Did you know you can upgrade your phone’s hardware as easy as the way you download an app? Well, this is finally coming to be a reality.
Motorola’s has started a dubbed ‘’Project Ara’’, a project which may make upgrading a phone’s hardware as easy as downloading an app.
The company describes Ara as a free open hardware platform that will facilitate highly modular smartphones. The new project will allow third parties to create individual hardware components without the burdon of having to manufacture a whole new phone. The company says it wants the new initiative…”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.”
Project Ara phones consist of a structural frame the company refers to as “endo” (as in endoskeleton) and interchangeable modules. These modules, which anyone will be allowed to make, are where the true customization comes in. They can be anything from an internal components like application processors to peripherals like displays or keyboards to something completely different altogether.
Motorola notes that this sort of project is available due to the increased versatility of smartphones in addition to the lowered entry of 3D printing. Within the Ara ecosystem, creating a new hardware component would be as approachable as developing a new app.
