Project Ara is a project being worked on by Google at the moment which is a modular smartphone concept where the goal is to swap out components and upgrade them as needed, much like how one would upgrade their desktop PC by swapping out RAM, hard drives, and GPUs.
Google will be hosting their first Ara Developers’ Conference in April, but in the meantime it seems that they are too excited about it and have decided to show off some of its early prototypes along with a demo on how it would work.
This demo was shown off during the Launch festival in San Francisco which took place this week, and where Google’s Paul Eremenko took to stage to talk about Ara as well as to demonstrate the device.
The video itself is pretty long clocking in close to 3 hours, so for those who don’t have the time to watch the entire thing, basically there is an endoskeleton which forms the backbone of the phone. There will be individual modules that will connect to the endoskeleton through the use of tiny magnets that will hold it into place.
We’re not sure how strong the magnets are, but presumably they will be strong enough to stay in place without moving about or possibly falling off.
Eremenko also described the vision of Ara’s ecosystem to be similar to that of the Google Play Store, where users can easily search for different components to suit their needs, much like how Android users can search for apps, widgets, and tools to customize their Android phones to their liking.
We can only imagine more details will be shared at the Ara Developers’ Conference in April, so check back with us then if you’d like to learn more.
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