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Phonebloks/Project Ara had their second developers conference last week - well, two of them. One in San Fransisco (for the American companies designing components as well as the core Ara team) and one in Singapore (for Asia-based electronics and camera manufacturers - the guys making all the android hardware) The phones now have 3G reception built into the chassis and Google has shifted their electropermanence magnets to the chassis rather than locating them on the block. It also appears they have adjusted the arrangement of the pins of their main connecting sockets, compared to Spiral 1 design: (Spiral 1, back in mid-2014) (Spiral 2) As you can see their main goals for "spiral 3" (dev kit 3) are. They include RF performance (radio frequency) which is used for, well, phone calls. will Google shift the phone antenna to the chassis too?? aannd.. the market pilot is Puerto Rico. Time for me to move to Puerto Rico! =D Meanwhile, some of the block parters All of the medical recording and measuring instrumentation ever. Glucose levels, ph levels, water detector, as little tabs installed in modules, be it disposable or not. Sennheiser. Making everything. They have their own sub-blog on the primary phonebloks blog and are the most active module developer. They have been asking community suggestions and designs for the "ultimate sound blok" and three primary things have come up. whether they can put all three in one block or whether they have three different bloks for different folks it remains to be seen. 1) have a super high quality best-of-the-best DAC AMP sound stuffs for all of the audiophiles. 2) have 2 3.5mm jacks, for shared listening, or for higher bandwidth throughput, or for stereo mic recording for an actually usable recording for journalism or publication. 3) some sort of wireless tethering to headphones the likes of yet we haven't yet seen before. I am a bit disappointed no speaker block, that we may need a second block for a speaker block because there will be no room left on the primary block. Innolux is developing (at least the first) screens for Ara. The Screen shown here is a 4.5" "HD" (720p) display, although then audio cut out so we don't know the rest of the specs. It looks great though. And ha;f the appeal of Project Ara is the ease of swapping particularly the screen were it to break. You pay bulk discount price for just the screen replacement, which you replace yourself in 10 minutes. Toshiba, making cameras. There is a flat 2mp camera for anyone not really into that and wanting to save money. Then there are 5mp and 13mp cameras (with a second sensor. Maybe a flash. maybe a light sensor. whatever it was the 5mp did not have it) for those more photographically incined, both with sizable bumps because the camera can't extend through the width of the phone. I'm still waiting for a psuedo SLR compatible mount sensor for full size lenses for actual pro photography off a phone, loosing the viewfinder obviously but that's it. I find it interesting that the representative mentioned these are "Reference Designs". Excellent! Asus and Gigabyte Aftermarket Camera designs, right??! =D It seems Google is planning to release a base model "grey phone" for $50 with Screen *(720p) Or (480p) 4.5 inches Processor *(1 or 2 core) 1.2GHz Battery 1800Mah Memory *(4GB or 8GB) WiFi (WiFi calls only) - (Cell radio optional) Operating System: Android 5.x Lollipop - Google Ara build Ram 1GB but then obviously upgradable with third party stuff of everything. So a great phone for the masses, the people who just don't care/need functionality and a phone for the tinkerers. And Google is going to facilitate a Google Play-like store for module trading. That will REALLY help with certification and moderation of blocks. Overall a ton of great design and engineering gone into what seem to be already very capable and functional blocks, that would make a great smartphone. That with this chassis, when new blocks roll around in 2016 or even 2020, the capabilities of the phone will continue to change for the good. EDIT: Solidenergy is developing battery tech for ara. The company, started in 2012 has developed an anode tech that is half the size (twice the density) as current gen models. That should be ready to go Q1 2016 http://blog.phonebloks.com/post/109873051733/project-ara-will-use-a-revolutionary-battery

my main thing is the ecosystem is so small who is making the modulus but .Google’s vision of cheap modular smartphones made up of interchangeable pieces is getting closer to reality. The company showed off the latest prototype on Wednesday, and said that it will start selling its first modular phone in Puerto Rico later this year. Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group revealed the Spiral 2 on Wednesday during a crowded event for software developers at a Google office in Mountain View, California. It is a slim handset, its face dominated by a large display and a receiver module for phone calls that includes a light and proximity sensor on the front. On the back are eight different square and rectangular modules that snap into the phone’s slim metal skeleton to add different functions to the device. The modules on the back include a camera, USB charger, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth radios, and the device’s main processor. The display and receiver module on the front can also be swapped out. All the modules are held in place by magnets in the device’s frame. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/534236/googles-modular-smartphone-to-debut-in-puerto-rico/

Google's Project Ara DevCon 2 is near from today, I am very exited about the public launch of first ara phone and the devcon 2 google already announced the spiral 2 hardware which has more developer space then the original spiral. some people have question that what is the specs of the entry level 50$ ara phone well these are here The Ara 'Grey Phone' model small size 2x5 (2 module wide by 5 modules high) Small Endo 2x5 'Grey Phone' $50 US Screen *(720p) Or (480p) 4.5 inches Processor *(1 or 2 core) 1.2GHz Battery 1800Mah Memory *(4GB or 8GB) WiFi (WiFi calls only) - (Cell radio optional) Operating System: Android 5.x Lollipop - Google Ara build Ram 1GB Well lot of companies announced lot's of things for ara like Sennheiser is designing Project ARA sound module Globant announced Project Ara marketplace like Google Play for hardware modules. for all other news http://projectaraforum.com/forums/ara/ Share your opinions about project ara and is this the next hit from google after android.

http://blog.phonebloks.com/post/100084027488/blocks-a-modular-smartwatch-by-hakeem-javaid David Hakkens recently switched ploy rather than advocating for a modular smartphone, to advocating any tech company to any capacity to develop any modular consumer electronics device. This is the first that caught his (and my) eye. Just like Project Ara this is the Desktop PC marketplace on a wearable. It will allow consumers to choose their price and what features of the device they want to spend their money on. it also allows for greater combustibility and upgrading potential - a major selling point for desktop PCs, yes? - And of course sustainability and all. Wearables more so than any other catagory given they're still juvinile so a generation barely lasts a year, sometimes 6 months. A more stable market would be very beneficial in the long run. Hakeem Javaid and his now 16 person team have been developing a modular smartwatch concept for Intel's 'Make It Wearable challenge'. Their design has been shortlisted to ten so has been granted $50,000 funding and access to Intel's latest mobile processors. The design is very simple and straightforward. The blocks interconnect through a standard audio/3.5mm jack where the band is the blocks. Many watches have metal bands of connected segments and this is an inspired way of interconnecting the technology and modules into the design without making things too tiny. In other words, It's project ara without the chassis but on your wrist! Promotional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1dB4LzIVSU The problem with all of this is that we may end up with too many different standards. We may end up with a smartphone modular market, a tablet modular market, an SLR modular market, a watch modular market and a glasses modular market. While this marketplace is self growing and sustaining when the big players like Sennheiser and ASUS get into play, they won't develop for 15 small platforms. We need to make sure as an international community that only a handful of standards are developed to cover all bases. Perhaps project ara is applied to all consumer electronics (phones, tablets, SLRs, drones, fridges) and this (or something similar) becomes all wearables (that have a different agenda and design requirement). Two or three standards are ok, 15 is not.

Crowd sourced table of contents... maybe not needed this week. News Apple Vs Retailers. War On Nfc Payment Technology. Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Ijks Snow Source 2: finance.yahoo.com Source 3: slate.com CVS and Rite Aid in the US have stopped accepting Apple Pay no official statement from those companies speculation is that they are developing their own NFC payment software to save the 2-3% on each transaction Tim Cook “It’s a skirmish. Merchants have different objectives sometimes. But in the long arc of time, you only are relevant as a retailer or merchant if your customers love you.” On Saturday, the pharmacies Rite Aid and CVS (both members of the MCX) disabled Apple Pay from their stores, even though they have the compatible equipment that was working when Apple Pay launched last week. They also blocked Google Wallet, a similar system for Android phones that Google launched in 2012 MCX happens to be working on its own mobile payments app, CurrentC, which is in beta testing and is expected to launch next year. CurrentC requires you to scan a barcode to make payments, something proved to not be as secure as near-field communication and other encrypted technology used by Apple Pay and Google Wallet. Tesla Runs Into Trouble Again Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Victorious Secret Source 2: washingtonpost.com Source 3: freep.com Source 4: forbes.com US government seems to be giving GM and other traditional automakers preferential treatment new law states that anyone wishing to sell a car in Michigan has to do so through an independent dealership Tesla prefers to sell through corporate-owned stores and galleries Michigan law forbids even having galleries where pricing can be discussed Michigan customers can still purchase the vehicles online or travel out of state to a corporate-owned store 18-Core Xeon E7 v3 ‘Haswell-E3’ Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Xacraf Source 2: digitimes.com Source 3: kitguru.net Coming Q2 2015 (According to Digitimes) Will feature up to 18 cores with hyperthreading. Quad channel DDR4 controller. Integrated PCI-E 3 links. New Xeon family will offer more reliability and bring them closer to Itanium products. No comment from Intel. Apple Watch Os Running On An Iphone Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Dayo26 Source 2: theverge.com Source 3: 9to5mac.com Current iPhone home screen is still the same design as the original iPhone. The Apple Watch home screen is far more fluid, scales to any screen size without looking cramped or spaced out. All your apps are close by, all the time. The new ‘reachability’ feature that makes your screen slide down so you can reach items at the top of your screen is as good as an admission from apple that the current design is not meant for a screen this size. Apple has created an entirely new, modern home screen that is more intuitive, more flexible and adaptive as well. Only time will tell if this design trickles down to the iPhone, but the benefits it brings make it a strong contender for a new face of iOS. 1000 MPH On Land. Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Benediction Source 2: wired.co.uk Source 3: wired.co.uk Richard Noble is spearheading a project called ‘Bloodhound SSC’. Richard is responsible for the previous land speed records in 1983 and 1997. The problem with land speed records is that drag from air increases with a squared ratio in proportion to the speed. Lockheed's A-12 could cruise at Mach 3, more than 2,000mph, for as long as it had fuel. The Bloodhound SSC’s wheels are solid disks of aluminum, each weighing more than 200lbs. At record-breaking speed, each wheel will become a centrifuge, subjecting the rim to the same G forces scientists use to separate DNA out of cells. At 1,000mph the radial load on each of Bloodhound SSC's wheels will be ~50,000G. It’s disk brakes are only meant to be used under 200mph. The car should reach 800 to 850mph in 2015, and then coming back the following year to hit 1,000mph. Alienware Graphics Amplifier Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Rok Source 2: theverge.com Source 3: engadget.com Source 4: digitaltrends.com Allows for full sized GPUs for laptops. Costs $300. Supports any GPU (up to 375W) Measures 6.8 x 7.3 x 16.1-inches, and weighs 7.7 pounds. You can order one now. Only works on Alienware laptops. Msi Laptop With Real Cherry Mechanical Keyboard Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Nagby Source 2: cowcotland.com named the GT80 Titan switches mentioned in this article are Cherry MX brown - maybe others to come keyboard takes up the bottom half of an 18.4” notebook as it’s too thick to allow cooling or internals underneath touchpad & numpad combo on the right of the keyboard 49.1mm thick, 4.5kg Motorola Droid Turbo Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Mcmad358 Source 2: imgur.com Source 3: droid-life.com Source 4: theverge.com Source 5: phonearena.com Source 6: imgur.com Source 7: verizonwireless.com Source 8: imgur.com Source 9: motorola.com Up to 48 hours battery life, 8 hours of charge in 15 mins. 21 MP (5248x3936) in 4:3, 15.5 MP (2952x5248) in 16:9, f/2.0 aperture 4K at 24fps, 1080p at 30fps, 720p Slow Motion Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 805 processor with 2.7 GHz quad-core CPU (APQ8084) with 64-bit memory access Adreno 420 @ 600 MHz GPU 3GB of RAM 5.2” 1440p Quad HD 2560x1440 AMOLED, 565 ppi. 3900 mAh Water Resistant, NFC 32GB and 64GB models. Android 4.4.4, KitKat Back is made of fine woven materials Mono, front-ported speakers. Far Cry 4 Dev: Resolution Doesn't Sell Games Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Rafbanaan Source 2: neogaf.com Source 3: totalxbox.com “1080p or not 1080p isn’t an interesting question. It is certainly not something I care about in a game” said Alex Hutchinson, Far Cry 4 creative director said this after confirming a target resolution and frame rate of 1080p 30 “It feels weird to me that people are cool about playing a sort of retro pixel game, and yet the resolution somehow matters. It’s like: is it fun, is it interesting, is it new, is it fresh, are there interesting questions?” Hutchinson think enthusiasm for high-end visuals is waning “If our thing is ‘woo, the same exact thing you had before, at twice the resolution, instead of a new thing’... A new spin or an evolution, I think is much more interesting.” missing the point - it’s not about “pushing boundaries” it’s about providing a playable experience at 1080p 60fps Wow Ibm Fighting Ebola With Supercomputer Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Timothy teaming up with Sierra Leone’s Open Government Initiative, Cambridge University’s Africa’s Voices project, telco firm Airetel, and Kenya’s Echo mobile developed a system that lets people report Ebola-related issues and concerns via SMS or voice calls “For us to tackle Ebola, it is crucial to maintain an open dialogue between the government and the people of Sierra Leone.” creating opinion-based heat-maps that show areas of worry and areas of infection has already highlighted regions with growing numbers of suspected infections also working with Nigeria (they have been cleared of disease) to support preparedness for future outbreaks overall goal is to create a global cloud-based Ebola Open Data Repository T-Mobile Ceo: “Don’t Buy Your Ipad From Us" Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Topwargamer Source 2: slashgear.com new iPads from major USA carriers are network locked even T-mobile was guilty of it John Legere revealed that Apple shipped the iPads to T-Mobile with SIMs pre-locked to T-Mobile’s network Tweeted out “My advice to everyone - and I’ll get in trouble for this: buy it from the Apple Store” X-Wing And Tie Fighter - Pc Gamin Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Demonunicornkiller Source 2: kotaku.com have been digitally re-released on Good Old Games $10 each special editions of the games (slightly higher resolution and improved sound, both games’ expansions) will run on any modern PC both the 1994 and 1998 versions Amd Is Going To Re-Launch The R9 290X With 8Gb Of Memory Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Tro Source 2: kitguru.net only major change is the 8GB of GDDR5 (up from 4) currently only available from Sapphire Technologies Club3D, PowerColor, and Sapphire will all be available for the holiday season in a bid to compete better with the GTX 980 custom cooling with a higher clock-rate Sapphire board was clocked at 1060MHz (normally 1000MHz) memory was clocked at 5600MHz (5000MHz on normal card) from article “While 8GB of GDDR5 memory sounds impressive, not everyone needs a frame-buffer that large at present” Youtube 60Fps Its Finally Here Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Brownninja97 Source 2: kotaku.com Source 3: forbes.com Rollout of 60FPS started on wednesday. Currently only for chrome. You need to select the ‘1080p60’ or ‘720p60’ option in quality settings. YouTube retains control over what videos will appear at 60fps and says it will only be enabled for ‘motion intense’ videos so your average vlog or cat video is unlikely to qualify. 48fps will also be released. *Forum Member ‘Smogsy’ built a man-cave Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Smogsy All info/pics in linked post. Build of the week: Mr. Tuf 2.0 n.b.: You can full screen the prezi slideshow for the stream. Source 1: prezi.com Voter’s Pick. Built by forum member: Anirbas Nice build, clean. Digi camo on the case and on the board and interior. Uses fittings instead of bends for tubing. Build of the week: ARK Source 1: prezi.com Staff Pick. Built by forum member: Ikem Another really nice build. Takes a excellent system to begin with and converts it to water cooling. Lot of gear packed in the case, storage, dual CPU, dual GPU, etc… There are two more topics you missed RAPID FIRE Lg Releases 31' Cinema 4K Ips Monitor Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: M Tieu Source 2: t.co $1400 in the US. IPS display featuring Maxx Audio and Adobe RGB Color Space which should make for a brilliant display quality. Reddit Opens A New Crowdfunding Site Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Tech Dreamer Source 2: redditmade.com Site called Redditmade. Focuses more on physical goods like t-shirts. The company will take a small cut of the campaign to cover the costs of its platform. So, Tim Cook Is Gay. Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Majinferno Source 2: money.cnn.com "Let me be clear: I'm proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me," he wrote in a column in Bloomberg Businessweek. “If hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it's worth the trade-off with my own privacy." Project Ara Update Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Plasma Source 2: blog.phonebloks.com Source 3: gizmodo.com Source 4: gizmodo.com The engineering team at NK Labs has shown Phonebloks a real, honest-to-goodness functioning test phone that boots into Android. Google now plans to hold its second Ara conference on January 14th.

PSA: TL:DR IN COMMENTS I think there is a huge bunch of misunderstanding about phonebloks and project ara which i will help to clear up. (copied from my comment post on another forum topic. not entirely doubling up, but i want to get this message more widely viewed.) Phonebloks was an idea by one guy, which Google saw the success of and announced Project Ara, which had been in the works for the past half year. Therefore project ara is real and phonebloks is not. They use the same idea though - modular components on a solid chassis. Given that you're IN this forum, please don't play the card that 'they'll make you pay an extra $50 for every module'. That is the entire point of the custom desktop PC. If you want basic you get basic and don't ask questions. If you want advanced and powerful it may not be worth your money but you spend it anyway, don't you? The desktop PC keeps down the monopolization by making it an open market with just some self-established guidelines and standards for components (I/O shield, PCI express, etc). Now what happens when you make a phone (or a tablet or a watch) with those same principle? Why would anyone on a forum that praises the custom desktop PC get upset with that! A device that is merely open standards for a market to be established to make and sell things under their own market devices. They can be as competitive or non-competitive as they want but at the end of the day it is the consumers' choice how much they want to spend, and on what features they deem valuable. Again, lets compare to the desktop PC: why do you have it rather than a complete system from a nearby tech store or (heaven forbid) a mac?? a ) you like to put it together and enjoy tinkering with it b ) you like the personalisation that you can achieve with it over complete systems from other places. c ) you're fed up with the lack of performance in commercial computers and would rather spend inproportionally more money to receive that performance. d ) you have the money to buy a commercial pc (barely) but would rather you choose the components you need based on your workload (no GPU but an SSD boot drive. No optical drive but a better cpu. etc) e ) you like to save the money/resources in upgrading outmoded parts than turfing the whole computer, saving a production cycle and saving you the consumer a lot of money (especially if they re-sell the parts) while maintaining tech relevancy. Now please tell me which one of those does not directly apply to modular consumer electronics. A modular watch or phone's base model is cheap, but you can make it as powerful as you want. $100 for a basic smartwatch is great deal for most people. If you want a beefed up one buy the extra parts and pay $500. Still cheaper than many on the market (COUGH apple). but then you end up with a smarphone-powerful smartwatch which someone would have if they didn't have a smartphone. In project ara's case. the stock model will be $50. don't think of that as a phone for the plebs. Remove all the stock bloks and build a $900 phone like you would buy an HTC or iphone. Then in the next gen you only spend another $300 on new processor or when you had broken it, $50 for a new screen. Again, look at the comparison to the desktop PC market and ask yourself why you would have anything against it! To the topic of 'why don't they make a modular tablet': short answer: they will. long answer: it doesn't matter. the project ara modules will be intercompatible with each other across any activity, so so long as you have a chassis that can hold them they'll work. A modular tablet is just a larger chassis to put blocks into. Google stated that they want to establish the phone first, starting with a medium phone, then releasing a phablet chassis and mini ipod-nano-6th-gen sized phone chassis, THEN releasing a tablet and who knows an SLR chassis. A drone chassis. a fridge chassis. Something with the same standards that the same block can plug into and work together. So you will have a phone chassis and a tablet chassis and a fridge with a compatible chassis. You keep batteries in each and you take out the storage from one to the other perhaps. or the camera onto the device you want to take the nice pictures with that day. or if you're frugal the nice processor block you swap between devices to save on doubling up buying the stuff. When in the fridge perhaps the storage block gets metadata from the frisge, which when plugged back into the phone alerts health apps and so on. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter whether its a phone or a tablet or a fridge. Physically the difference is screen size but therefore chassis size. All it takes is Google to see Ara's success and release ONE product to support it and WHAM - done. I hope this clears up a bunch of misunderstand that a lot of people (including and especially linus) seem to have.

Project Ara gets demoed by a Google employee and talks about it and how it works for about 20 mins. (Forward it to 5:00) http://youtu.be/18LU5UtG5-M So what do you guys think. Personally I'm excited, but there's still a lot of unanswered questions. Hopefully Google will shed some more light on it during the Ara developer conference on April 15th and 16th

Last week Project Ara had their MDC (Module Developers Conference) and showed off a lot of the hardware behind how Project Ara is going to work. http://www.tested.com/tech/smartphones/460765-tested-explains-how-googles-project-ara-smartphone-works/ Because Project Ara is designed to be a modular smartphone, Google does not want to control this market with an iron fist. They want to make it an open marketplace with open standards like the PC market. This MDC was to give hardware manufacturers the specifications on how to make modules for the phone. Therefore specs of size, connector location and type, how the blocks are held together, and even the manufacturing process that Google is trying to implement. All very exciting. (replacing a broken screen is as easy as yanking it off and buying a new one - while the phone's still turned on!) To start with, Google does indeed have a working prototype of the Ara Phone. So it is possible to work. The $50 (actually 'Sub $100') price tag "for what [Google] calls a basic "grey" phone includes $15 for the Endo [Chassis], $15 for the display, $5 for a battery, $10 for the main Application Processor module[AP] [small SSD for OS storage, CPU and RAM on one chip, where the entire chip is interchangeable but within you can't keep the cpu while changing the ram], and $5 for a Wi-Fi unit". This does aim at the cheap phone market, but you could chuck out all of that and build a baller enthusiasts phone with awesome hardware for $1500. Its possible. Parents buy kid a basic grey phone when they're 7, and every year get something new for it. Age 8, an HD display, age 9, better camera, age 10, more storage, etc. Or you could buy just an Endo Frame for really cheap and customize from there from a marketplace of different manufacturers. (The stock AP module. Other companies (like Intel or Nvidia) could make their own if they wanted to) The other slots can be filled with whatever you want, and are interchangeable. If you're a cloud user but 2 weeks battery life, you can ditch the hard drive and have all battery modules. You can have no battery if you're always charging it, and just get a wireless charging port and then awesome speakers and camera and such. Position of all the components can be wherever (with restrictions on physical size of course) as the connecting pins are the same on every slot. Another thing is that if you had a tiny camera thing, the manufacturer could put in lightweight spacer material to fill in the module (lightweight phone) or they could but in some storage to save all the photos to, depending on what they decided. Depth is not an issue so long as users are ok with chunkier phones, but that is a user decision. The connection is though a 10 pin port. where pins 1 and 2 are power and ground, and the other 8 pins are 2 way data transfer (or more power if its a battery) depending on what the hardware manufacturer decides. The bandwidth should keep the Ara phone moderately future proofed. The interface can handle 10gb/s for most modules, and 20gb/s on the larger ones. So even an ethernet port block could transmit at close to full speed for quite some time. This connection allows the modules to talk to each other through a very basic low level firmware, so communication between camera and gyroscope and microphone could be a thing for augmented reality creating devices for the "FPS game where you map out a location first" software thing Linus seems interested in. The Endo also contains a small battery designed for hot swapping. It can keep the stock AP block powered for a few minutes while swapping battery blocks out when one dies, giving this phone essentially unlimited battery life. That's built into the frame of the phone, on top of all the other batteries that could be chucked everywhere (around the screen, next to the camera, around a wifi block, essentially anywhere where the PCB and components of a block don't fill up the whole thing.) Hopefully the things that made the PC marketplace great a decade ago with all sorts of graphics cards and hard drives and CPUs for different audiences and prices will make this phone great too. Next thing was the attachment method. Many people have wondered whether blocks will just fall out if you're not careful, or whether they need screws or latches or are one way or something. Nope. They're held in place with "Electropermanent Magnets" (EPMs) Essentially electromagnets that don't loose their charge when powered off. I don;t know the strength of these magnets, or how you release them when you want to remove blocks (maybe they just make it stiff to release and you can tug it free), but they will hold stuff in place when you don't want it to move. Theft could be interesting though. Rather than stealing phones, people might start stealing blocks... (cross section of how a block will be built. all the layers for every block as well as the Endo Frame will make this phone thicker than current, but its a price to pay for modularity.) (conceptual idea for the 3D printer. Not yet built but should be fully built and tested by this time next year for full scale production) Finally, Google announced their production method for the Ara Phone. 3D Printing. Google has teamed up with 3D Systems and asked them to design a mass production 3D printer for the backs of modules, as well as potentially the entire module (now that we can 3D print PCBs and electronics) It will work by having a more or less stationary head while the work moves underneath along a conveyor belt, slowly being built as it goes along. The slow part of most 3D printers is that the head makes a line, it then lifts up and moves back to the start to make another line. If you could have heads always applying stuff, and have multiple heads applying different colours or shapes at the same time, you could 3D print anything REALLY FAST. This allows for customization of the back of the phone. Choose colour or even get a photo there. Depending on end cost and size, it also allows Google to have production anywhere in the world. If demand is high in Germany, just put a Printer in Germany to save on shipping. (examples of what designs you could have on your phone. The plastic backs are removable to put on other modules when you buy them.) Really exciting stuff. Even if Google decides to NOT build Ara Phones (which i doubt they will this far along) they still have all the tech they have now developed - the Electropermanent Magnets, the 10 pin interface with 10 gigabit transfer speeds as well as power, the 3D printer... Looking forward to April next year! =D I covered a week ago the differences in what Linus talked about in the WAN show with what's actually happening with Project Ara, thought i'd clear up some misinformation that was going around. Link to my other topic here: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/142942-the-good-parts-of-project-ara/#entry1908417

i want to know your opinions about project Ara and if you dont now what project Ara it is pretty much Motorola and the phoneblocks guy teaming up together to make a phone that you can upgrade anytime kinda like a pc and if you dont know what phoneblocks is it is a phone that you can upgrade anything and choose your parts to your phone like if you want a bigger battery you can get a bigger battery but customize it the way you want, and project ara is just Motorola trying to put it into action Video about Phoneblocks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAw7vW7H0c Video about Project Ara: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skXwTxo0Bo0

I feel Linus doesn't fully understand the gravity of how awesome this concept is. This will probably be the last phone you will ever need. These are the reasons why i backed phonebloks and why i back project ara: (reason one is its PRETTY. Customization decals on the phone would look awesome, and with the tile effect, any combo could look awesome. Straight white. Monocolour. Paterns. Anything broken up with aluminium will look sweet. Ok designer fantasies out of the way.) - COST - the $50 price is NOT a full phone cost. That is the cost of the metal backbone chassis with wifi antenna. You still have to pay for processor and camera and battery and actual phone antenna. the plan is for google to sell these backbones and have it an open marketplace with industry standards so other companies (nvidia, intel etc) can make their own processors to put in, at different costs. That if i want a last gen processor, i can pay $100 for it. If i want a bleeding edge processor. I can pay $400 for it. Exactly the same way the PC market works. - CUSTOMISABILITY - These ports are designed as 2 way data and power ports. Which means you can put a camera on a larger block if you want; it just means you can't put a battery block there and you have to deal with a smaller battery. If you wanted only processor and 15 batteries you could. If you wanted 500gb storage but no battery you could. And so with industry leaders providing different quality and cost blocks, you should be able to get almost whatever you want. Perhaps some overclocking too if they're open standards. Get a Canon camera on the large block for $500, and then fill up all the medium blocks with batteries Mount it to a quad copter, and put on a gps block, a camera block and an I/O block. Maybe have an entire gopro or quad copter chassis (see below) Each block can have quality and power and you can choose what to focus on like with a desktop. The small DAC might just have a 3.5mm jack, which sticks out a bit or something. The medium one might come out at an angle to fit, have volume rockers and a tinny speaker. The large one has an awesome speaker, volume rockers, and 2 jacks for friends to listen to. You can carry that around with you just in case, then take out your camera temporarily or something. Have 2 camera blocks that are synced HTC 1 m8 style. These are SOME ideas i had off the top of my head. Up to manufacturers to make, not google. they have said they're making the chassis and software. Nothing else. - SWAPABILITY - These blocks are supposed to be designed to be interchangeable between platforms. That when different sized chassis' come out for phablets and full tablets, I can just take my batteries and hard drive and camera from my phone and chuck them on my tablet which is only an extra $150 for the screen and chassis, and use each device when i need it. A tablet isn't always useful, neither is a phone, but having one set of hardware i can use in anything is awesome. What if i put it on a camera chassis with lens mount? What if i put it on a smartwatch mount which had 2 small slots, with built in processing? so i could choose whether i wanted gps tracking or heartrate monitoring, or battery. - UPGRADEABILITY - saying that there is only one cpu that would fit in it is a bit of a bad statement. This modular system is being approached in exactly the same way as the PC industry is. You can swap out your processor for another one. Except that due to size constraints its going to be a combined CPU/GPU/APU/Motherboard chip. (although with this other concept you might be able to customize within the processing block) If you look closely there is a locking mechanism on the edge of the slots, so it isn't going to fall out, and with open industry standards it will have as much tinkering potential as any desktop does. - COMPATIABILITY - With the size constraints there is a maximum constraint, but no minimum one. You could put a camera which was 1% larger than the medium slot, but way smaller than a large slot, and if it came with spacer material in the box, then it would fit. That could keep weight down for people who want a 30g phone. Yes you could make it thicker to put more in (see the camera in the background below) and again, that is a size and dimension compromise the consumer is willing to make. So yes i think it is aiming for the cheap market, but also the adventurer market, and the fitness nut market, and the tinkerer market, and every single market out there. That is the point of this That is the point of a desktop PC that you can CUSTOMIZE IT depending on whatever you feel like doing at the time. (if someone could link this to linus or luke that would be appreciated. It took a while to write) ((i don't really care if there are typos, but i am interested in discussion =) )) Thank you =)