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Prior to the launch of Moto Mods in 2016, the first batch of Jolla The Other Half concepts included back covers with an additional E Ink display, an infrared camera, and a touchscreen. Angry birds Equalize those themes and active ringtones. But perhaps the most popular was the Blackberry/Nokia Communicator-style sliding keyboard made and sold by two entrepreneurs from the original Jolla community. This trend is back again, and at CES 2026, the accessories company Clicks showed off a great presentation Magnetic keyboard accessory You can press the back of any Qi2 or MagSafe-enabled smartphone, although it uses Bluetooth to connect.
A lot has changed in what can be achieved, not least more bandwidth, more capabilities and more accessible and high-quality 3D printing. “We have seven pogo pins (in the Jolla Phone) that give you the ability to take power out and put power in,” says Jolla CEO Sami Pennemäki. “So you can do wireless charging, and you can power external circuit boards.” Pienimäki imagines E Ink interfaces, or low-bandwidth radios, on the back of his next phone. It has an I3C interface, which offers bit rates of up to 12 Mbps, allowing data to flow between the phone and the device, enabling new types of smarter modular accessories.
Jolla promised to release the final specifications of the phone by the end of the month, with shipping to the first pre-order customers at the end of June. Pienimäki teases that it’s “tempting” for him to release one of Jolla’s in-house concepts for TOH’s back cover even early as a “demonstration of what you can actually do.” (The Jolla Phone does not have FCC approval in the US, but the company is considering a US launch in the future.)
With over 10,000 pre-orders since December 2025, Jolla is back in business but still far from mainstream. So why, despite the huge hype on the Internet over the years, have modular phones never really caught on?
“During the LTE days, there was thinking that these devices would turn into ‘cloud phones,’ where the cost of the rest of the phone could be optimized,” says Feldhake. “Interchangeable parts and lower costs, as most of the computing will be done in the cloud.”
But things have changed as the cost of flagship phones has risen from $350 to around $1,000. Camera and media production and consumption have become much more important: “Great displays, great cameras, multiple cameras, more memory, better sound and microphones, plus sleeker and thinner hardware – that can’t be easily done on a standard smartphone,” says Veldhak. “There are big compromises, and the phones are thicker and heavier with less performance. Then, proxy AI, which is on-device to reduce costs and improve security, makes the modular design less optimal.”
Repairable units
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One strong and emerging argument for true hardware modularity is repairability. Another European smartphone maker, verfoneThis issue has been presented for more than a decade. “It’s about thinking about how do you assemble the actual phone itself into modules?” says Chandler Hatton, Fairphone’s chief technology officer. Latest Vervon Gen 6 The smartphone consists of 12 modules. A customer sitting at the kitchen table with a single T5 screwdriver (included) and a guitar pick can repair the phone quickly, easily and inexpensively.