Meet Project Ara by Motorola, the Lego Like Modular Smartphone of the Future

Motorola just announced what might be their most ambitious project so far, "Project Ara" for developing a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones, just like a phone made of Lego blocks, but instead of just plastic toy building bricks, they will be real hardware components.

We always hate when new more powerful smartphones are introduced that have better screen, more RAM or a faster CPU and usually the difference between the old and the new model is slightly better "Feature X" and around $499 less in our pockets. What if you can upgrade this "Feature X" without having to change the whole phone. You can also think of Project Ara as building your custom PC configuration, handpicking the modules you want from a list of options. You want a bigger battery? Ditch the old one and get a bigger one without any trouble.

The design for Project Ara consists of what we call an endoskeleton (endo) and modules.  The endo is the structural frame that holds all the modules in place. A module can be anything, from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter--or something not yet thought of!

Some time ago now, a concept project called Phonebloks got us excited about this kind of phones somewhere in the future, but honestly we did not think it had the right support from at least few of the mayor players in the industry. Now with Google behind Motorola, we can count on Project Ara doing the same what Android did for the mobile software.

UPDATE: Phonebloks will collaborate with Motorola

With all this amazing support we want to take it to the next step. We found a good partner and we are going to build an open-source online platform so you can help developing it.

Via: The Official Motorola Blog