With Motorola revealing that its modular phone prototype is almost ready, the dawn of the fully customizable smart phone might not be too far away
The Phonebloks concept has the ability to switch out the handset’s
components and replace them with whichever component the user wants. With
Motorola backing this project, it may soon become the dream phone of millions
of mobile phone users around the world. Motorola, has called this as “Project
Ara”, and is working with Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks, on building
an endoskeleton and the modules. The company has already done a lot of
technical work in opening the process up to the volunteers’ community (known as
Ara Scouts) to design the hardware modules. Their goal is to develop a
third-party eco-system, with low barriers to entry, which will help increase the
speed of innovation, and help compress development timelines. The various modules which have been suggested
currently are the CPU, display, extra Battery, external sensors, and anything
that a human mind can think of. The
modular phone is being hailed as the phone which can never get obsolete, since
every module can be taken out and replaced with an upgraded module.
The CEO of Motorola, Dennis Woodside in an interview with Marquees
Brownlee on YouTube said,
“The idea is to have a skeleton that holds together a set of components and the components slide in and out. If we have the interfaces and the protocols that enable the speaker to speak directly to the CPU then this would all be possible”. He also dropped hints that once completed, the modular smartphones and its components will be sold on the Moto Maker customization website. He further added, “Moto Maker was the beginning of a more exciting and longer term story which is how do we involve consumers and give them more choice”. “Ara is much further out but you can see how those two things tie together and how as we introduce new materials into Moto Maker we’re going to pursue that theme across our product line going forward. What we’d like to eventually get to is customizing functionality within the device and that’s where Project Ara and Moto Maker may converge”.
“The idea is to have a skeleton that holds together a set of components and the components slide in and out. If we have the interfaces and the protocols that enable the speaker to speak directly to the CPU then this would all be possible”. He also dropped hints that once completed, the modular smartphones and its components will be sold on the Moto Maker customization website. He further added, “Moto Maker was the beginning of a more exciting and longer term story which is how do we involve consumers and give them more choice”. “Ara is much further out but you can see how those two things tie together and how as we introduce new materials into Moto Maker we’re going to pursue that theme across our product line going forward. What we’d like to eventually get to is customizing functionality within the device and that’s where Project Ara and Moto Maker may converge”.
The Moto X will offer custom colour schemes, materials, backplates, and Project Ara will take those directions to a whole new level for the tech enthusiasts.
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