am so I'm a little blank right now but uh am I still if I stone the call ya know you're here alright cool makeup sharing it's like everything blanked out for a sec sorry um but no I think it's gonna be something like desktop computers where you know that the people who are going to use project ara are people who are tinker's you know people who really want something more powerful something upgradable you know something that they can keep around for years and years and years as opposed to you know most people who are going to upgrade every couple of years like they do with their laptops um I do think the thing that's going to hold it back though is Android as in like the operating system because in most cases Android is made for the specific phone that it runs on at like at a kernel level like all the drivers the camera drivers the you know the CPU stuff and all that stuff is made specifically for that one android device and if they want ora to you know to be something that people keep for years and years and years they're gonna have to start coming out with like a version of Android that's like a desktop operating system that has all of those drivers already there and they can just install it on anything and so I think that's the that's gonna be the big thing for for it that's you know I might be way off base I'm not a one hundred percent certain on that but well I was gonna I was going to put out this notion like it doesn't the ecosystem sort of already allow for sort of the in and outs of an operating system along with the processor because we have processors like the Snapdragon series that can be outfitted with every single band and it also would be able to take on pretty much any Android iteration if as long as we don't use particular types of processors that require a very specific type of kernels of you think that maybe just having the Qualcomm basis enough be enough for Android to really survive on this project or ecosystem oh no definitely like we're heading in that direction already you know with the like you said with the Qualcomm processors that have all of the all the various radio bands built into it but you know I we were talking about it before the show you like a in the chats about how you know like there's gonna be the k1 the k1 processor for project are right so yes so we have Nvidia's k 1 and then Snapdragon and you know that it requires two different sets of you know two different sets of software so you know in order to switch one out and put one in you know it would essentially require someone to reinstall Android unless Android were able you know to be run on both you know no matter which one you installed it on it would still work just fine kind of like you know how you do with Windows now where you can install it on AMD or intel it doesn't matter because you know the basic code is there for both of them and I think that's something that androids going to have to do with so many different you know especially with stuff like cameras and then you know that at least two different kinds of processors and you all the various hardware that goes into these things you know it's going to have to come to that point where it's going to be like installing a desktop OS where it doesn't matter what's in project aura it's still gonna boot and still gonna run yeah and I think that's going to be the you know the biggest hurdle although you know if it's getting this close to being released it's probably something they've already been working on anyway yeah they have okay yeah how about you go she went well how do you how do you feel about maybe one day using a phone that is a a conglomeration of pieces well as a computer nerd who still builds own you know pc rigs i absolutely love the idea but first i kind of want to address that some of the things that that joe said first of all yes i can see it being appealing to the pc type you know who likes to build their own stuff but actually that's not what Google is really going for ideally if you look at like the website and stuff they keep talking about how it's they want to use it to reach you know the next five billion let's a big mantra and the idea is that you know someone who doesn't have a lot of money could you know by the base unit for around fifty bucks and then it would basically just come with a basic processor a screen that would be low res and just everything needed to get started and then as I saved up money they could slowly but surely add on things and that's they're actually probably marketing more towards emerging markets initially not and so that's you know and I'm not sure how much success will find them that it really comes down to how easy they make it and actually that leads to something else he was talking about it comes down to Android because even with Windows you know you have to if you in a new part you know you have to still there's driver issues there's installation issues sometimes you run into trouble shooting is Android gonna be able to adjust to that well enough and you know they are working on it they have a special version of Android L they using is the basis that allows for hot swapping of parts but I'm just not sure if Android is designed to handle this and I'm sure they're thinking about that but so basically what I'm saying is that that the aim that they're going for is the emerging markets and I'm just not sure if it's going to hit there but I do think it has some potential for the nerd types you know it's just it comes down to logistics i'm not sure if they can pull off you know making the android work well enough for this kind of you know platform well i mean that emerging markets comment is really interesting we're going to come back to that but i do want to get feisty as thoughts on project ara in general what do you think this particular ecosystem might have to offer us jumping off of what the other guys have said already that you know exactly what the operating system and Android itself being the limitation of course Google's look keeping tabs on everything and it looks like they're going to control all of the parts through possibly the Play Store another outlet like that so I'm not so much worried about that you know the custom OS the version of l like you were saying that would pull it all together but i think the real key thing here that will make or break project ara is the hot swap ability obviously it's going to have it which is a positive without it i cannot imagine people wanting to shut down their device each time so that they can swap a piece and and move forward that hot swap ability will be a key factor and you know that the tech crowd that's interested in this device that i think is going to be pretty much the same crowd as you know those interested in the raspberry pi device and the arduino kits and you know those things are great devices there a ton of fun but i really think they're limited in scope it's not not exactly a general public that's going out and buying those things so i have my concerns over ara yeah I think I might agree with you John because I think one of the one of the main aspects of the whole modular phone type deal is that well I mean customization is going to be very big for this particular device and like people have been reporting on already the whole customization process for it kind of takes on a moto maker feel and that's kind of great because moto maker really made the Moto X one of the best phones over the last couple of years but the problem with making it into a modular sense is that well who knows what type of modules were going to even have in order to create the phone that we want and who knows what will happen when third parties kind of get in on this well everything come from just one manufacturer and even then what modules are going to be made available because from from what we've already seen so far in these prototypes is that we have things like the Tegra k1 which actually sounds pretty awesome even though the x1 was just was just announced and that would be even better but we have 720p displays in one night and coming off of Andrews side of things I do think that it will become a nice emerging market product but I don't think that's where it's going to really I think is going to greatly evolved from that I mean when we talk about price point everyone's saying that a modular phone could be low priced but if you want to go above and beyond just how much are we gonna have to pay for these different for these different parts well if I can jump back in there I cannot stop thinking about google glass you know the you know the pilot project for that one you know explorer edition was still $1,500 and you know you might think that project ara and project glass have about the same chances of survival and well glass is essentially being shut down here for little bits yeah and it's nice that it's going to be in Puerto Rico I do think that's a good thing because you know that that kind of makes it seem like that it's going to be for emerging markets but I really don't think that's ever going to stay there people there's going to be a phone in view no matter what but like as far as these these these modules are concerned we haven't seen too many of them yet what are the cup what would a phone look like with all the modules that you would want to have in there we already have a lot of examples in this one phone market of these high-end devices but what if these parts would you mix and match together let's let's start off with Andrew on that one well as far as you can mix and match just about anything there's different sizes and it goes on to the back and there's a magnetic force that keeps them in place I think the front uses pins but the back is where most of the customization happens hmm and there's going to be initially around 20 to 40 different modules and it's not just gonna be like processors and RAM there's also going to be like different kinds of sensors you know things that could be specialized for workplaces but things could be specialized for home use and you know that base which is what gets me concerned how they're going to make all that work but yeah basically they're going to allow you to swap any kind of part and any basically there's no limits to what a what someone can develop for it which is a fascinating concept but once again logistics I think it's going to get in the way how are they going to manage all this how are they going to make sure everything's working right you know like a feisty dad mentioned that you know they're going to do this through a storefront at some point which is true but even so just testing all of it for all the different configurations because you have you know let's say at some point you have a hundred different modules they're gonna have to test each of these in different scenarios with different pairings and I just I think it's gonna be mess I think it's a great idea but I think it's gonna be a mess yeah I mean that was no something that I kept thinking of what we were talking about this was just what will what will the other manufacturers have to say and what project argh be strictly a google project that is well isn't isn't really out sourced out you know what I mean they're allowing anyone but the frames initially are going to be built by Google's so that you know the mainframe the spiral to is the newest one that's going to be by Google but the modules can be by anyone but what I'm really you know you were talking about how I you could see it moving into you know outside of the emerging markets which is true but the big concern there is how carriers will react and how will they play a part are they going to get an onboard where they're designing their own modules I could see Verizon doing that having giant Verizon logos everywhere on the back of the modules gee you know but very horrible the verizon bloatware module yo oh good god that'd be terrible how great would that be those dip if all of the bloatware from like 18 seer of verizon was just on one little module that you could just just pluck out OD acted like i just had a great video idea if they do do that we have to do the smash the verizon bloat module baby I'll do it I'll volunteer to dude I have a sledgehammer I think people would really love that I think that'd be great but i love i love where that's going like what would the thing that i can get out of my head when I can't think about project ara is there just there's so much room for creativity and creation but there's also so much room for regulation and I'm really scared of what you're right these carriers would do with project ara that's where I think the major pip honk like it they're not gonna like it huh you don't think so not at all I mean unless they can find a way to control it and I'm not sure kind of comes down to what Google you know allows them to do where it doesn't allow them to do but the idea of having to you know certify all these parts and make sure they're approved is verizon it's going to be bad for the carriers like verizon but it's going to be bad for consumers to i think in a way because you know our is verizon gonna have lockouts where only certain modules work that they've approved for their network cuz you know verizon is one you know and so is eighteen eighty they're all are where they like to test everything very you know vigorously and if it doesn't meet their standards and so are they can allow any old module to work with it that's where it gets you know at first I'd say into the very foreseeable future probably 5-10 years I think it's going to be an unlocked only thing I don't think carriers who can even be involved yeah and you know gonna be love I imagine people are going to have just like the skeleton available because that might be all they can afford at the moment yeah and then just kind of put things in little by little Joe any anything away in on here about availability rather of project ara given carriers and whatnot I think I think grow she's pretty much right I think it's going to be one of those unlock things it's gonna be just like the Nexus was when it first came out your the nexus one was only unlocked you could only really buy that you know from google's website and then you know it wasn't until what was it like the Nexus S that you could actually buy it on a carrier I think it's going to be exactly the same thing with project honor thank you one of those things you have to buy it straight from google you have to buy the parts at least the initial parts straight from google and then as it evolves it'll start falling into more hands you start getting it more places but no i think rush is absolutely correct on this on that one mhm so i wanna if you don't mind I wouldn't mind posing a question comfortably yeah any of you guys seriously just like chime in whenever you wish so you know I i I've heard you all say hey it's a cool idea you know for the nerd side of me to be able to build parts how much would you be willing to pay for such a you know for such a thing I mean what would you consider like for the base for the processors I mean how much to build the phone you want how much would you be able to sing this requires a lot of knowledge as to how much these parts are even required how much do I was saying you know ballpark I mean you feel that you know is that to build a complete phone should it be pretty close to what you're paying for a flagship are you willing to pay it you know a thousand plus I mean well yeah that's yeah that's really interesting how about how about what the price that you kind of put out there what what are the modules you would put in that hopefully create that price point how about that um you know I from my perspective it would depend on the benefits cuz you know you go and dump fifteen hundred dollars into a desktop and you're going to be able to play like the latest games at you know flawless 1080 sometimes even you know to k for k at you know 30 60 frames per second depending you know and it's it there's value in spending that much in a desktop PC and even you know spending twenty two thousand dollars on a laptop you know there's value in that and I think the question it's not necessarily like what would you pay to build a project or phone but I think the better question is what value is there in spending that much more because I know that one of the things you know is crush you mentioned like for workplace so like you know if you're a handyman and you can turn your you know this is a horrible example I want to go with anyway but you can turn your phone into like a Geiger counter by popping in a module you know that that person would probably be able yeah I would definitely pay you know two hundred dollars for a Geiger counter module but you know for me you know i'm a gamer all you know all flagship android phones currently play all game so you know what's the benefit to spending extra money if I'm not going to get any extra benefit from anything that's out right now yeah i think it's it's it does matter whether or not a let's say mid-range phone it doesn't cost more than current mid-range offerings and i think that's that's going to be sort of a key when it comes to whether or not this kind of ecosystem is going to be successful at least from the outset feisty what does a what does a what does a project or a phone look like for you at what price point see this is a tough one I've thought about this a lot actually and there is no possible way for me to build a project or a device you know I would need a 14 inch tablet to have enough space for all of the pieces that I want and and I think that you know that speaks again to the hot swap ability the pieces however you know I'm just at Christmas time here I picked up a few little phones I mean they were thirty dollars a piece wrote about them on the site they're actually pretty good little phones and I'm using that for a specific purpose you know one is an mp3 player one takes pictures you know there I've already got these cheap devices they're set to the side they're focused driven I think if I were building a project our device at I might have to buy or build more than one so that again I can have these multiple devices with with specific purpose so that becomes a problem for me because it won't like you're saying price tag if every module is anywhere from you know twenty dollars to three hundred dollars at that price tags can be over a thousand and no time yeah I just really think that it's that the price will rock it so easily when it comes to a lot of these parts you know and and you were talking about having different phones for different or different devices for different situations I mean isn't that sort of the point of a modular phone however is being able to take out let's say a let's say you take out like oh I was thinking about in Joe's case you know what if he wanted to really test out an app for performance you would take out his Snapdragon 600 which costs let's say two hundred dollars and then pop in the Tegra x1 that hopefully we'll come in you know then you can really do some benchmarking on a nap you really think you would need more than one skeleton for for everything you do feist yes absolutely I'm as is i'm already using more than one phone and they serve different purposes and I mean again I'm holding down 16 different jobs okay not that many but it feels like it's some days but so you know you can only install so many Google accounts onto a single device and you know well one device is making a phone call you need that next device to be doing something else and then you know if you're using one device as an mp3 player it's on the other side of the room is hooked up to the stereo you're not taking calls on that seeing one device one project our device with hot swappable pieces again not for me and maybe as one of my devices even my main device wow I wasn't expecting that to be the way that you soak it like the that's really cool down that's really cool though that you you know yourself so well as a user to be able to know that but wow that's interesting I imagine you have my sample of extreme multitasker exactly you have like we have like a phone for every little task it's like you have like I imagine you like surrounded by 10 phones right now all doing something different there's only six sorry all right how about you go see what is the what what is your price point for something like this honestly I I'm not rich so it comes down to what I can afford but you know I would easily pay eight hundred dollars or so maybe even a thousand if I could have enough components for where I see the potential in arua is ok so I have my base phone it has you know what's Snapdragon you know a 258 10 whatever by the time I get to it you know it has a base amount of RAM three gigs maybe you know as basic storage but you know I'm gonna go camping this weekend let's say and so you know I'm not going to be I'm going to have an actual decent camera with me so I'm not going to using the camera on my phone so we can take that module out I'm going to put in an extra battery or so i'm going to move things around and just the ability to say hey now i have two three four days of battery life because i've loaded this thing up maybe I put in a weaker processor because i'm not going to need that but i want a good battery life something happens i can make a call make a text that's really I think our is amazing is you know you can adjust the phone's hardware based on your use case you know there might be times where I need you know the best processor and I put that in or I might need more battery life or might need a good camera and that's where I think ara will have a lot of potential for the nerd type for the emerging type it's going to just come down to hey I can slowly but surely update this and they're not going to want to pay a lot they're not going to need very powerful processors and I think that our akan cater to both sides yeah I think that's one of the phone envy is going to come in though you can have those people that are like oh I got this Snapdragon 400 yeah I keep thinking of project ara in terms of what I put in there will make me feel like I have a certain type of phone so let's say someone makes a moto g are and and they they work with that and one day they're like okay I got I got a little more money or I really want this boost in productivity or or or or processing power I'll throw in that Snapdragon 805 and make this a moto x and I do think that there's a lot of there's a lot of benefit to something like that I also think that hopefully hopefully hopefully the the price point is going to be very reasonable depending on the parts that you get maybe I really think that they're going to kind of take advantage of that the fact that someone doesn't have to pay for everything right away so they can I guess overpriced certain parts so you have to settle you know I kind of I'm a little bit cynical like that I I'm like that sometimes where I really feel like I have to settle for certain parts or certain things before I could really go to the upper echelon but funny how you know I feel like andrew grush the way that you put it that's really what Google is trying to go for is that whole idea of slowly upgrading and then Google's probably listening to this right now and thinking Jonathan face is not one of those customers that we want but you know so let's let's let's get a little bit creative here i want it i want to know what kind of modules do you want on your phone i crush was talking about i don't really need a camera you know what would let's let's let's reach for the brass ring here what what are the things that you really want on your phone that may have been there before or is not there now something that you really would want to put on your side no no expense spared you know something i was thinking about while well these guys are talking was how cool would have like a module that would allow you to switch like your entire Android experience from say your phone to your SmartWatch or to your you know Google glass or something like that and be like okay well i'm done with google glass right now i'm gonna pop this module out stick it back in my phone and you know i have those apps in that data available to me whenever I need it and I thought that is something I thought was I was just kind of working with in my brain it's literally four minutes old but you're not to have like you know have a module on my android wear SmartWatch pull it out pop it in my phone you know install some apps on their do some customization and stuff like that pop it back out you know put it back in the watch you know body you know a project ara where I guess and does not roll off the tongue very easily no it doesn't but you know and just be able to customize you know instead of you know thinking about one device that you can put everything into you know think of it more it's like you have two or three devices that you can interchange everything with like you know something like what Feist would you know want just not with multiple phones but just multiple gadgets in general like you pop out a module stick it in your car and all of a sudden you have access to your google play music you know stuff like that that i thought would be really kind of cool and that would be something that would spend a lot of money on feisty is probably over there like now that's too much more when I get in my car again I want to get my car there's already a phone there yeah that's the car you know it he's got one on the glued on the dashboard another one taped on the visor it pulls it down and there's the navigation the story's coming soon Shay has right I don't think I really want to know the answer to this but is there one in the bathroom too ready to go oh that's like that's like the 12-inch that's where the tablet comes in no comment that's a great idea though being able to hotswap from one apparatus to another and I just trying I'm just trying to wrap my head around what a project are aware but I would even look like a project where r or whatever they want to whatever they would call it I imagine it would have to be pretty big to be able to hold something like that we're talking like 20 20 50 like but when computing finally gets that small I suppose but it wouldn't be like a permanent thing when you stick it into your phone I'd imagine just having it pretty much the size of an LG G while she's just being able to like pop off the screen but like the screen also contains all the circuitry underneath for the you know the storage in what have you and then when you pop it into the phone here the phone has the RAM and the processor already so you don't need to take that with you you keep all that stuff in the watch and then just take the you know the removable stuff and then being able to I don't know it's just again five minutes now I've been thinking about this so but I can't imagine it would be that big if they did it right i mean some of those modules are pre you know friggin small it's not like these things are the size of coffee tables true and honestly that a even in under five minutes that already sounds like a pretty well hashed out idea it's just a matter of obviously the rd um but let's talk about a smartphone here Joe what's the one module you gotta have on the back of that phone or the front if you want talk about the display that's a really good question um given what I do with my android devices I would want the best conceivable cpu / GPU either combination or individually and I actually hope that something they do is separate them and allow us to upgrade our GPU and CPU separately because that would be awesome yeah just like a desktop but I would want the best of the best in there because if there's anything I can't stand it's game lag especially on Android where you can't just like turn down the graphics on most games to get the frame rates up so you know like i was playing um Rick Riptide gp2 oh my note 3 and it stuttered once and I almost threw the damn thing against the wall uh-huh because i was like no you're a note 3 you do not do that to me so that that's what i would do your ass you're a stutter not see that's why i like it's just like the moment you see like a little bit of sutter on like a like a TouchWiz thing like not worst course together I say I can handle it in the UI it's not so bad but you know in games it's like come on for real fair enough um okay cool well I agree they're definitely uh how about a feisty over there what's what's the one thing you need to have on the back Your Honor I would actually like a full io panel I want USB ports i want hdmi oh I want you know of course that's what feisty says yeah you know yeah it's tough sometimes a lot of these phones that you know they just they don't connect to anything you know sometimes a physical connection is nice to have and for me that's a major disadvantage to a lot of Android devices now again you wouldn't want to use that all the time and certainly when you're on the go it doesn't much matter but you know I spend most of my time at the house you know sitting at the office and connecting to the stereo is important connecting to an external monitor is very important there you go that was a nice my dad so what is I well what things exactly are going to be connecting to hear and you said the monitor and stereo and whatnot but if you have like a full panel with like I with like USB ports and whatnot are you transferring data back and forth a lot or is is that what the idea is there well there is some data of course we do a lot of screen shots and having to transfer those but I mean wireless is easy enough for those specifically I think of the media I'm always listening to music I'm surprised you can't even hear in the background right now I'm going I turned it off heck which bonus which phone is playing that right now actually I find the LG devices are some fairly decent i would love high fidelity that would be very nice and there again would be another chip that i want to go with that is you know i don't want just plain old mp3 playback i want some high-end lost lezbot audio flac right well I get a lot of flack over that no sorry bad joke very nice ones are punny it's a it's interesting you bring up the audio part because really the one of the modules that you're gonna be having to put on the back of there might be a speaker grill for example and when I noticed at least on the front of these is uh you know this ecosystem is gonna take on an identity of its own there's really only room for a screen up front you can't really find space for like a boom sound speaker front chasing you know unless I'm wrong that's actually uh looking at the skeleton they did design it so you could have a smaller screen on there that you could have room for that actually I was another early presentation slide so it's possible okay who knows what they're gonna put on the front though but that I'm gonna save that for after we hear from grouchy because I it's great that you said that because I really that's where I would put one of my most wanted modules but I'll get into that after we hear what brushes aura would look like well what's the one module you gotta have well home one sec before uh Ferger she starts I know exactly what module feisty wants on the back of his phone a whole second phone have one walking yeah have one phone turn the damn thing over and there's a whole nother phone with fresh stuff right there really nice I didn't cases oh no it's true all right sorry aggression bud go ahead oh it's all good um let's see uh maybe a Taser who doesn't want a Taser well I mean uh in all seriousness for me batteries uh the more battery life the better coming from a nexus 5 and having to carry around tons of external battery packs all the time I mean I think I'd like for it see yes I remember yeah yeah I hadn't like everywhere that I kept plugging them in and so coming from that battle we should be very important to me but you know just thinking outside of myself you know I just wanted to make the point some of the stuff I could this was just flooding on my head when we were talking just stuff for like health to like a glucose monitor for example you don't built in the phone no no what Reagan you know that would be awesome a man after my own heart grow she knows that's that's why yeah that's working kinda thought they're just kissing up to me right now my dad just kind of popped into my head that's kind of cool you know listeners for those for those of you who do not know already I've said this many times on our channel on YouTube I am a type 2 diabetic so I have been very much into the health portion of Android as of late but yeah that's definitely I'm in full agreement on that I didn't even think about that yeah just all those kind of sensors you know there's all sorts of health sensors that can be built in you know people who have special you know who either have special health needs or special education you know there's a room for that oh yeah for sure um yeah like a glucose meter I'm trying to think of what some other ones would be like a like a legit heart rate monitor but I mean yeah I get really i think that's not the cheap little yeah junkie what Samsung gives us yeah exactly um yeah no one said like fingerprint monitor audion fingerprint scanner rather or anything like that um but yes scanner I iris scanner they'll be so tight we have to turn the phone around and then look into true yeah they did have to have room on the front for that or something you know yeah definitely i love it i think i think you you want with taser though I've f it yeah nazar would be awesome I mean who doesn't want a Taser just yeah yeah I just imagine like some like 21 year old like club hopping like girl like walking out of a club like hold on Becky this guy's follow me at ur phone around his jab a guy in the ribs with it dragged around talk to again but you know would be like dude spies spies would be able to like do all kinds of really awesome stuff with project oh baby the James Bond phone do you have like a laser they can cut things and like you want to take a picture and it shoots pepper spray stuff like that didn't I have a Taser phone one time though wasn't it like the matrix phone like when there is a Taser phone try to remember that was a while back i'm a recovering that yeah yes i was one act it was the phone from the matrix wasn't it the second Matrix I'm try remember that you know the matrix movie right and then yeah listen it was really there was an iphone case though or something or it was some bleep I think was an iphone case that really exists that a Taser built into it yeah I remember reading about while back okay well it's fine so it's been done technically mmm batteries krushi without that you mentioned what one report that I that I read was saying that when you were able to take out when the battery gets down low this the skeleton or rather the the actual driver cpu of the of the project ara phone will be able to draw power from the battery that's about to die so that you have enough time to remove it and then put another one in yep um that sounds pretty awesome I just gotta say but I mean it's just another okay one day we're gonna talk about this I'm sure it's gonna be a Friday debate topic but I'm really getting sick of all of these different workarounds that all these companies have when really the main problem we have is batteries are really not they should be right now it's like the one piece of a phone that hasn't really evolved over the last or they're at or they're too worried about thinness you know and you know not that we want brick phones but I think most of us will be willing to sacrifice a little bit of space for a bigger battery oh yeah I know definitely i'd have had this conversation with a lot of people you know across the blog or industry where they say like oh the biggest problem with android is the you know the OEM skins or the biggest problem with android or the cameras aren't as good as iOS like know the biggest problem with android and the one that everybody complains about is the fact that these things die after 16 hours mm-hmm you know with pretty me like two hours if you have a nexus oh oh ho a one year old nexus i can imagine that yeah the batteries not so yeah it's not so hot anymore it's starting to its starting to have lots of issues let's just put it that way yeah I love my Nexus 5 but it's starting to have some problems I mean I remember the Galaxy Nexus I was so bad that sprint was giving out about extended batteries for free like I got when they were like oh yeah you know you can have this extended battery for free and they just sent it fit in the original shell and everything like but that you know I totally agree like you know a lot of people have a lot of problems with Android but the biggest problem that everybody has is hey this battery sucks yeah like no matter like i have it in video shoot i got it for days ago I can kill the thing in 10 hours flat and it's got like I think it's over 5,000 milliamp hours in the batteries I think it's even larger than that and I can still kill it in 10 hours and that's just it's absurd yeah I can imagine people with them with our phones having a specific pocket in their bag with just a bunch of battery modules like thank you we need a module that actually will accept all of the other different types of batteries and we've all got the extra batteries from our previous phones in previous lives and you know be able to use those instead of having to buy new ones would be nice that would be coming out of that is a fat module to be able to put in like a d battery or like an eyeball decay start where we go yeah well I guess for me what I was going to say was yeah the module that I would really want would be on the front and that's because I have been very very open about the fact that I miss old form factors and one of them happens to be the phone that has a friggin keyboard I knew this was coming exactly because back when we were I CES now this is gonna be a little bit controversial but I was actually saying that I was very close just going to a local sort and picking up the new blackberry because I had the original blackberry bold because I keyboard was just amazing back in the day and now they have a newer version and I can talk about blackberry right now because you can sideload android on there so okay so I'm not really portraying everybody right now but really they the keyboard is kind of compelling to me and like I was telling the guys right before our podcast I actually am about to go through a full review process and vlog about my my adventures with the original google phone the g1 and this is the one where the screen literally slid out of the way and there was a full qwerty keyboard if i can get a screen like that on my aura phone i would love that but if i could maybe maybe put a little bit of a little bit of space on the bottom in order to put like a full qwerty keyboard on there let's just say of blackberry quality then i think that would be really great oh yeah going i was gonna say on the subject of like the hinging screens did any of you guys ever used the HTC g2 that the successor to the g one and right had that really unique like z hinge that like you know an odd could you imagine that like on a project ara phone being able to have like a whole second row of modules that you could just slide out and pop back in oh man laughs yeah it takes people around just have a whole second row of all the more module space I know josh is talk about the screen that literally slid out of the way and I was like oh what if you just put more modules behind it like and still have the screen just kind of slide over and I made that phone would be the size of a Bible but you know it would be interesting that that yeah yeah our phones are getting big enough as it is you know and I really don't imagine that there aren't going to be people out there who just stack on stack on stack modules you know and who knows maybe people maybe like I see set kickstarter let's just get over to Kickstarter and someone's gonna make a module that will add another panel for modules or something like that I think it's that kind of openness of modules that will kind of make a break the the emerging markets I think of china for example in this may be a bad example and i'm going here but you look at all of the copyright violations that that happen in china and i think that would be a huge huge major factor for you know project are moving forward we can get 3d printed modules here you can get the verizon logo you can get a picture of your kitten your puppy your child but i imagine that over in a lot of the asian markets you would get the Hello Kitty modules you would get the appropriately the transformer modules and I think those could you know again the openness and to be able to downgrade maybe the specifications to bring the price down but but that kind of personalization I think we'll go big in a lot of those markets I do a great yeah there might even be modules that are just made to look you know it's a yeah that they actually talked about that a little bit plus they're gonna make it so you can pretty much customize like any module you can have the back customized the what have what did they refer that to us again a shell the shell right the shelf of the module or what web Trevor well yeah there the shell is the or the frame or the endoskeleton is the actual thing that all the pieces go into I can't remember exactly what they call I just call modules there's no name for the actual module i permit i swear i saw this term where did there was though it's three things that's the chit's the exoskeleton the module and then the thing that goes on top of the module to give it its look that was that was the part I couldn't like I can't remember what the term was and but in any case I do completely agree that that's going to happen one it's only a matter of time before something like this is gonna turn into a commercialization type of deal and which shot you know what kind of fun you guys got me thinking uh as far as if they're having Kickstarter and all these places people throwing out modules Google's probably going to have to if they're going to make this work they're probably going to have to have some kind of like drm where you know some kind of like digital rights management that you know only ones that have been approved by Google work cuz they're else androids not going to be able to handle all that you know don't dumb did I was getting at there was they're gonna have to yeah yeah if it goes through google and everything has to be so to speak drm door approved for copyright decency well that lymphatics i think it'll really block things especially in the emerging markets that's but you know if you look at you know Disney properties you know you go to the disney store and you buy a baseball cap it's got Mickey on the top you pay a premium for that and premium is exactly the opposite of what these emerging markets need yeah and those companies are gonna be the ones who will be able to mark it up like that's that's you pay a little bit more for something that's got Mickey's face on it or god forbid frozen and you know something like that you know just you got paid just a little bit more just have that branding on there and then you know it's just not a topic we have to get into right now but you know it just imagine what our would look like for kids and you know what all of these parents are going to have to deal with in order to create these phones that their kids will enjoy using because of what is on top of them the branding and all of the the the stuff that these companies do to them to make them more thats a kid friendly but the same would go for even adults like what imagine somebody would like logos on the back or just just any company could probably make just their own ways of making some of creating a module or whatever cover goes on top of it and it's a it's it's a broader guard i think to me is going to be a very nice way of shaking up the system but whereas originally I don't know if everyone remembers this but originally this was a was an IndieGoGo or was a Kickstarter that this originally was um it was there ya know project now before project ara there was a company that was phonebloks film blocks there it is they were just basically they had a concept idea and then motorola because they were the ones that were behind this originally they came out and talked to phone box today actually we have this we've been working on this for a while and they weren't going to announce project ara until you know I think it was still six months or so out from being announced but since phonebloks had already given them the perfect introduction basically they started teaming up and since then phonebloks has been basically working with Google now since you know Motorola is no longer part of Google and they've been doing a lot of updates that you know you go to their site and they'll have all these updates for what you know motor oh I'm sorry Google is doing with project ara and so yeah it started with foam blocks but it wasn't it wasn't like an open source project was just more like a concept they were like hey this is what we think would be cool oh and they wanted to get people interested in the idea they were trying to generate and that's why you like I remember when we first covered covered this we're like hat that's a pipe dream that will never happen but then all of a sudden mold Motorola came out said hey we're doing it was like wow okay i guess this can't happen crew and what came with it was the backing and also all the pitfalls of being part of a huge corporation that's what i'm trying to say and you know it's a he'll be really interesting to see where this comes out do you guys think that I mean if it's going to come out in Puerto Rico then what's to stop any of us even from just getting one from there and going straight to the source and go ahead and do like a preliminary review on it i'm sure a lot of people on the outlets and media outlets are gonna go ahead and find a way to get from Puerto Rico you know and I'm sure you know who we're gonna get our we're gonna get a pretty good look at it here in 2015 I think ebay for the win yeah right well and I'm just I'm sure they'll probably pretty tight on the regulations like you know kind of like they were at Google glass you're not technically supposed to resell it you know I'm sure they'll do some of that yeah you know but that it won't stop people from getting her hands mmhmm yeah um ok so i guess i guess the final question that I want to pose here because we live in a world right now in the smartphone let's say Android space where we basically have the incumbent as the way but we'll say it all of these big companies that here samsung LG and whatnot do you think that creating an ecosystem like a project or a ecosystem is going to change the way that all of these companies move forward with the way that they create smartphones or do you think this is going to be in a point to be a mass adoption of this type of this type of ecosystem um I think it's going to be the I'm sorry little phlegm there I think that OEMs are probably going to end up manufacturing parts for are assuming it does get a hold in you know in the mobile industry because that can be you know it could be a savior for some like you know Samsung is on the fall according to their sales numbers HTC's you know been down so many times it's like they got mud stomped or something and you know HTC you know manufacturing parts for project ara could be another way for them to get back into the mobile industry without having to come out with a phone that beats the iphone or a samsung phone in sales every year so that i know that that was something that was i I think it was vaguely discussed when this whole thing first started happening was you know that there were going to be 0 ms that you know bought into the project or a premise and i think that's something that's going to happen if project are starts taking off here there's you just another way of getting revenue for them ok feisty you don't think that we're going to see like a like a samsung modular phone any time in the future do you think that they're going to be like wow joe said they're just going to create the parts and kind of sort of piggyback on the success of this ecosystem hopefully if it is successful am I allowed to say yes and no ok expresso well ok getting the humor out of the way we talking you use the name Sam song and who knows what they're going to build we might build six different versions you've been anyways project teasin oh no I can certainly see a lot of the company's getting involved in it and possibly putting out a module or two but I actually think that project ara will work backwards we're going to see the third party people come in with some great idea four modules and then the Samsungs htcs and stuff are going to not build their own module versions but just build these things into their own phones I think that's kind of where it'll go hmm to a bit of a mixture of the two absolutely yeah look it pretty interesting what if what if there is a what if what if a phone came out that just had one little area for one module that you can change in and out to just add something to what is already existing that might be one way of looking at it brushy uh yeah they both both Joe and feisty made some really good points uh I don't think that it comes down to how successful it is but yeah there's gonna be copycats in fact you none of you may know this and some of you might there already is a copycat project in the works from ZTE called the eco mobis i believe it's called yeah I'm with him it's called at cts i believe it's eco mobis I think it's or bobis I'm not a hundred percent sure on the pronunciation of it but it's dt's take on project aura and it's they haven't shown really much they just talked about it basically and so you're gonna see I think you're gonna see that the Chinese companies make clones if they think that they can push us especially if it starts taking off in emerging markets you don't think Chinese Chinese companies are going to want to get a piece of that pie and they're not going to want to work together they don't and so you're gonna see you can see all of them you can see oppo you're gonna see you know you're gonna see what way you can see all these companies making their clones I don't think the big boys samsung LG I don't think they will initially I could see them getting involved with modules but I don't know if they'd want to do that because that would dilute from you know their core stuff I believe that feisty has the right angle I could see them taking you know hey this module is really cool let's throw this on our phone you know I see them taking that route more and actually Josh you made a good point I could see there being you know with the control it say hey okay well there's one little area where you can we have 15 different things you can swap into that one spot yeah you know you can have either heart rate monitor or a fingerprint scanner or exactly where you know an extra battery or whatever you know yeah and I could see you know I could see that but i don't i don't see samsung or any of the the bigger players getting involved but I do see that i do see the chinese and even the indian companies i do see them jumping in especially if it's proved successful emerging market yeah definitely and if there's any water that you're seeing some real i guess maybe the word is not quite innovation maybe that word is low strong but if you want to see some real creativity then yeah we have seen quite a bit coming out the chinese market i agree with that I also think what I was thinking was what if the exoskeleton was created by a particular manufacturer that brought with it certain features that you then added on to with the modules that more or less are interchangeable no matter what skeleton you have I think it would be hard to convince the man you know Samsung and all the other manufacturers to play nice to one standard cuz what's in it for them you know they would be able to control it they won't be able to decide what modules work what don't i don't think they would just like carriers i don't think they're gonna want to play ball to that level mmhmm yeah that's true so we do be there it's a kind of a cynical point of view but i really do think that it has a lot Mary sorry yeah she you room to think they come to one standard I mean I guess they've done it in the pc industry to an extent well what were you saying feisty i was just gonna say you know crèche is saying that the these guys are not likely to play well together is google the competition are they going to play nice with project are on the first place yeah you know that was that was one of the points I I brought up way earlier at the beginning was you know having Android you know work in such a manner that you know you can do the hot swapping and all that stuff if it were built to do that what exactly could Google do to stop them from not playing nice you know because it would you know Android would boot and work on anything as long as the drivers were already in there so you know it wouldn't matter whether or not they wanted to play nice because the software would already be compatible you know just like windows is or just like Linux is you know you got you know if you can install as if you can install it on anything then you know you don't need anybody to play nice it's just there for people to use whatever which is like I said earlier that's why it's it's gonna be a just excite Mara there I'm not for sure how they're gonna regulate it but Google's going to figure out a way to keep them from doing certain things and it's that's where I think it's gonna run to a lot of what make or break is how their how they handle it how they work with manufacturers how they work with module developers we've seen a little bit and Google's been very open with this project so far but it's just uh it's really a massively ambitious project I'm still not convinced that it's feasible long-term I know what's coming out soon technically but as far as truly getting out in large numbers I don't know I still think it's quite a ways off yeah I think I think really that's that's a good that's a good point on consensus there is like we got to see it in the wild first before we can make any real judgments on it but obviously speculation is speculation and that's exactly what we do here at the Friday debate but you know like I said we're we're discussing project all right here and I just wanted to open up the panel one last time before we went ahead and said goodbye to our our listeners here thank you so much for listening to our first episode of this podcast all of our guys over here Andrew Joe and John any last thoughts on project ara in general um no sorry it's almost one o'clock in the morning I'm brain dead right now thank God we did like I said talk the ears off of this thing so I'm sure that if we didn't have any that's perfectly fine how about you guys Andrew and John I think we're headed in the right direction here you know project ara it looks like it's going to be a lot of fun if nothing else certainly the the modular design and that the ability to get in at hopefully a lower price point and then build it up from there and and survive through upgrades you know bring in the new processor so that you can support you know the newer operating systems and you hopefully keep that exoskeleton through a few different iterations of Android Edna I think it's along the right tracks I just as bruh she said I think the logistics might kill this poor thing yeah rushing um you know basically what feisty said I feel that they're heading in the right direction I think it's a really this project at one point I wasn't for sure they could do anything with it and they're getting there they're heading in the right direction but I think that on one hand the pc industry has been doing this forever and it's been working but androids a whole different ball park and I'm just not convinced that without some massive work I think we're not there you know maybe by the you know three or four iterations of Android from now maybe they will develop that but I think we're still five years off before our I could really be what it means to be a game changer as it were yeah exactly i think it's just gonna be one of those little hey cool did you hear that they're doing this with ara but as far as any major you know adoption from anyone it'll be a while no I just had a thought actually if I may yeah we thinking of project ara so much as a you know as a phone as a personal device that sits in our pocket so to speak there's always room in the industrial part of the world where a module isn't so to speak a little tiny piece but it's a full robotic arm on an assembly line I think there could be room for project ara as a tool as the operating system and and brains for commercial robotics that is a nifty idea attaching the screen to the robot giving it some commands onion on attaching it so no one else can mess with it or anything that's what is definitely really cool we're always looking at things from a consumer perspective but obviously a lot of what has been good for us as consumers has been brought into many work-related industrial even let's say private sector areas as well project tango was a good example of that you know they're putting it you know they've been working with NASA and putting it in you know robotics and NASA and so yeah you know he makes a good point they've been doing with project tango Google's other you know and so yeah there's definitely room outside of the consumer field for it too absolutely so even if project car doesn't necessarily take off as it were for for people like us it could find a home and plenty of other places oh yeah definitely yeah all right well and with that will go ahead and close the book on this particular topic for this week we hope you guys enjoyed this episode of the Friday debate podcast by android authority our first episode so for those of you who are listening to us for the first time which is pretty much all of you because it's our first episode thank you so much for being there with us I want to extend a quick thank you to all of our hosts and I will also say if you want to find andrew grush on android or decom you can find his writing all over the place and as lead editor he does have his hand in a lot of bowls for a lot of people who are writing the content for our website you can find Jonathan Feist on twitter at j Feist one jfe is t1 and if you want to find some really random pontifications you can go over to Joe Hindy twitter at that joke hindi that is all three words put together spelled the way you think that Joe Hindy H I n D Y you can find me at Josh salutes as you may know already and you can also find me on instagram and you can probably find our other guys on Instagram and you can find those links down in our description if you are watching this on youtube or if you are on itunes or stitcher where you will find this podcast currently we're working on other syndications of course and it's only a matter of time before we'll get there discuss all of our topics at our android authority forums and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel android authority of course remember everybody that we are your source for all things android and thank you very much for watching and listening to the friday debate podcast see you guys next week