The future: Upgradeable smartphones

The future: Upgradeable smartphones

The consumer electronics market is converging. Where you once had a work computer, a home computer, a game console, a TV, a DVD player, and a mobile phone, in 2013 it is not unusual to simply have a laptop and a smartphone, or perhaps a smartphone and a tablet. This has led many people to believe, including me, that the PC will eventually die out, replaced by smartphones that are infinitely more portable and flexible.

One argument against the supersession of smartphones, however, is the small matter of desktop PCs having more processing power due to a larger power envelope (TDP) and better heat dissipation. There will come a time, though, probably in the next few years, when processors are so small and energy efficient that smartphones will have enough processing power to meet the needs of all but the most discerning consumers.

An even stronger argument against the rise of smartphones is their lack of customization and upgradeability. As it stands, smartphones (and tablets) are designed, marketed, and sold as consumable devices. You buy a smartphone, chew through its storage and battery for a couple of years, and then throw it away when your two-year contract comes up for renewal. Carriers love this, of course, because it keeps you locked into an incredibly lucrative contract. As far as manufacturers are concerned, the two-year upgrade cycle represents the most orgiastic piñata whacking ever devised — just look at Apple’s record profits, which stem almost entirely from monumentally massive iPhone sales. Do any of your other gadgets get upgraded every two years? Maybe your laptop, if you’re rich, but otherwise the consumer electronics upgrade cycle is usually nearer four or five years.

If smartphones were upgradeable, there would be significantly less reason to buy a new one every couple of years. If you could simply slide in a new processor, RAM, and battery, your smartphone’s useful life could be extended almost indefinitely — just like a PC. Likewise, if carriers and manufacturers didn’t leave older devices to languish with old versions of iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, then consumers would have very little reason to upgrade. In both cases, though, the consumer would end up buying less phones — and so it isn’t really surprising that neither the manufacturers or carriers are attempting to improve either the hardware or software situation.

Adding a CPU socket significantly increases the size and complexity of a device. [Image credit: CPU World]

The other problem with upgradeable hardware, of course, is that it’s hard to create a device that is small, powerful, efficient, and upgradeable. There are certain trade-offs intrinsic to the minimization of computer hardware, and losing the ability to replace individual components is one of them. Even desktop PCs are not immune to this axiom of computing; in the olden days, almost any chip could be unplugged from a circuit board; today, almost everything is soldered except for the CPU, RAM, and graphics card. (Do you remember when graphics cards had sockets for more expandable RAM?) Laptops used to have replaceable CPUs and RAM, but that’s slowly becoming a thing of the past as they miniaturize, too. Smartphones sometimes have a replaceable battery and micro SD card, but many have no replaceable parts at all.

The iPhone 5′s main logic board crams an entire computer into roughly the same volume as the socket shown above. [Image credit: iFixit]

The simple matter of the fact is that it takes extra space to make something upgradeable. While there’s enough space in your desktop PC to provide a CPU socket and clamp, it just isn’t feasible in an ultra-thin laptop or smartphone. Even with the shift to smaller socket types, such as LGA, you’re still talking about an additional 5mm or more — and that’s before you add any kind of cooling solution, which will probably be fiddly to remove/replace in its own right. RAM and flash storage, while only a couple of millimeters high when surface-mounted on your smartphone’s logic board (pictured above), expand to maybe two or three times their original volume when they’re attached to their own removable PCB and slotted into some kind of socket. Replaceable mobile graphics cards do exist (and are used in some laptops), but again they’re a lot bigger than integrated GPUs; there isn’t really enough space in modern smartphones for a separate CPU and GPU.