Last month, I posted a teaser video that Israeli startup Modu had put out to get people guessing about what its product might be. The company pulled back the curtains further in advance of the World Mobile Congress in Spain. It turns out that it is a tiny modular phone that can be slipped into different device “jackets”—like an MP3 player, a GPS device, a bigger cell phone, car stereo, or a digital camera. It will launch on October 1 with mobile carriers in Russia, Italy, and Israel. There are no plans for a U.S. launch at this point.
You can think of Modu as an expanded SIM card. It can make a call, send text messages, and hold a contact list—the bare minimum required to be a mobile phone. That is why it is so small—about the size of an iPod Nano. Consumers will be able to carry it around and stick it into different device jackets, depending on the functionality they want. In a camera, for instance, Modu can be used to send pictures over the wireless network. (Although, it will initially only support GPRS, which is slow. Another drawback—there is no WiFi.) The jacket devices should cost less than comparable gadgets with telephony functionality, and the idea is to create an accessory mini-economy around the Modu, so that any device manufacturer could create whatever jackets they like. Modu is the platform, and other companies can build devices around it.
I haven’t seen the device or played with it myself, but the idea of a modular phone is intriguing.
TheMarker provided the video above exclusively for TechCrunch. In it, Modu founder Dov Moran explains the concept. (Thick accent warning).
No Wifi no problem. Stick in something that has wifi built in.
Pretty cool!
wow! this is so cool! i always complain about the smart phones being too big and the cellphones being too limited. bluetooth is a failure in that market.
Nice phone, tried to email them, info@
email bounced
hopefully they will read these comments
Vow that got me thinking.
Let me see..what I could build around this. May be i will use gumstix ( http://www.gumstix.com) alongwith this.
Rajan Tawate
There is a technology W-SIM that was designed to address this in a standard way. And does so much more elegantly IMO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W-SIM
That said, I’m all for anything that forwards the concept of modular cellular devices, the potential is enormous.
Your image just linked to TheMarker.com (a leading Israeli financial paper). Here is the direct link to the interview and demo (in Hebrew) with founder Dov Moran.
and here is the link for the english version of the video.
http://www.youtube.com/user/grimland123
The Hebrew video (post #7) is actually quite insightful.
Moran says that companies like Nokia and Motorola already take market share away from Canon, Nikon & Co, because cellphones today have a camera thats good enough for most purposes.
But Modu enables Canon, Nikon & Co to fight back - rolling their own cellphones with enhanced camera capabilities, without the expertise and marketing efforts required to design, manufacture and sell a cellphone from scratch.
Surely if you distill the essence of traditional number-based telephony, you get a SIM card, not a mini mobile phone. And this means that the logical next step is an open-platform internet tablet with a SIM card port.
Still, it looks nice.
Just what we need- a drawerful of specialized jacket devices. So, I’m supposed to buy a bunch of proprietary gizmos to expand functionality? A software configurable device (iPhone) blows past this kind of thing. Look how they added geotracking without needing a hardware upgrade by accessing web services. I can’t see any value in this. Dated tech out of the box, IMHO.
So it’s a cellular modem that can also make calls. An ExpressCard cellular modem would be smaller and cheaper to embed. Anyone really interested in adding wireless data to their device would integrate it - way cheaper and nothing for the user to break.
Modularity is silly because you have to pay for all the connectors, plastic around each piece, protection in case someone makes a bad module, marketing and inventory cost, etc. It makes sense when you add highly optional features to an expensive thing, but for mainstream features it’s much cheaper to integrate.
If you want to modularize the mobile phone, how about a dock for iPhone that connects it to a full-size monitor, mouse, and keyboard? It’s your computer when docked, and your phone when undocked. You’ve always got all the features with you, but the usability expands when docked. Just like how an iPod comes with headphones but you can connect it to the stereo. Where is the iPhone dock for car dashboard?!?
Very Cool !
I think the next step of human evolution will be that in order to survive, people will need to have very good eyes (to be able to look at tiny iPhone or Modu Screens) and very small & quick fingers (to be able to type on tiny keyboards like Blackberry…).
There will be no fat guy with glasses left in 2050 !!
Another disposable type cell phone. Old.
To #4 We definitely read the comments, Keep them coming
Cell phone modules have been around for many years, in many form factors (including express, mini-PCI, several proprietary form-factors). This one adds a case, battery and minimal UI. Mildly interesting, but as others have pointed out, doomed. What’s the interface (to connect to cameras, etc.)? Proprietary. Describe the use case again? I take a picture, grab my “phone” (which will be larger and more cumbersome than necessary to account for modu compatibility), remove the modu, insert into the camera, transfer the photo. What happens if someone calls me while the photo is transferring? Now I take the call from the camera? Huh? Also, the radio is GPRS only? Useless. Even if it supported EDGE, that’s too slow to move data around.
The way to solve the problem of WAN access is with PAN. Everyone already has a phone with a data account. Just add PAN (BT, wireless USB, whatever) to the other device and make it seemlessly easy to connect the two. Solve the problem of pairing devices - why can’t I just touch the two things together to make them talk to each other?
Very interesting idea but I can’t see it being widely adapted.
Recently i came across this : http://www.geeksaresexy.net/20.....ce-gadget/
Very similar to Modu…. But open source…
amazing idea.
when comparing to iPhone you forget the iPhone costs. This is not an iPhone competitor and majority of the market is not iPhone customers.
This is for people that want decent device with a good camera at the right price (vs. the N95) or people that need QWERTY keyboard that are not ready to carry these uncomfortable devices all day long.
Good luck, modu!
Valuable concept. I would venture to say the idea would be great in these forms that I can think of.
Security Systems role over
Gas Meters
Electric Meters
water meters
Personal Car diagnostic systems (hopefully coming soon)
Gas Pumps
Car tracking systems
laptops
Car stereos with a true address book for reference with automatic location finder
over seas tracking of Crates
just some ideas. I hope this is helpful
# 16 “What happens if someone calls me while the photo is transferring? Now I take the call from the camera? Huh?”
that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do since that virtual camera will of course be a modu-compliant one. The idea isn’t of course to make you switch constantly between the modu and the camera or any other device but to allow you to spend an afternoon shooting quality pictures, without losing the cell phone functionality. then go home, eject the modu, stick it into the modu compliant laptop, digital photoframe or whatever and store the camera. of course there’s the added charm of the potential modu-enabled fridge later on when you’re snacking, too
Basically the concept of the modu and its host of compliant jacquets isn’t any different from the forced entry of HD flat LCD TV’s into near eveyone’s homes. The LCD works just like the modu : admittedly it doesn’t need to be ejected, but it does invariably produce the mandatory surround system, hd dvd player (apparently already obsolete thanks to blue ray!), cd player not to mention the cables.