Google is no stranger within the smartphone market, but Project Ara will be their very first handset that the search engine giant will be creating by itself. The company is already known to have made laptops and a tablet, among many other devices. Even though the modular smartphone is still in its prototype stages, you can’t escape the fact that it’s going to be a very exciting piece of technology. However, the phone is far from being just modular as there are many other things to expect from it such as a new store and more devices linked to the mobile phone.
Project Ara is an Exciting Tech That Many Can’t Wait to Get Their Hands On
The original premise behind the creation of Project Ara was to modularize just about everything on it. Users would be able to change anything from the screen, to the processor, and even its camera. The developer model will already be shipped out within next year. However, there are still some key components that will be permanently installed into the phone. Now, instead of everything being modular, users will just have to deal with some key elements such as the screen, the basic speakers, the processor, and the RAM.
This does not come as a small amount of disappointment for those wanting Google’s Project Ara to be completely modular. While there are a lot of people who really want to upgrade bits and pieces of their smartphones instead of purchasing an entirely new one, the Ara team stated that after “lots of research,” they have found out that most users “couldn’t care less about it” and “most people didn’t know what their processor was or did.”
There are also other notable changes with Project Ara, well, at least for what has been announced before. For instance, the original plan was to use powerful magnets to hold the modules in place. Also, there are wireless, capacitive interconnects in order to get those modules communicating with the frame. Now, according to an interview from Rafa Caramago, who runs the development of Google’s own smartphone, with The Verge, there are new connectors that are made with shape-shifting “nitinol memory alloy.” “So when you pass a current, it actually contracts and you can mechanical things with it – but now I can control electronically, which means I can control it from a software.”