What was just a fictional project months ago, it might become reality soon. Project Ara, an open source initiative led by Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group aims to develop modular smartphones.
Even if the project it’s led by Motorola is more than clear that Google is behind this. It appears that Google/Motorola liked Dave Hakkens idea with Phonebloks and decided to partnered with him. Motorola started to work on this Project Ara one year ago, while Dave Hakkens Phonebloks idea emerged nearly 2 months ago, at the beginning of spring.
The design is simple: Project Ara needs an endoskeleton and modules. The endoskeleton is the main frame that holds the rest of the modules in place. As Motorola says, modules can be anything, from a processor to a display, keyboard, battery and so on.
Now that this hardware ecosystem has been created and will be open-source, the next step will be to invite developers. Motorola have plans to invite developers to create modules in a few months, while the alpha release of the Module Developer’s Kit (MDK) will be around the winter.
Dave Hakkens Phonebloks project is very interesting, as it quickly got 960,000 supporters. Now with Motorola and Google in the same boat interesting things might happen. If Android is an open-source OS for every mobile device, Project Ara might become the next big thing for smarthphones. Here’s how some early designs look like.
Right now, if you like the idea with modular smartphones you can join the Phonebloks community or sign up to be an Ara scout and help Motorola shape the direction of Project Ara.
Source: Motorola Blog
