Motorola’s Project Ara aims to make modular smartphones like Phonebloks a reality

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Published 29 Oct 2013

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Remember Phonebloks? A completely impractical idea which showed a completely modular phone, whose each and every part was upgradeable including the processor and camera? Well, it turns out the idea was not as impractical as we thought.

Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group is working on a new project dubbed Ara, which aims at creating a free and open hardware platform necessary for the existence of a modular smartphone. With this project, Motorola is trying to do in the hardware world what Android has done in the mobile software world.

Below is a sneak peek into some of the early design prototypes for Project Ara -:

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The design for Project Ara is made up of an endoskeleton (endo) and modules. The endo is the structural frame that holds the different modules in their place. A module can be any of the different parts required in a smartphone, including processors, camera, storage space, battery and more.

Motorola has also met the developer of Phonebloks, Dave, and will be engaging with the Phonebloks community during the development process for valuable feedback.

The company has been working on Project Ara for more than a year now and is expecting to release a Module’s Developer Kit (MDK) sometime this winter. It will also be sending out invites to developers to create modules for Project Ara sometime in the coming months as well.

Via – The Official Motorola Blog