Motorola Announces Project Ara, An Open, Modular Smartphone Hardware Platform [UPDATED]

[ofr057]

looks promising ... look forward seeing a review of it

[mucitel1]

I think most people would upgrade battery...

Sent from my GSmart Aku A1 using Tapatalk

[TopWargamer]

Supported the Phoneblocks idea since day 1. Glad to see somebody is taking it to heart. Will need more detail on this new phone, but looks like my next phone will be a Motorola.

[hiyayhi]

It could be sweet but I doubt it will happen, same problem as that kickstarter project.

This will probably end up just having expandable battery and storage.

[mymouthandi]

It could be sweet but I doubt it will happen, same problem as that kickstarter project.

This will probably end up just having expandable battery and storage.

 

Is that a bad thing?

[do_hickey]

This needs to be talked about on the WAN show. Linus and Slick knocked phonebloks so hard when that went around. I wish Motorola had more information so that they could discuss some of the concerns they had with phonebloks and why it was impractical. Also, it llooks like Motorola actually teamed up with the guy to work on this, thus allowing for his predicted date of hearing more info about phonebloks on October 29 (see his video).

 

Now, I'm not so sure this idea will take off, anyways. There may not be enough demand as it may be cost prohibitive for the average user without carrier pricing, and I just don't see it being durable enough. But it would be cool if it was done properly (and if it's being developed by Motorola, there's a good chance it could be) and it takes off. The question is, will Google tighten its iron grip and make this more difficult for everyone involved, or will they stay true to their old model of spurring and feeding innovation?

[Kamil]

I don't really see how you can easily upgrade the battery if each version of a component has to fit into the exact same spot.

 

... Unless it fits into that spot, but has an extension above that covering the entire back. SO MUCH POWER! And phones were getting too thin anyways. If this is available when my contract expires I'll probably buy it off-contract; the subsidies are nice, but I think it would end up being cheaper to just upgrade whatever part I need than to get a whole new phone every other year.

[Nicktrance]

Awesome concept, still don't see it being good enough to make sense in the near future

[gliliumho]

I don't think it'll be as modular as the Phoneblock claims to be. Probably modular for the storage, camera, battery, speaker and screen. All the processing chips will probably be in one block or even embedded on the board itself. I'm curious how it's gonna turn out for development of custom ROMs.

[chromeboy42]

I'll get it if it comes out if they have Moto maker for it. It'll be really expensive though...

Sent from my MobiGlass while chillin in my 300i orbiting Terra

[stevv]

The concept photo is interesting, 

 

Two phone sizes, Three block sizes, and extension attachment (blue phone).

 

Big square blocks: possibility of dual batteries.

 

 

I can imagine carrying a bag of modules and extra charged batteries.

[hiyayhi]

Is that a bad thing?

Not at all, infact it would probably push the industry for more phones like it. I am just saying that a phone that is totally customisable is a little unrealistic. But epic if they can pull it off.

[Seldszar]

wow I am very intrigued. If it works well, it will be awesome.

[88borus]

I'd like to begin with I want this project to sucseed as much as everybody else. But to be honest I'm not convinced. There is still a couple of problems with the idea.

 

The first of which is Motorola still needs to win the support of other harware manufactures. Motorola hasn't been a chip manufactuer for quiet some time, so they'll need to have some support there. I mean the current ARM proccessors aren't built for modularity; they are built for a specific system that isn't supposed to change, they dont have combatiltilty across the board. There maybe a way to build systems on to a PCB with the CPU and its acompanying, but I'm sure this would cause a bottleneck and/or would cost signifigantly more. Another option could be to move towards a more motherboard-like design for the base of the phone, but from what I've seen and heard thats not really the goal of this project. I'm no expert so I dont know how hard this would be to for chip manufatutres to optimize for Ara, but at this point it makes me a bit sceptical. This also begs the question what about architecturechanges? Will I need to buy a new base or will manufactures be foreced to use the same architecture for Ara? In short compatiblity is going to be a nightmare to figure out.

 

Also there is the problem of form factor. The pictures seem to show every component using a 10 or 20 contact design. This doens't seem like enough contact points for a cpu to recieve data and send it in a smartphone. I know that many phones uses connectors with few contact points to connect components, but theyre specificly designed that with a spefic case in mind (which is impossible with Ara) and there are many points where connectors have  higher numberr of contacts. Then there is the problem of latency due to using a non standard bus to communicate data. This is a massive problem, unless each part is speficially designed with Ara in mind. Which then revers back to my first point. The technical limitations are very possibly what ends up killing the concept. I know the people at Google and Motorola aren't stupid, but they will probibly have to erither sacrafice cost or peformance in a major way for this one.

 

My third issue with the modular phone concept is the lack of support/options. I know there will poribly be a multitude of choices, but if there isnt (or if the components aren't different enough) then its not a modular phone for everyone, its a modular phone with one type of user. I'm affraid if they do have to compromise, theyll cut the highend compnents here to keep the cost resobible for the end user and we'll be left with a phone that only has low end compnents and no room to upgrade, expect every 2 years when new components are released (when you'd be buying a new phone anyway). There is also the issue of only Motorola manufacturing/selling components. There will need to be competioion in this new market or prices will be extremeley high for the duration of its existance.

 

Which brings me to my final speculation: Long term support. This is supposed to be a 5+ year phone base with upgrades in between. If there nobody buys the Ara, then manufactures aren't going to waste resources supporting it. And if Motorola gets greedy after a major success and deciedes "Maybe we should release a new base with some different architecture" then the project will fail.

 

This phone will live or die on manufacturer support and while Google would be my top choice for winning support (unless Elon Musk was here), I think it's goning to be an difficult battle. This is huge gamble and I'm nervous this may be a huge blow to an already hurting Motorola if it fails. Like all new tech, I'm excited to see how it turns out and hope it does great, but I think we all need to look at everything will a sceptical and critical eye. I thank anybody if took the time to read this, I'm glad you cared enough about my opinion. Thanks I hope that it was interesting!

[Emperor_Piehead]

Chances are we won't see any other companies.

 

It can go one of two ways.

 

1) Motorola patents the idea. No other companies can do it.

2) Motorola license the idea and companies like Samsung, HTC, LG and such develop their own.

they said that the hardware would be open source

[Lyons]

I don't think it's a coincidence that the Phonebloks Thunderclap date and Project Ara was announced on the same day. It's very likely Phonebloks was a hype machine for this 

 

Regardless, it's awesome, an I would definitely buy/use it.

[Mooshi]

Moto hasn't done interesting since the razr days. Interesting to see how this might turn out considering Samsung and Apple kinda dominate the market.

[Alfie_Assassin]

Linus Phone Build log anyone?

[The Syndicate]

I wonder if someone will make a $4,000 Gigapixel camera.(I don't have any camera knolege, I'm just assuming it might cost $4,000)

[Mentalguy]

Linus Phone Build log anyone?

take months to finish

[Wferr]

take months to finish

**years

Sent from my iPhone

[Henry]

I swear to god, if they run stock Android on this with updates from Google itself, this may be the greatest invention for mobile phones since being mobile.

 

I swear to god, if they run stock Android on this with updates from Google itself, this may be the greatest invention for mobile phones since being mobile.

Except like, if apple's still a dick and wins the latest patent war about capacitive touch screens....

[DefinitelyNotAPedophile]

I am wondering one thing still. Where does the freakin sim card go . There is really no proof of this product working yet. I wont back it up until i see a finished product

[mymouthandi]

Not at all, infact it would probably push the industry for more phones like it. I am just saying that a phone that is totally customisable is a little unrealistic. But epic if they can pull it off.

 

It is totally unrealistic at the moment, you are correct. I wouldn't be surprised if the first iteration just had expendable storage, memory and battery replacement, then the next iteration adds a replaceable camera and then each iteration adds something else after that.

[maazster]

I wonder how they would overcome bandwidth issues, the thing is the components can be bottle necked for be low speed because of the throughput between in the interconnects.