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GOOGLE HAS SAID it plans to have its first smartphone from its Project Ara initiative available for the public to buy next year.
At the first developer conference for Project Ara – which began yesterday in Mountain View, California – Google told its audience that the first Project Ara phone will go on sale in January 2015.
There will also be an update for Android in December, which will prepare the operating system for Project Ara phones and the first model will be sold for $50.
The first phone will be the “grey phone,” a deliberate choice since Google wants to encourage people to customise it. From there, users can add a number of modules to the frame such as WiFi, camera, battery and sensors.
The makers say the frame that will hold the modular components together will last for five to six years. The components will stay attached to the frame via electro-permanent magnets.
Project Ara was originally started by Motorola, before part of it was sold off to Lenovo for $2.91 billion, a year ago and teamed up with Phonebloks to help further develop the project in October.
After the sale to Lenovo, Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division merged with Google and continued working on the smartphone project.
Google will be holding two more developer conferences for Project Ara in July and September.
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Ara, ’tis just another auld phone.
Shut up and take my money.
I’m sure ikea are involved
Haha, deadly :)
I will stick to my nokia 3200, thank you very much
The basic $50 model comes with wifi only… Can it legally be marketed and sold as a cellular/mobile phone if you have to buy the cellular transmitter separately?
Interesting,
Everybody who buys a smartphone buys a case to protect it. When this concept hits the tablet format we will be returning to the upgradable PC model… The software had better be good.
My problem.
Phone manufacturers spent a fortune putting good tech into a tight package.
With all this extra packaging around each component the size must increase dramatically.
I’ll stick to my current phone manufacturer.
But there are many challenges in such a project. I’m sure though that your problem has been addressed by teams of people so i wouldn’t worry so much….
I doubt it has given the dimensions and weight of their current prototypes.
Also I’d question why current smartphones don’t have massive batteries and tiny components if it’s possible in this modular format.
I’ll stay concerned thanks.
Because prototyping is about getting elements to work based on design intent. Refining prototypes toward finished product means meeting a price point and ensuring it’s fully functioning, along with ensuring/creating demand.
You don’t get massive batteries and tiny components for several reasons. Cost, typical current screen size, weight – all are good reasons.
I know what prototyping is I work in a R&D dept.
You’re not addressing the issue.
Current manufacturers use the best components and design phone housings to maximise the use of space in a given footprint and depth (screen size defining footprint).
How, with additional housings between each component and larger connectors between components, could a phone like this maintain a reasonable size and weight?
Simple, it cannot. This is a gimmick to get people to spend more on their phones by buying additional components for upgrade/damage/loss.
If you fail to see the logic there, well, lol.
“Current manufacturers use the best components”
Do they indeed? I think manufacturers are far more interested in buying their components at low cost with high reliability once they meet minimum requirements.
“reasonable size and weight”
as you’ve said, the screen size tends to dictate the footprint. this, fairly automatically puts size as something that is not desperately difficult to control. in terms of weight, there are a lot of material options. Seeing as you work in R&D, I expect you understand the relationship between material density with volume and mass?
If you’re looking for a gimmick then maybe look at the iphone. Modular design is smart design, with technologies like 3D printing and access to personal fabrication people are slowly realising that within a few decades there will barely be such a ting as “off the shelf” products. Modular, personal products are the start of that.
So you come down on the iPhone as an example? Not the Samsung or the HTC or the LG?
Gas really.
You’ve just proved yourself to be a fanboy of something singling out a single manufacturer, despite the fact that nothing really differentiates any of them other than their external shell and OS. This makes me think less of you than your weak argument made me think.
3D printing is miles away from being consumer ready. I use a 15,000 euro printer daily because that’s the cost of producing good quality accurate parts and that printer only used 2 polymer types. I’ve used sub 3000 euro printers and they are all rubbish. Prototype and novelty items is all they are. You’d be better not wasting your money and sending your STL or STEP files to someone with a good printer and paying them to print.
Associating 3D printing with Googles, sorry it’s not even Googles, idea is nonsense.
In decades phones may well be obsolete (wearables, subdurmal circuits) so that comment is redundant.
And you associating my comments with definitive statements is as ludicrous as the interpretation of what I haven’t said.
For someone working in R&D, you should learn how to interpret, not assume.
Frankly I’m amazed this isn’t an article about the Journals obsession with iClone sorry iPhone
January
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