Back in 2014, Google’s modular smartphone Project Ara entered into beta. This was promising as many were looking forward to actually getting their hands on the commercially available handset, and a beta would mean that things are on their merry way. Unfortunately no word on the project until 2015 where Google reassured that the project was not dead.
However it was later revealed that Google would be delaying Project Ara to 2016, which means that we should be able to expect it this year, right? Wrong. Turns out that we now have a new date to look forward to, and that date is 2017 which is when Google is planning on releasing Project Ara commercially.
There is no word on how much it will cost or when exactly in 2017 might we be able to expect it, but its final form, according to Blaise Bertrand, Project Ara’s head of creative, “It’ll be thin, it’ll be light, it’ll be beautiful.” Google has already teamed up with several companies to create modules for the phone.
These companies include Micron, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony and iHealth. They are also designed to meet specific needs, such as a diabetic patient’s need to carry around a glucometer, in which that is a module iHealth will be offering, and so on. Project Ara is no doubt a unique idea and we guess we’ll have to wait and see if such a concept is what the smartphone market has been asking for, or if it will simply end up being a novelty (hello 3D phones!).
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