Hasta La Creative!

Smartphones are lovely, but they're also wasteful—not worth repairing when they break, quickly obsolete in a hyper-competitive market. But what if there were a different model, one where a phone's pieces could be easily removed, repaired, customized and upgraded? That's the idea behind the Phoneblok. It is (or would be—it hasn't been made yet) a smartphone made of detachable "bloks" connected to a base that locks everything together into a solid phone. If a blok breaks, you can replace it; if a blok gets old, you upgrade it. At the "Blokstore"—a kind of app store for hardware—you buy bloks, sell bloks, buy a pre-assembled phone or assemble your own by selecting the bloks made by brands you want to support. The idea, from Dutch designer Dave Hakkens, is pretty fascinating—even if critics say it's impractical and/or technologically infeasible. Phoneblok has undertaken a Thunderclap campaign to raise awareness, and is promising big things for Oct. 29. Meantime, check out phonebloks.com for more, and watch the video below. There's a reason it's gotten more than 12 million views in a week.