Google’s much talked about Project Ara, the modular smartphone that may just well be the future of mobile technology, is looking set to be announced in January of 2015 as at a recent Project Ara developer conference, it was revealed that users will be able to order their Ara, with personalised configuration, from January 2015.
Project Ara was originally a Motorola project for a modular smartphone which would essentially be an exoskeleton phone that has modular areas for users to individually upgrade areas of a smartphone. Want a better Camera? Upgrade just that or maybe you just need more RAM, you will be able to just buy a RAM section.
Motorola announced the project in October last year, not long after a similar Kickstarter campaign was started for a similar product called Phonebloks. Since then the two versions have been combined and Motorola has been sold off to Lenovo, with Project Ara staying at Google.
Upon the announcement of Project Ara, Motorola/Google stated:
“We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines.”
The developer Kit for Project Ara is currently out in the wild with Devs across the globe working on technology for the handset, so such an early announcement on a completed for sale version of the phone sis a bit of a shock.
The project will rely on third party components as well as official branded parts to upgrade the devices, and if the system works, Project Ara could essentially be the last Smartphones you ever buy.
The scope for Project Ara is huge, and with the smartphone Market making billions, we can see some very quick and fierce competition rearing its head in the next year.