A few years ago Google unveiled its modular smartphone, which would allow you to upgrade components, not unlike what you could do to a gaming computer. Rather than buying an entirely new phone every time a certain aspect of it becomes outdated, this seemed liked an answer to everyone’s problems. This project was titled project “Ara”. Since its reveal, Google has decided to go in a slightly different direction to appeal to the masses.
The phone in its prototype stages failed to live up to everything the company promised. It repeatedly gave out during technical demonstrations and wasn’t able to keep up with the capabilities of current phones while also being modular.
The phone was originally designed to be completely modular in that one could swap out anything from the processor, camera, speakers and even the display. However, according to CNET, Google found that when they asked the general public there was no interest in such customizability but rather people just wanted to be able to customize peripheral accessories. “When we did our user studies, what we found is that most users don’t care about modularizing the core functions.”
This caused Google to change their course of their action slightly. Instead of allowing everything to be modular, they are now focusing on just having cool, unique, and swappable accessories on the phone that are not available on any other cellular device. As of now all core components will be built into the phone and non-modular. The project “Ara” phone will likely see fitness-centric, music related, and other lifestyle focused swappable accessories in replacement of the original technical customizability.
Although not a far cry from what the project originally promised, it does have those who are more technically inclined feeling abandoned. The idea of never having to buy another phone seems to be gone but on the upside, if this phone turns out to be a success and other phone makers follow suit, no one will ever have the exact same phone ever again. Instead, your phone will be custom tailored to your particular needs (within reason).
The phone will be available for developers only, Q4 of this year and is likely to hit stores sometime in 2017 for the general public.
Featured Image Via Flikr/Maurizio Pesce
