Modular Phone

Mobile phones, serving as the portable communication, entertainment, and working devices, are favored by most people in the world. Considering the rapid development of hardware, people change their phones every one to two years on average. However, unbeknownst to us, this behavior creates a lot of electronic waste which contains hazardous chemicals such as lead and mercury. Our team proposes using modular smartphones to effectively address this issue. Modular smartphone, a smartphone made using different components that can be independently upgraded or replaced in a modular design, aims to reduce electronic waste, lower repair costs and increase user comfort. As a result, people can designate their phones, reducing the possibility of changing the phones frequently due to wearing and malfunction of certain parts. At last, the lifetime of cellphones will increase, the expenses to purchase a new phone will decrease and user experiences can be lifted for sure.

Nowadays, mobile phones are becoming increasingly essential and indispensable in our daily routine.

Virtually every action we initiate such as chatting, calling, buying products resorts to those little gadgets. However, as Moore's Law（for every 18-24 months, the processing speed of hardware in any given electronic device will double）start to lose efficacy, the development of various parts inside cellphones isn't as fast as they are in the past. So, many people replace old cellphones with new ones very often (nearly 1-2 years), thus producing considerable amount of toxic electronic waste, which is the problem we intend to solve. Is it worthy to directly replace a phone and "squander luxuriously" those useful parts for the mere purpose of pursuing a more stylish design and a better hardware experience?Consequently, our group suggests the utilization of modular smartphones, which exist but aren’t prevalent, to sufficiently and effectively reduce the pollution of electronic waste. This design, scales globally and allows buyers to customize their phones, enabling them to replace only a small amount of parts rather than all of them when they want to dispose of the old cellphones. Moreover, those retired parts can be re-bought by their corresponding manufacturing companies, forbidding further pollution.

The people we intend to serve are those who use cellphones a lot for various purposes. To those people, the longevity and capability of smartphones may well be decreasing significantly during usage. Humans, eager to purchase their desirable phones, have specific demands towards the performance, appearance, color, and style of particular cellphones.

Modular Phones can assist people in designing phones exclusively their own. More specifically, modular phones can meet the demands in size, accessories, and colors, etc., satisfying personalized needs.

Using modular cellphones can facilitate personalized design and specific changes of certain parts. The fundamental and the most essential procedure is to “collage”various parts together and make them function as an actual phone. Manufacturers can provide users with different types and sizes of phone structures, such as full screen, small screen, double-sided screen, and external folding screen. In addition, main boards, RAM chips, vibrators, batteries, cameras, amplifiers, and shells are all available. One thing worth mentioning is that these components are quite small, so they meet the requirement of assembling them.

The pictures demonstrate the actual procedure we need to follow. First, components listed above must be produced. Next, they can be attached to the main board (chassis) using permanent magnets or puzzle-like pieces. Finally, users can test the capacity and performance of the newly-made phone and start using it! If customers want to include additional features such as different cameras, auxiliary display screens, and fitness trackers, they can put them on the main board as well without obstruction. Those components, once used, can get replaced and recycled without pollution. For those who cannot assemble the cellphones themselves, they can send it to the manufacturing companies and acquire assistance.

We apply modularity to a product that upgrade frequently. During upgrading, some useful parts of the phone will be wasted, and the old model may end up in the garbage, threatening the environment. Our approach can reduce the waste to minimum and get all of the trash well-recycled. 

The durable, general connection between different parts of the phone. Since the phone will be disassembled and resembled for several times, the mechanical and cable connection between different parts of the phone must be durable. Moreover, the main control chip of the phone must have great compatibility for it may connect different generations of components of phone. 

Since there are so many people using phones nowadays, it would be very important and helpful to figure out a solution to help reduce the pollution and maximize the customers' needs. 

We plan to serve at least the people in our Province or country in the next year, and try to apply to the people around the world in the following years. 

Boosting our popularity, seeking for investment opportunity, and finally making a profit. 

I think the main issue for our team is the funding problem. Without enough funding and money, we cannot use this technology in various countries. Since our solution is tech-based (modular cellphone), we need a lot of experts or insiders to assist us in making design decisions. Besides, the companies which will make those cellphone parts are also crucial to our scheme. In summary, money is the biggest problem so far. Moreover, the competition of mobile phone market in China is very intense. Whenever a new company want to enter the market, others will use inappropriate methods to depreciate that company and their products. 

We will produce a prototype and publish a crowdfunding project online. If the crowdfunding succeeds, we will start to advertise, preparing to enter the market. 

5 people, all high school students.

Our team includes an economics student and 4 students interested in math/physics. When math/physics students think of an innovative design, our economics student will examine it in an economical setting. We combine our knowledge in different subjects, and try to figure out the best solution to the problem that we found. 

Our service acts as an intermediary agency - we provide customers various choices for there preference of hard drives in their Modular Phones. Both the costumers and the hardware producers will be the beneficiaries. Since costumers can DIY their phone hardwares and producers can expand their business, just as how they DIY their personal computers; however, owing to many barriers currently, such as glued frames of their phone, they can never, or hardly, replace any part of their phone. Our mission, or the plan, is exactly to settle this issue. Also, producers can enlarge their business to produce more hardwares to sell. We can gain money from the frame of Modular Phone , price spread and technical support.

The nature of our work, in effect, is a business plan to gain funds on our own; more specifically, we aim to serve a connection between our clients(phone users, the target population) and the free market(devices market) , earning from the price spread. Nevertheless, our team will never surrender the state subsidies to environmental friendly projects as our second financial income.

We believe that Solve can give us an opportunity to show our ideas and solutions to more people. Since all the members in team are from high school, we want to have a more worldwide and more professional way to communicate with other people and make our solution more accepted by more people and apply to use. 

Although we do not intend to apply for the AI Innovations Prize and use utilize advanced AI technology, we will partially resort to the AI technology by help our users to select their devices in accordance with their personal preference and financial situation.

Our solution is an innovative business plan but lacking in the funds to initiate. Therefore, we have to apply for the GM Prize so that we can have experiment in the reality instead of merely imagining and develop our prototype for public testing. Funds for us are so significant that we have to win the Prize, or this solution is worthless and some environment problem can not be solved.