The smartphone is one of the most empowering and intimate objects in our lives. Yet most of us have little say in how the device is made, what it does, and how it looks. And 5 billion of us don't have one. What if you could make thoughtful choices about exactly what your phone does, and use it as a creative canvas to tell your own story?
Introducing Project Ara.
Designed exclusively for 6 billion people.
Not familiar with Ara? Don't WORRY be HAPPY...
The concept is a simple one - you buy a basic model Ara phone and all the bits can be pulled off and swapped as you see fit. Fancy a more powerful camera module? You'll be able to buy one through Google's dedicated store - a treasure trove of hardware modules populated by components made by third-party manufacturers, from the likes of Samsung and its ilk, right down to little independent devs working out of their basements - just like Google Play for apps, in fact. The same will be true of many other components, including things like memory, display panels, physical keyboards, sensors and scanners, ports, modems and wireless modules, and much, much more.
The tech savvy of you out there are probably pretty interested in Project Ara, I know I am. Fortunately the developers are very forthcoming with details about how the project works and what their future plans are, and now we can take a closer look than ever at some of Project Ara’s finer details.
A couple of weeks ago, Jason Calacanis was hosting his LAUNCH conference, where a pretty substantial Project Ara demonstration took place, shortly after Google gave an announcement about its development conference for the project this coming April. The video included below is pretty lengthy, but only the first half an hour will be of interest to those looking for some insight into Project Ara.
One of Ara’s greatest strengths is that any company could come along and develop a module for the device with their own speakers, camera, or even different antennas for people who spend a lot of time moving between countries. Each module is shown to be held into place with magnets and each part can be placed anywhere on the chassis, offering up a huge range of options for important components, such as the battery. There’s even a battery in the chassis to keep things ticking over whilst components are replaced.
Impressively, the device is expected to cost just $50 for the default “grey phone”, which comes with the all-important battery, WiFi, and a budget SoC, to get you up and running. The talk also discusses three different device sizes, ranging from a medium sized phone, the larger phone shown in the video, and a phablet sized option for those of you looking for a bigger display.
If you’re interested in Project Ara’s origins, video below offers up a brief history of project’s development, interviews some of its key personnel, and delves into what the development team has planned for the future.
And one of the more interesting revelations of the conference explained exactly how said users can go about personalising their devices. It's been reported before that Google has plans for a Play Store equivalent for hardware modules, but it seems there'll be another facet to that which is comparable to Motorola's Moto X "Moto Maker" customisation web store. The so-called Ara Configurator has been designed to allow users to design a custom appearance for every module aboard their handset, and this doesn't just go as far as colours either, things like printed graphics, multi-tone paintjobs and even 3D texturised effects courtesy of 3D printing.
"Users can import photos into Ara's Configurator, which will create a personalized design based off of the color palette in the images. Or, they can create customized 3D-printed textures for the surface of their device's modules," says Mashable's Karissa Bell. "These textures, which can only be placed on the top surface of modules, are designed to be easily replaceable, so users can swap them out when they want a new design."
Release Date of ARA : More News To Come On January 14. Google has announced a Project Ara developer conference duringJanuary 2015. It'll be the second iteration of the Project Ara Module Developers Conference and will be held in Mountain View on January 14 next year.
You can Watch Video Below for Understanding Concept : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz5uOh-JMlo
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