Googles Modular Phone, Project Ara, Is Launching Next Year

 (Photo credit: Google)

Project Ara, Google’s plan for a modular phone that you snap together like Legos, looked like it was never going to see the light of day. A plan to launch in Puerto Rico was cancelled last year.
But at Google’s developer conference on Friday, Google announced that it’s finally almost ready. Google said a developer edition would be shipping this fall and that a thinner consumer version would be shipping next year.
Project Ara works by providing a frame with open slots for swapping in and out little hardware modules. The modules are things like cameras, speakers, microphones, graphics accelerators, radios, sensors, or even medical devices like a glucose meter. This gives users a lot of choice for what functions they want their phone to provide.

Read Also: iPhone 7 Leak Reveals Pro Camera


Google listed a number of development partners working on these modules that range from giant manufactures to tiny hardware startups: Samsung, Panasonic, Micron, Toshiba, TDK, Wistron, E Ink, Toshiba, Harman, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, iHealth, BACTrack, goTenna and Cohero Health. At a Project Ara developer conference in early 2015, Google said it’s convinced 50 developers to work on hardware modules for the phone, including chip makers Marvell, Nvidia and Rockchip.
Google has received a lot of attention for Project Ara. The idea of being able to buy modules to incrementally upgrade your phone could reduce a lot of unnecessary costs and waste associated with having the latest and greatest in smartphone technology.

Read Also: Motorola To Release World's Second Modular Smartphone

So far Project Ara has been run out of Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP), but Google said on Friday that the project is breaking out into its own business unit.
On Friday, Google showed off a new version of Project Ara that has six slots for snapping in modules. ATAP engineer Rafa Camargo showed on stage how a module could be inserted into the base and it would begin working immediately. He used a camera module to take a picture of the crowd. “There’s no rebooting the device or hunting for drivers,” Camargo said. And to remove a module, Camargo said the user can either go into the phone’s settings and select an option to eject a module or they can simply say something like, “OK, Google, eject the camera,” and the module pops out. When Camargo ejected the camera module with just his voice, the crowd went wild.