Motorola announced its modular phone concept, known as Project Ara, shortly before Google agreed to sell the company to Lenovo.
However, rather than let Ara get lumped in with the Moto deal, Google
decided to keep the advanced technologies group that was designing the
experimental device. Thus, Google has been pushing forward with a device
that seems almost too strange to exist. At the Ara developer’s
conference, Google’s Project Ara head Paul Eremenko said Ara is set to
be released in January 2015, and it’s still on target to cost a mere
$50. So what does your $50 investment in Ara get you? Not a whole phone,
but that’s kind of the point. The Ara kit will contain a frame, screen,
WiFi, and processor. The remainder of the components are selected by the
user and slotted into the back of the device. The device is known
internally as the Grey Phone, because it’s intentionally a boring gray
color so users will customize it with colorful modules for the camera,
memory, mobile connectivity, and more.
Making Project Ara
work will require both hardware and software to be re-architected —
mobile platforms simply aren’t designed to be as modular as desktop
ones. Google holds the reigns of Android, so it could conceivably build
support for swappable hardware, but tightly integrated components from
companies like Qualcomm and Broadcom might be harder to segment.
Including a processor with the Grey Phone might be an important step in
making the platform work. Eremenko says the Grey Phone base is being designed to last five or six years,
but users would pile on new modules throughout that time to add new
features. Although, including fundamental components like the screen and
processor as part of the base makes that length of time seem a bit
unrealistic. If Google can get Ara on the market for $50 in less than a
year, that would be an impressive first step.
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