The Phonebloks concept that we first saw and then later picked up by Motorola (Project Ara) is without a doubt the best thing that could happen to a mobile device, and it looks like Chinese phone manufacturer, Xiaomi, is interested in the concept too. Lei Jun, the CEO and founder of Xiaomi, recently posted several photos to his Weibo account, showing off a Magic Cube, a similar modular phone project with the company’s logo intact.
The pictures have since been removed but nothing in the internet stays hidden. As you can see from the image above, while it may have a similar module concept that allows you to customize the “blocks” you like, it doesn’t seem to be as versatile as Phonebloks – the main board and display doesn’t look like they can be upgraded but hey, it’s a lot slimmer than Phonebloks, I must say.
Speaking of Xiaomi, remember when the ex-VP of Android, Hugo Barra, joined the company with hopes to expand the business beyond its home and neighboring country? Well, Singapore may be its first target market, for the Southeast Asia region at least. In a recent press conference in Taiwan, Hugo Barra announced that Xiaomi wants to tap into the Southeast Asia market and could be starting with Singapore.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time with potential partners in other countries, in Southeast Asia primarily. We just came back from a trip to Singapore a few weeks ago and we are trying to get our operations for Southeast Asia set up as quickly as possible.” – Hugo Barra.
(Source: GSMArena, PhoneArena, TechinAsia)
