A new mobile phone concept that would give users a chance to choose from a range of components, and replace or upgrade them when necessary, has generated enormous interest online. But could this sustainable, modular device ever become a reality? Six months ago, the Dutch designer Dave Hakkens took apart his favourite camera. "I noticed all these little parts," he says. "And everything was good except for the lens motor. That had broken." But when Hakkens contacted the manufacturer to get a replacement motor, he was advised to just replace the whole camera. "With your bike you repair the tyre, you don't throw the bike away," he says. "But for some reason this is what we do with electronics."
Hakkens realised that if a device could be taken apart and upgraded more easily it would last much longer, minimising electrical waste. And so the idea of Phonebloks was born. The concept -Hakkens hasn't figured out how to actually make it -is for a phone with a replaceable screen and easily moveable, changeable "bloks", each containing a different element such as battery, chipset, gyroscope and so on.In the video Hakkens made to publicise Phonebloks, the bits fall into place on the backplate of the phone like pieces of Lego. The bloks vary in size and can be made to tessellate in any number of combinations. "Let's say this is your phone and you do everything in the cloud -why not replace your storage blok with a bigger battery blok?" asks the voiceover. "If you're like this guy and love to take pictures, why not upgrade your camera?"Last month, Hakkens set about showing off Phonebloks using the "crowd speaking" platform Thunderclap. Users donate their social reach to a project they support, allowing the site to commandeer their Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook accounts to broadcast a message at a single, predetermined moment. Hakkens was aiming for 500 people to sign up to his Thunderclap, but the Phonebloks video went viral, gaining seven million views in three days. He has now amassed 950,000 Thunderclap supporters and on Tuesday the Phonebloks video will ping across social networks 375 million times. "It comes down to a consumer signal," says Kyle Wiens, the founder of iFixit.com, a repository for user-generated repair manuals to the latest gadgets. "The market needs to indicate to manufacturers that we care about modular, repairable hardware."