It’s a man’s phone

As a woman, I’ve slowly been written out of the phone world and the phone market. That extra “.2″ inches of screen size on each upgrade simply means that I can no longer do what I enviously observe men do every day: Check messages one-handed while carrying groceries or a bag; type a quick note while on a moving bus or a train where I have to hold on not to fall.

Anecdotally I once tried to put my iPad in my back pocket and it didn’t fit. As a man, I’ve been written out of the tablet world as those devices are clearly created for females with handbags only.</sarc>

It’s a Man’s Phone →

(via Michel on Facebook, from whom I totally stole that anecdote)

Related: Bic Pens for Women

Phonebloks

A phone only lasts a couple of years before it breaks or becomes obsolete. Although it’s often just one part which killed it, we throw everything away since it’s almost impossible to repair or upgrade.

Phonebloks is made of detachable bloks. The bloks are connected to the base which locks everything together into a solid phone. If a blok breaks you can easily replace it, if it’s getting old just upgrade.

Clever, yet I wonder how much the modularity will have an impact on the speed of the device.

Phonebloks →

UPDATE: Be sure to read Why Lego Design Principles Don’t Work On Smartphones:

Breaking the CPU/GPU/RAM trinnity up to allow for modular upgrades wouldn’t just make the device run slower, though. It would make your iPhone consume more power and triple its physical footprint. The result would be a bulkier device, or a device with less room for other components (such as a bigger battery). Even if you could live with that, though, Phonebloks would require expensive sockets so that the CPU, graphics, RAM, storage and modem could communicate with one another at high speed.