Modular smartphones have been growing in popularity, with Google's Project Ara having been the subject of most of the modular smartphone hype.
A new modular smartphone has been announced, however, called the PuzzlePhone, which is one of the simplest modular smartphone designs to date, really only being divided by the "brain," which contains the processor, camera, RAM and storage; the "spine," which offers the main frame and display; and the "heart," which holds the battery and other electronics.
For this reason, the PuzzlePhone is of course a lot less modular than Project Ara, but that's not necessarily a bad thing as it simplifies things a lot.
The PuzzlePhone, first announced last year, is now live on Indiegogo with a funding goal of $250,000 in flexible funding. If you want to donate, keep the "flexible funding" part in mind, as it means that even if the funding goal is not reached, the company behind the campaign will keep the money. For this reason, a number of scams have been started using flexible funding campaigns. According to PuzzlePhone, it was forced to go with a flexible funding campaign because of the fact that Indiegogo only allows for payments via PayPal for fixed funding campaigns.
Funding aside, the PuzzlePhone certainly looks like an interesting device. It offers fairly respectable specifications, such as 3 GB of RAM, an octacore processor and 64 GB of storage. The fact that it is modular is very interesting and will hopefully mean that users will be able to upgrade components of the phone in the future.
Those interested in buying the PuzzlePhone will need to spend at least $333 for very early birds, with funding options ranging up to $777 for the Indiegogo limited edition version of the PuzzlePhone. Estimated shipping for the PuzzlePhone is starting in September 2016. The Indiegogo campaign has so far raised $31,710 and has 41 days to go.
Via: The Verge
