Google revealed that the first generation Project Ara device will be launched in January 2015. Project Ara was first started out by Motorola along with Dave from Phonebloks project, Google retained the ownership of Project Ara when it sold Motorola to Lenovo.
With the modular phone, Google wants to take Android even further and from coming January they are all set to open up the hardware industry. As sources from the Project Ara team suggests, there is going to be an “adapted version” of Android to help run these modular phone.
In times when we are restricted from even adding a micro SD card or easily replace the battery, Project Ara takes a different perspective. The entire concept of a modular phone is best understood when compared to a PC.
The PC’s have always been designed for upgradability of every component in the system, right from the Motherboard to RAM, Graphic cards and so on. It’s this freedom of choice to combine any different set of hardware, it’s this same ideology that set the Project Ara into development.
Google aims to get in hardware manufacturers to build generic parts ranging from modules for camera, WiFi, RAM’s and processors for the Project Ara.
So basically if your modular phone runs on a 1ghz processor along with 1gigs of RAM you will be able to upgrade it to higher specs instead of buying an entire new phone and burning a hole in the pocket. Google aims to price the starting kit for the modular phone to be at just about 50$.
If Google is able to pull this off for its own good it is also going to give back freedom to the consumers. We have our fingers crossed for it to change the way smartphones are built!
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