“Google is jumping into its next futuristic hardware project,” Heather Kelly reports for CNN. “This time it’s a modular smartphone dubbed Project Ara that can be customized by swapping out individual pieces, such as the battery and the camera.”
“The company previewed the very early-stage project at a developer event in Santa Clara, California, this week. Google said the first version of the phone will likely be available in early 2015,” Kelly reports. “Though the company didn’t mention a sale price, it said the devices would cost anywhere from $50 to $500 to manufacture, depending on the model.”
“The phone will come in three sizes, ranging from mini to ‘phablet,’ and it will run on a future version of the Android mobile operating system. A frame called the Endo will hold the interchangeable components together with magnets,” Kelly reports. “Because the Ara project is open-source, the fun will be adding third-party modules or even printing your own with a 3D printer. Instead of relying on a single hardware manufacturer, people could shop around and add unusual elements made by startups, cameras produced by camera companies, or custom hardware for highly specialized work phones.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
The NSA wiretap module isn’t optional.
And no body wants a swapper!
And…nobody have a fuck
Such a project is a little ahead of it’s time for commercial applications profits-wise, but it’s great Google is shelling the money to advance it with little to nothing to show for it financially. It could advance the gadgets space for devices and purposes yet un-thought of.
It sounds like low margin commercialization of devices ala the Windows machines, but maybe that’s what Google wants; to be the Windows of the coming decade.
Why not? The Moto acquisition worked so well. Just call it a Lego Phone. Plenty of six year olds will have mommy buy it.
Exactly. We’ve already had the Fischer-Price operating system, Windows XP. Now we can have a Fischer-Price phone! For adults and kids alike.
just watch the Marvel comic phones… although too transparent is where Apple would go…
and imagine if you could stretch those phones out to phablets if needed…
In other words… i prefer real legos
Setting its hopes low then.
the stupid Indians can have this google mess of a phone
Me not stupid. Wannabe rapper, now that stupid.
@name-copier Snoop Dogg
Are you unable to make a point without slopping out a dose of your pustulating hatred at the same time?
Will it have a PCI bus like the old PC’s? Then will it still be supported when a new bus standard comes around? Will android spiral into a Vista like experience trying to support a multitude of modules from third parties? will crashes happen with no idea which module isn’t quite 100% compatable? Will people go into “debug mode” more than they are in “work mode” like the experience with PC’s? I could go on and on.
I went to Mac’s because the “modular” PC’s stank!!! I aint about to go through that same experience with phones.
ARA is not how you spell error!
Sounds like a nightmare to me but Uber geeks will love it no doubt, they don’t expect things to actually work.
This sounds great in theory, but when you get a camera from Mfr. A to put on the phone, it’s thicker than the other ones and thus your phone looks like something a 6 year old put together.
Not to mention who’s the manufacturer crazy enough to put real money into designing/testing/certifying/mass producing something for this, which Google will then change on a whim come the next version…
A frame called the Endo will hold the interchangeable components together with magnets
Ooo! Sounds so sturdy!
the fun will be adding third-party modules or even printing your own with a 3D printer.
I’m adding a LIGHT SABER to mine! ‘Hold on the line honey while I fight off this Sith Lord. YAHHHH!’
“I turned mine into a cane! Sadly, I’ve had to duct tape on its Endo because it keeps falling off when I use it to walk. What’s cool is when I hold up the cane as an antenna! It’s great for solving crap reception.”
“I embedded my Endo into a giant cheese hat with headphones!”
“Three words: Cellular Beer Bong”
IOW: This is going to be hilarious.
What 3D printed add-on are YOU going to magnetize to your Endo?
You could be making a lot of money drafting infomercials, or garnering notoriety satirising them
Lol! :)))
Fragmentation in the literal physical sense …go figure
Everything Google makes on their own smacks of a teenage sci-fi fantasy from 1991 with no practical application in the real world. Yawn. :/
Well most of the google staff are under 20yrs old, can’t drive and have their mums pick them up from school (work)
So the goal of this project is to throw away obsolete phone parts presumably to lessen electronic waste all to preserve the investment in the milled exoskeleton and now also obsolete interconnect backbone?
That’s like swapping out desktop PC components all so you can keep the $60 case, obsolete motherboard, and grimy old keyboard.
Yes—something is off. It does not compute. Danger, Will Robinson!
How does Google get away with spending absurd amounts on these ridiculous plans.
Surely this money would be put to better use lining shareholder’s pockets.
This is as good as burning it in a fire.
Google Ara?!
WTF!
Who Cares whatever Google does?!
their entire mojo is: haphazard lucky strike business planning.
they hire 1000s, work on 1000s of lab experiments. and hope 1 needle in the haystack will turn into a hit. nothing as meticulously planned or efficient as Apple!
Too many bitch about Apple no longer being innovative. whether Google, Samsung, media, consumers. Very stupid, since if Apple did invent new stuff yearly of half-yearly with today’s impatient ADD culture, then we’d have half-ass innovations with even worse quality – that’ we’d pay dearly for!?! so what’s the rush? Real Innovation takes time! Apple solutions look simple only because they are highly sophisticated. Sophisticated simplicity or simplified sophistication takes brains, talent, vision, creativity, ubiquity, ease of use, affordability, too many factors to become X-Factors. Only Apple so far, at least, has perfectly blended hard-and-software and arts. That is Apple competition cries over spilled milk with silly gimmicks, cries foul over hypocritical lawsuits, damages Apple’s image with FUD etc. – they’re simple clueless, flummoxed spoilt brats.
Google may create 1000s of projects, but none are viable, sustainable, real world products. none are profitable except search ads which makes up 97% of their goo. Google had time to innovate since their single mojo day 1998-09-04, but it’s all never-ending, intangible, not real world pipe dreams. they’re basically a conceptual lab, not a real world producer.
Goo Ara?
modular fantasy! the world’s most impractical phone!
imagine losing some bits & pieces.
or the phone falls & breaks literally into pieces.
or sand/dirt/water etc. dropping between piece lines.
what’s next in Gooland Fantasyland?
modular mobile dildo as part of your experience on cellular level?!
Goo Ara?
more like Google is getting or has been, since day 2 after 1998-09-04’s search engine,
in a Goo Era…
modular mobile?!
guess Goo has reached cerebral hemorrhage!
their creativity is just pathetic (at least in practical terms ; )