In a new fortnightly piece, Exeposé Features seeks to inform you about people and things about which you might never have heard, or those which are familiar but that you’ve never had time to explore.
This week, Online Features Editor Imogen Watson brings Phonebloks to the forefront of your technological minds.
Exeter is a university rife with smartphones.
I myself am very fond of my iPhone and, although I hate to admit it, when it is out of action it takes me a little while to adapt to life without it.
But out of action it does indeed go from time to time, and standing on the side of a dual carriageway (thank you Google Maps for such a successful walking route) in the middle of Normandy surrounded by ominous grey clouds and with a forty-five minute walk ahead are not the ideal circumstances for it to happen. Smartphones are temperamental objects, and are especially not designed for accidental water bottle leakages.
And when a phone is broken either seemingly or actually beyond repair, or if it is just too much effort, what do so many of us do? We throw it away.
As Phonebloks says, “Every year millions of mobile phones are thrown away because they are broken or obsolete. In most of these cases it is just one part that needs repairing or upgrading and all the other parts work fine. However, the entire phone will be thrown out because of one reason: mobile phones are not designed for repairs or upgrades.”
Although numerous companies exist for recycling old handsets and even sending unwanted ones to developing countries, a poll done for Orange in 2011 found that £2.7 billion’s worth of phones in the UK alone go un-recycled, and instead are either hoarded or binned. The British government estimates that we generate approximately 177 million tonnes of waste a year, and not only is technological waste – or e-waste – a problem here but also increasingly so in developing nations, where our old but working recycled mobile phones often get sent. It is truly a global problem.
The disposable way in which we and companies treat our technology is the kind of problem which Dave Hakkens (with a little help from friends Matt and Gawin) is looking to solve with Phonebloks. The idea is that, as the name suggests, phones are made up of individual components – the bloks – which are held together and connected by a central board so that it all, crucially, works. When a component breaks, instead of getting rid of the whole phone like so many of us would now, you can simply replace the broken blok. In doing so, you would be able to keep your old chargers and cases.
Before I was informed that iOS7 is not actually all it is cracked up to be, I spent a good hour deleting apps and photos from my phone to make room for it. So imagine, for example, you are the kind of person who adores photography. You use your actual camera to take your photos, and not your phone, but you need the storage to perhaps transport photos, and to listen to music to and from your photography opportunities. Posh camera phoneblok? Unnecessary. Bigger storage phoneblok? Perfect. You might, however, prefer using the Internet on your phone and save everything in the Cloud, but find 3G and Wi-Fi drain the battery. You can guess what I am going to say: abandon the storage blok and get a better battery.
The examples are endless, and the customisation appears to be, too. The idea behind sales is that companies of all sizes and third parties alike would be able to invent and sell their own bloks whilst users review them, in what Dave Hakkens describes as “like an app store for hardware”. By choosing the bloks you want, you can also choose to support the companies or individuals you want to support; but if assembling your own phone is not your idea of fun, you would theoretically be able to buy a ready-made phone.
Whilst it has yet to be taken on board by any business people, Phonebloks has managed to reach nearly 328 million people alone via social media at the time of writing. If companies manage to take it forward, it could be a step towards a real greener technology and an awful lot less waste, not just in physical landfills, but also in our attitudes too.
Imogen Watson, Online Features Editor
For more information, please see www.phonebloks.com
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