Google Announces Marvell And NVIDIA Chipset Options For Project Ara

Most of you guys have probably heard of Google’s Project Ara by now. For those who haven’t, this is an upcoming smartphone by Google that will feature modular components. What this means is that users will be able to swap out certain components depending on their need, so for example you could swap out a camera module for one with a better sensor, or one that records video better, and so on, all the while keeping the rest of the phone’s specs intact.

That being said if you’re wondering which SoC Google will be going for, it turns out that they have chosen a few that users can choose from. Previously Google revealed that they would be using a Rockchip SoC and now according to a new Google+ post, Google has revealed other options which will include a Marvell PXA1928 SoC and an NVIDIA Tegra K1 chipset which can also be found in the recently released Nexus 9.

Now if you liked the Nexus 9’s performance then chances are you might go for the NVIDIA Tegra K1 option. This isn’t to say that Marvell’s option is bad, it’s just that NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 is a bit more mainstream especially since it is in the Nexus 9 tablet. “You can anticipate seeing these as part of the reference designs in our upcoming MDK v0.20 release. (The Rockchip AP with native UniPro that we blogged about previously is coming along nicely and will be ready in time for our Spiral 3 prototype in the Spring.)”

Google is expected to release Project Ara to the public come early 2015 so if you’d like to see how useful modular smartphones are in real life, we guess you won’t have to wait too long to find out! In the meantime which SoC option do you think you will be going for?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Google, NVIDIA, project ara, SoC