Motorola reveals Project Ara: A fully modular smartphone

Earlier this year we had the Phonebloks Kickstarter that aimed to create a fully modular smartphone with customisable hardware that you could swap out to suit your needs much like how you build a PC. Well it looks like Motorola thought that was a good idea as the company has now revealed ‘Project Ara' today on its blog.

“We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines.”

Motorola didn't flat out steal the idea of ‘Phonebloks', they actually hired the man behind it. The advanced Technology and Products group is working with Phonebloks creator Dave Hakkens to create the Phoneblok modules and has already “done deep technical work”.

The device will work by having an endoskeleton that holds all of the modules in place. Motorola's blog post reads: “A module can be anything, from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter–or something not yet thought of!”

The project is now open to the community to start designing hardware modules and we could see Module Development Kits released as soon as this winter.

KitGuru Says: A customisable smartphone that you can build and upgrade yourself sounds like a great idea. It will certainly grab the attention of tech enthusiasts, I wouldn't mind being able to fully customise my phone. I'd like to see a range of cases as aesthetics will be play an important part in the adoption of these modular style phones. What do you guys think? Would you like to build your own smartphone? 

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