Motorola’s Project Ara Announced: Modular Smartphones Are Coming

Modular smartphones are an interesting idea and earlier in September the Phonebloks concept was revealed. Well it looks like that concept will soon become a reality as Motorola has recently announced Project Ara, an open-source initiative that will support third-party hardware development for individual phone components, ultimately allowing users to mix and match the perfect smartphone for themselves. Motorola will be working with Phonebloks and will be engaging with the Phonebloks community to help make their idea a reality by combining their ideas together with Motorola’s technical expertise.

For those unfamiliar with Phonebloks, the idea behind it is to create a modular smartphone where certain components can be switched out and upgraded individually without having to buy an entirely new phone. The device will consist of a basic structure and the modules can range from cameras, to displays, to keyboards, to batteries, or the more unusual such as a pulse oximeter, according to Motorola. Motorola will soon start to reach out to developers to start creating Ara modules with a developer’s alpha kit to be released this winter. Interested developers can head on over to Motorola’s website to sign up to be an Ara Scout. Sounds like exciting times are ahead of us!

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Motorola, project ara