This is maybe the phone I’m most looking forward to. Project Ara is a modular phone, allowing users to swap out specific pieces when they wear out or want upgrades. You’ll no longer have to toss your whole phone for a better camera, faster processor, or new battery.
Originally developed by Motorola, Project Ara will remain at Google after Moto is sold to Lenovo. While we’ve seen teasers and rumors have been pointing to release dates, we haven’t had any concrete info on pricing and availability until now. Project Ara will arrive in January of 2015 at a starting price of $50.
Now that’s a bit of a misnomer as that $50 is basically an unusable “motherboard” and you’ll have to buy other components to piece it together into a working device. We still don’t know what hardware will be available at launch, but the first color will be a “boring grey” to encourage customers to customize their phones.
It’s a fairly aggressive timetable. Only two years from concept to delivery. Ara will run Android, but that means adding driver support to the OS so it can recognize different hardware components, something our phones are very poor at doing outside of SD cards and mass storage. Carrier certification is expected by November.
Are you looking forward to Ara? At $50 will you take the plunge on a modular phone? Leave us a comment below!
I’m excited about the possibility of the modular design. Being able to “hot swap” a battery or sensor, and the idea of incrementally upgrading your device according to your needs. The possibilities are endless. I am however, skeptical about the mainstream adoption aspect. How big of a user base will it take to make this a viable model? Regardless, I am all in. Let the hype beast loose!
Well, and we can be sure that the first generation wont sell well at all. Anything new takes at least two or three generations before consumers are comfortable with the idea. The trick will be keeping the project afloat long enough for it to find some traction in the market.