(First posted on tech.qq.com, for original Chinese, click here)
In the PC era, if you decided to upgrade to a higher performance CPU, there were resale sites where you could pawn the old processor. However, in the smart phone era the average consumer switches to a new phone every year. Many old and/or broken phones are abandoned, including the most valuable bits: the processors.
A Finnish modular mobile phone technology company, Circular Devices, is preparing to develop tech so that discarded cell phone processors can be recovered and used to build a high performance "super server".
Thanks to Google's Project Ara, the modular mobile phone concept is to gaining awareness among more and more people. In the future, with the purchase of a modular smartphone consumers will be able to upgrade their devices with the latest Qualcomm or MediaTek processors.
Joining Google's ranks, CircularDevices is also set to implement their modular mobile phone, called the "Puzzlephone". To take advantage of smartphone user's old processors, the company developed a product plan called "Puzzlecluster" (the "cluster" comes from the term "server cluster", which is two or more computers acting together to create a single system), which will be a server with upgradeable performance. Future modular phone processors could also get a "second life" in computers.
It should be noted that the Puzzlecluster remains in the conceptual design stage. It will likely be a long time until the technology is actually available.
One clear benefit from the application of this technology would be reducing the amount of e-waste.
Right now Circular Devices plan on using traditional power to juice their servers, but they also wonder whether Puzzlephone battery modules couldn't be used to craft a new system of power supply.
Puzzlecluster servers could be used in a variety of industries with many applications, such as for research and data analysis, in conjunction with cloud computing services, or other situations that require parallel computing processes.
The company announced in design sketches that each server processor unit that can "accept" multiple mobile processors, and multiple units can be integrated into a single high performance of supercomputer.
US technology news site TheVerge noted that regardless of whether Puzzlephone and Puzzlecluster can be realised or not, this is still a good sign. It shows that the technology industry has begun to consider modular smart phones and how to get more out of used devices.
Google's Project Ara is the modular phone "pioneer". They recently announced that their first modular phone will launch in Puerto Rico in 2015. In addition to the moddable exterior, the prototype phone is reported to have 11 modules, such as for camera, power, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communication. Users can plug in, replace and upgrade modules.
If Google's plans can be implemented world-wide, then electronics enthusiasts and environment-savvy consumers could be anticipating a "save your smartphone" future.