Rants and raves about stuff happening in and around my life in Singapore

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Project Ara and Phonebloks

6:57 AM By Barry Smyth No comments

Phonebloks, a concept phone that is built from detachable bloks that allows a user to switch out components as and when they want, looks set to become a reality. In what Motorola calls Project Ara, the advanced Technology and Products group is working with Phonebloks creator Dave Hakkens on an "endoskeleton (endo) and modules" with a timeline to a Module Developer's Kit (MDK) release by the end of 2013.



If it works out it will probably be the most significant innovation for mobile phones this century. Hakkens has described his design as a "phone worth keeping" -- with the ability to upgrade piece by piece and (hopefully) never experience obsolescence again. As new and better bloks are developed you simply swap out the component blok on your phone for the new one. And if you don't need a camera on your phone then you could use a bigger battery blok to take up the space and so on.

It means that as there are new developments in the industry you no longer need to change your whole phone, instead you just change or upgrade the related blok. And if companies get behind this development it means you will have a much wider choice of what components you want to use making your phone truely personal.

Motorola says it was already working on what it’s calling Project Ara when it bumped into Hakkens. Project Ara is designed to be a “free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones,” says Motorola.

“We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software,” writes Motorola, adding that it’s goal is “to give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it’s made of, how much it costs, and how long you’ll keep it.”

For more information you can follow Phonebloks online and join the growing community of over 381 million people world wide who think that this is an awesome idea!

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