Remember oject Ara? The modular, swap-as-you-see-fit smartphone coming out of ’s Advanced Technologies oducts (ATA group? Eremenko, the head of oject Ara, quietly announced that the devices will come loaded with a modified version of Android that allows for nearly all hardware modules to be “hot swappable,” so users will be able to easily switch out components without even turning the phone off.

The modules themselves won’t be hard to find either, as they’ll be readily available in the ay Store. “The project’s development continues apace through the collaboration with many partners such as Quanta, Toshiba, Rockchip, Foxconn others,” wrote Giulio Minotti on the onebloks blog. “Many companies, large small, as ird Technologies Array labs are developing modules with innovative features never seen before.”

The story behind the story: were already aware that naro were developing a specially modified version of Android for oject Ara, now we have more details on how it will actually work.

th the next oject Ara developers conference slated for December we’ll likely see more of what its partners have conjured up to make swappable mobile hardware a reality. Once these devices hit the market, developers will be able to take the regular old Android source code make swappable night vision cameras, heart rate monitors, or whatever else they can conjure up. Only the processor module (which contains the whole system-on-chip, including RAM) display module can’t be swapped without turning off the phone, it seems. The possibilities seem endless, that’s exactly what wants developers to think of with oject Ara.