By far one of the most intriguing projects that has made waves in the past year is Motorola’s Project Ara, first brought to our attention thanks to Dave Hakkens’ Phonebloks concept videos. If you haven’t heard of Project Ara before, the primary aim of the project is to research the ability of smartphones and its hardware to become modularized, one might say as modularized as the Android software itself. The ability to become modular would mean that although a phone’s framework would remain the same, certain parts of the phone, let’s say the camera or processor, could be swapped out or upgraded with some other part. The concept itself is incredible intriguing, and although a solid example of such a phone may still be some way off for consumers, it’s definitely a something to keep our eyes on for the future.
In fact, in Marques Brownlee’s Google Hangout interview with Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, Woodside elaborated quite a lot about Motorola’s plan for Project Ara. Not only did he mention that there was already a prototype for Project Ara, he mentioned that the Moto Maker site is a prime example of a platform where customizing your phone with countless combinations of interchangable parts would be ideal. You can check out the whole interview below, though if you just want to hear about Project Ara, skip forward to the 12:00 mins mark:
What do you think about Project Ara and where it’s going? Let us know in the comments.
