Can Modular Phone Accessories Finally Evolve Beyond MagSafe?

Predating the motorboat of Moto Mods successful 2016, the archetypal batch of Jolla The Other Half concepts included backmost covers with an other E Ink display, an infrared camera, and an Angry Birds tie-in that activated themes and ringtones. But astir apt the astir fashionable was a Blackberry/Nokia Communicator-style slider keyboard made and sold by 2 entrepreneurs from the archetypal Jolla community. That inclination is backmost in—at CES 2026, accessory institution Clicks showed disconnected a magnetic keyboard accessory you tin slap connected the backmost of immoderate Qi2 oregon MagSafe smartphone, though it uses Bluetooth for connectivity.

Quite a spot has changed successful what’s achievable, not slightest much bandwidth, much capability, and much accessible, high-quality 3D printing. “We person 7 pogo pins [on the Jolla Phone] which springiness you the capableness to get powerfulness retired and powerfulness in,” says Jolla CEO Sami Pienimäki. “So you tin bash possibly wireless charging, and you tin powerfulness outer circuit boards." Pienimäki imagines E Ink interfaces oregon low-bandwidth radios connected the backmost of its upcoming phone—it has an I3C interface, which delivers spot rates up to 12 megabits per second, allowing information to travel betwixt the telephone and the mod, enabling caller kinds of smarter modular accessories.

Jolla has promised to merchandise the last telephone specifications by the extremity of the month, with shipping owed for the archetypal preorder customers astatine the extremity of June. Pienimäki teases that it’s “tempting” for him to merchandise 1 of Jolla’s ain interior concepts for a TOH backmost screen adjacent earlier arsenic “a showcase of what you tin really do.” (The Jolla Phone doesn't person FCC support successful the US, but the institution is considering a US motorboat successful the future.)

With much than 10,000 preorders since December 2025, Jolla is backmost successful concern but inactive acold from mainstream. So why, contempt plentifulness of net hype implicit the years, did genuinely modular phones ne'er rather instrumentality off?

“During the LTE days, determination was reasoning that these devices would morph into ‘cloud phones,’ wherever the remainder of the telephone could beryllium cost-optimized,” Fieldhack says. “Swappable parts and little costs, arsenic astir of the compute would beryllium done successful the cloud.”

But things changed arsenic flagship phones went from costing $350 to astir $1,000. Both the camera and media accumulation and depletion became overmuch much important: “Great displays, large cameras, aggregate cameras, much memory, amended dependable and mics, arsenic good arsenic much elegant and bladed devices—this is not easy done connected a modular smartphone," Fieldhack says. "There are immense compromises, and phones are thicker and heavier with little performance. Then, agentic AI, on-device for little costs and amended security, made modular plan adjacent little optimal.”

Repairable Modules

One beardown and emerging statement for existent hardware modularity is repairability. Another European smartphone maker, Fairphone, has been making that lawsuit for implicit a decade. “It's astir reasoning astir however bash we radical the existent telephone itself into modules?” says Fairphone main exertion serviceman Chandler Hatton. The latest FairPhone Gen 6 smartphone is made up of 12 modules. A lawsuit sitting astatine the room array with a azygous T5 screwdriver (included) and a guitar prime tin repair the telephone quickly, easily, and cheaply.