PROJECT ARA:
Project Ara is the code name for an initiative that aims to develop an open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. The platform will include a structural frame or endoskeleton that holds smartphone modules of the owner's choice, such as a display, camera or an extra battery.
It would allow users to swap out malfunctioning modules or upgrade individual modules as innovations emerge, providing longer lifetime cycles for the handset, and potentially reducing electronic waste. Project Ara smartphone will begin pilot testing in Puerto Rico later 2015 with a target bill of materials cost of $50 for a basic grey phone.
The project was originally headed by the Advanced Technologies and Projects team within Motorola Mobility while it was a subsidiary of Google. Although Google has since divested Motorola to Lenovo,
it retained the Advanced Technologies and Projects group—which has since worked under the direction of the Android division.
It would allow users to swap out malfunctioning modules or upgrade individual modules as innovations emerge, providing longer lifetime cycles for the handset, and potentially reducing electronic waste. Project Ara smartphone will begin pilot testing in Puerto Rico later 2015 with a target bill of materials cost of $50 for a basic grey phone.
The project was originally headed by the Advanced Technologies and Projects team within Motorola Mobility while it was a subsidiary of Google. Although Google has since divested Motorola to Lenovo,
it retained the Advanced Technologies and Projects group—which has since worked under the direction of the Android division.
Google is pushing back plans to release its deeply customization Project Ara smartphone hardware until sometime in 2016. The Ara team today tweeted a message acknowledging the delay and shift away from plans to test out the modular phone project in Puerto.Rico later this year. But Google was also quick to note that it's in the process of scouting "
a few locations in the US" for Ara. Google's explanation for the change suggests that the team has been hard at work to make Ara a reality. "Lots of iterations... more than we thought," the company tweeted.
The night before Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division was supposed to show off the one and only functional Project Ara prototype to a room full of eager developers, someone dropped the phone and broke the display. At any other product reveal, this worst-case scenario would be a nightmare come true. Not to Google: The company made lemonade out of a lemon by turning it into a selling point for the modular smartphone. A year from now, painful situations like this might be easily fixed by simply buying a new display and swapping out the broken one.
Not that it would've made much of a difference if last night's fiasco never happened. Attendees at this week's Project Ara developer conference wouldn't have been able to boot up the prototype and play around with it like any typical smartphone -- in this case, "functional" is not the same as "functioning" -- but at least it would've made for a better presentation. Regardless of how it looked, however, we were able to briefly handle the Project Ara prototype and some of its first modules. To be clear, this is an extremely early model and there's a long way to go before it sees the light of day, but it at least allows us to get a good glimpse of what's to come over the next year as Ara continues to prepare for launch.
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