We have known about Project Ara, Google’s vision for modular smartphones, for quite some time now and today additional details have been provided by the company. Google held its second Project Ara developers conference in Mountain View today and revealed that the pilot testing will kick off in the second half of 2015. The interesting bit is that the pilot testing won’t be done in the U.S., instead Puerto Rico has been tapped for this honor.
Google has confirmed that Project Ara pilot test will commence in Puerto Rico through carriers OpenMobile and Claro in the second half of this year.
When the test begins users with a Project Ara modular smartphone will be able to configure their devices as per their liking through the Ara Marketplace and the Ara Configurator app. The company expects to have 20 to 30 Ara modules across 10 categories. It will also put “food-truck” style stores on the streets of Puerto Rico allowing people to check these devices in person.
As far as the Ara hardware is concerned Google is now working towards a model that is capable of making 3G network phone calls, and has the ability to hotswap modules in and out of the device easily. This is the Spiral 2 stage and Google expects to move on to Spiral 3 later this year, which would bring 4G LTE, all-day battery and a competitive camera module.
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