Cell phone manufacturers are battling to design aesthetically pleasing phones with impressive performance, but often neglect their products' repairability and impact on the planet. Fairphone, on the other hand, has been producing handsets that are sustainable and produced ethically. Now, nearly three years after its second handset's release, the company has just announced the Fairphone 3, a modular mid-range phone built with sustainability in mind.
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The modular 'BLOCKS' smartwatch launched on Kickstarter all the way back in 2015, and quickly raised over $1.6 million. The goal was to make a watch that you could connect extra modules to, adding functionality like an LED flashlight and more battery capacity. However, crowdfunded projects are always a gamble, and now Blocks has officially run out of money.
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Google's Project Treble was created to help fight Android's dirty f-word (fragmentation), by making the update process easier and faster for OEMs. Separating vendor-specific code like SoC drivers out from Android itself was meant to help when it came to OS updates and the work required to push them out. Now Google is working on increasing just how modular Android can be with something called APEX.
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Smartphones have been around for over a decade now. In fact, the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, debuted 10 years ago today. It's not surprising that the category has seen some pretty horrible trends in that amount of time. We've compiled seven of the worst ones we could think of in this post, a couple of which are (unfortunately) still ongoing.
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Remember when dreaming about modular electronics was all the rage? Even Google got caught up in the fantasy for a little while. Project Ara's notion of a modular smartphone might be dead for now, but there's still a smartwatch with interchangeable components to capture our attention in 2018. Blocks raised $1.6M in a Kickstarter campaign that ended way back in 2015, and there must have been concerns that the product would never make it into production. Some of its backers are thankfully starting to receive their watches now, as the company announces the official launch at CES.
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Those of you who are keen followers of the foldable tablet category might recall the ZTE Axon Multy that had its specs leak earlier this month. Android Authority is now reporting that this smartphone-tablet hybrid will be officially called the Axon M and has published some interesting pictures of it.
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Motorola's latest Moto Z flagship phones are modular, designed to accommodate add-on modules that snap to the back of their cases for extra battery life, more complex camera modules, pico projectors, et cetera. Critical and consumer response to the change has been mixed, as it was for LG's modular G5 designs. But in a recent meeting with technology journalists, the Lenovo subsidiary doubled down on the modular approach. Motorola committed to at least 12 new Moto Mod add-on products per year.
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Following the death of Google's Project ARA, it has been revealed that Dan Makoski, founder of Project ARA and former head of design at Google ATAP, has now officially been confirmed to be working at Nexpaq. In case you don't know what Nexpaq is, it's a startup that campaigned on Kickstarter to create modular phone cases for popular phones like the iPhone 6, Galaxy S6 edge, and Galaxy S5.
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It has been a long and winding road for Google's Project Ara, and a new report claims this is the end of the road. Sources tell Reuters that Google has suspended work on Project Ara as part of its efforts to bring together its disparate hardware projects. Google, as you might imagine, refused to comment.
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Verizon has had the exclusive on the Moto Z line for the last few months, but that's almost over. Pre-orders for the unlocked Moto Z start on September 15th, but the pricing is even higher than it is on Verizon—$699.99. The device won't actually ship until sometime in October.
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